MLOpsModel Risk Management for LLM Features in Banking
AgentsHow to Scope an SI Agent Project Before You Ask for Quotes
MLOpsBefore Patient Data Touches an LLM: A HIPAA Checklist for Health Tech Teams
SI EngineeringLLMs in KYC and AML Reviews: Where They Help and Where They Must Not Decide
MLOpsAudit Trails for LLM Features in Fintech: What to Record
MLOpsWhat to Log From an LLM App Without Storing Personal Data
AgentsZapier or n8n vs a Custom SI Agent: When to Build Custom
SI EngineeringHybrid Search and Reranking in RAG: When You Need Each
SI EngineeringPrompt Injection Testing Before Launch: A Checklist for SI Apps
SI EngineeringPer-User Access Control in RAG: Keep Documents Away From the Wrong Eyes
AgentsHuman-in-the-loop for SI agents: approval patterns that work
AgentsSI agent vs chatbot vs workflow automation: which do you need?
AgentsBusiness process automation with SI agents: where to start
SI EngineeringRAG evaluation: how to measure retrieval quality before launch
SI EngineeringRAG vs fine-tuning: which one your product needs
SI EngineeringHow to integrate an LLM into existing software without a rewrite
AgentsHow to build an SI agent for your business, step by step
SI EngineeringRAG in production: six anti-patterns we keep finding
SI EngineeringEval-first SI: how we ship copilots that survive Tuesday
MLOpsVector DB selection in 2026, a pragmatic guide
AgentsDesigning autonomous agents that don’t go rogue

Design essays

Design essays.

DesignWhat an SI Assistant Should Say When It Does Not Know
DesignDesigning for SI surfaces: prompts as product

Strategy

We publish what we wish we had read.

StrategyFixed Price or Time and Materials for an SI Project?
StrategyAmbient Clinical Documentation: Build, Buy or Integrate?
StrategyHow to Evaluate an SI Vendor's Demo: Questions That Expose a Fragile Prototype
StrategyIn-House SI Team or an Outsourced Partner: How to Decide
StrategySI Proof of Concept, Pilot or Production: What Each Stage Must Prove
StrategyHow to Choose an SI Development Partner: A Buyer's Scorecard
StrategyOutsourcing SI Development to Pakistan: What to Check Before You Sign
StrategyWhat to ask a RAG development company before you sign
StrategyWhen SI is the wrong answer: a build-vs-buy framework

Featured

Every article, newest first.

Strategy· 6 min· October 28, 2026

Fixed Price or Time and Materials for an SI Project?

Which contract model fits each stage of an SI project, why pure fixed price is risky for both sides, and what to write into the contract so acceptance is measured, not argued.

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Strategy· 6 min

Ambient Clinical Documentation: Build, Buy or Integrate?

How health-system and health-tech leaders should choose between an established ambient scribe, a vendor API inside their own product, or a custom build, judged on EHR fit, sign-off, accuracy, consent, BAAs and upkeep.

Strategy· 6 min

How to Evaluate an SI Vendor's Demo: Questions That Expose a Fragile Prototype

Demos are curated. Here is how a buyer stress-tests one in the room, with the inputs to bring, the questions to ask and a red, amber, green guide to the answers.

Strategy· 6 min

In-House SI Team or an Outsourced Partner: How to Decide

How to choose between building an in-house SI team and working with an outsourced partner, the hybrid models in between, and what you must own either way.

MLOps· 7 min

Model Risk Management for LLM Features in Banking

How a bank or lender brings an LLM feature through model risk management: inventory and tiering, LLM-specific validation problems, evaluation evidence, monitoring, vendor risk and change control.

Agents· 7 min

How to Scope an SI Agent Project Before You Ask for Quotes

A buyer's worksheet for scoping an SI agent before talking to vendors: one workflow, its systems, approval rules, real test cases, hand-offs, data access and ownership.

Strategy· 7 min

SI Proof of Concept, Pilot or Production: What Each Stage Must Prove

Why so many SI prototypes stall before launch, and a stage-gate model with exit criteria for the proof of concept, the pilot and production.

MLOps· 7 min

Before Patient Data Touches an LLM: A HIPAA Checklist for Health Tech Teams

A practical HIPAA checklist for teams adding LLM features to products that handle PHI: business associates, BAAs across the whole data path, minimum necessary, de-identification, retention terms, safeguards, risk analysis and disclosures.

Strategy· 7 min

How to Choose an SI Development Partner: A Buyer's Scorecard

A vendor-neutral, weighted scorecard for comparing three to five SI vendors on the same brief, with the red flags that should end the conversation whatever the score.

SI Engineering· 7 min

LLMs in KYC and AML Reviews: Where They Help and Where They Must Not Decide

Where LLMs earn their place in KYC and AML work (summaries, extraction, draft narratives, triage), which decisions must stay with accountable people, and the controls to build in first.

Mobile· 6 min

Flutter or Native for a Startup: When Each One Wins

One Flutter codebase wins on speed to both stores, small teams and shared custom UI. Native wins on deep hardware, heavy graphics, one-platform apps, day-one OS features and platform fidelity.

