A Synthesis Engineering Craft

RAG Architecture Lessons from Practice

Building a retrieval-augmented generation system revealed patterns the tutorials don't cover. Contractions break search. Not everything needs an LLM. Full docum

December 20, 2025·6 min read

Data Format Contracts for AI Pipelines

When tools interact, implicit assumptions break silently. Explicit data format contracts prevent the debugging sessions you don't have time for.

December 19, 2025·6 min read

Context Loss and How to