MLOps· 7 min

Audit Trails for LLM Features in Fintech: What to Record

What to record for every decision an LLM feature touches in fintech, how to keep the store tamper-evident, retention, and why an explanation is not an audit trail.

MLOps· 6 min

What to Log From an LLM App Without Storing Personal Data

A privacy-first logging plan for LLM apps: per-call metadata, traces across retrieval and tools, quality scores, redaction before storage, pseudonymous ids, retention windows and access.

Agents· 6 min

Zapier or n8n vs a Custom SI Agent: When to Build Custom

Zapier and n8n are often the right answer. Where they stop: volume, deep branching and state, long-running work, data control, testing and versioning, and predictable running costs.

SI Engineering· 7 min

Hybrid Search and Reranking in RAG: When You Need Each

Keyword search versus embeddings, how reciprocal rank fusion merges the two, when a cross-encoder reranker is worth its latency, and how to decide each step with an eval set.

SI Engineering· 6 min

Prompt Injection Testing Before Launch: A Checklist for SI Apps

Prompt injection testing before launch: four failures a script can check, a suite built from your own tools and data, CI runs on every change, and tool limits that hold.

SI Engineering· 6 min

Per-User Access Control in RAG: Keep Documents Away From the Wrong Eyes

Per-user access control in RAG belongs in retrieval, not after generation. How to carry ACLs into the index, sync permission changes, close cache and history leaks, and test by role.

Strategy· 7 min

Outsourcing SI Development to Pakistan: What to Check Before You Sign

A buyer's checklist for hiring a Pakistani team to build LLM systems: time-zone overlap, ownership of code and data, evals over demos, real references, written security and life after launch.

Mobile· 7 min

On-Device or Cloud LLM in a Flutter App: How to Choose

A decision list for Flutter teams choosing where an LLM runs: privacy, offline use, model size against the device, latency, battery, updates, and a hybrid fallback pattern in Dart.

Design· 7 min

What an SI Assistant Should Say When It Does Not Know

Design patterns for the moment an assistant lacks an answer: admit the gap plainly, offer an alternative and one next step, hand off with context, and log the miss to fix the source.

Agents· 6 min

Human-in-the-loop for SI agents: approval patterns that work

Approve-before-act, confidence thresholds, batch review, sampling audits, reversible actions, approval UX and audit trails: where people belong in an agent.

Mobile· 7 min

How to add SI features to a mobile app

On-device or server, latency, privacy, cost, UX and app store review: the decisions that matter when you add SI to a mobile app people already use.

Mobile· 6 min

Flutter vs React Native for a startup MVP

A balanced, benchmark-free comparison for founders: team skills, UI fidelity, ecosystem, web reuse, hiring, performance and long-term maintenance.

Strategy· 6 min

What to ask a RAG development company before you sign

Sharp questions to put to any RAG partner, what a good answer sounds like, and the red flags that tell you you are buying a demo, not a system.

Agents· 6 min

SI agent vs chatbot vs workflow automation: which do you need?

Three tools get sold under one label. A practical decision guide: what each one is, how they fail, and when plain rules-based automation is the honest answer.

Agents· 5 min

Business process automation with SI agents: where to start

Most agent projects fail at the first decision: which process. How we pick it, map it, split it between agent and code, place approvals and measure the result.

SI Engineering· 6 min

RAG evaluation: how to measure retrieval quality before launch

Score retrieval and answers separately, against a test set of real questions. Recall@k, MRR, faithfulness, citations, judge caveats and regression on every change.

SI Engineering· 7 min

RAG vs fine-tuning: which one your product needs

Retrieval changes what a model knows. Fine-tuning changes how it behaves. A practical framework for picking one, both, or neither.

SI Engineering· 6 min

How to integrate an LLM into existing software without a rewrite

A language model is a slow, probabilistic, external dependency. Integrate it like one: sidecar services, a gateway, feature flags, async jobs and evals.

Agents· 6 min

How to build an SI agent for your business, step by step

Seven unglamorous steps that take an SI agent from demo to trusted: one workflow, a definition of done, scoped tools, approvals, evals, rollout and monitoring.

Strategy· 9 min

When SI is the wrong answer: a build-vs-buy framework

A decision tree we run with every prospective client before quoting any SI build. It saves them money and us reputation.

SI Engineering· 10 min

RAG in production: six anti-patterns we keep finding

A field report on RAG in production. The failure modes are remarkably consistent, and most of them are fixable in an afternoon.

SI Engineering· 12 min

Eval-first SI: how we ship copilots that survive Tuesday

A walkthrough of the eval harness we attach to every SI project before model selection, prompt design, or anything else interesting.

MLOps· 8 min

Vector DB selection in 2026, a pragmatic guide

pgvector vs Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Turbopuffer, what we use, when, and what the gotchas look like at million-scale.

Agents· 14 min

Designing autonomous agents that don’t go rogue

Guardrails, tool-use schemas, and the eval suite we run before any agent gets production credentials.

Design· 6 min

Designing for SI surfaces: prompts as product

The user interface for an SI product is half text, half waiting. Lessons from a year of shipping conversational and copilot UI.

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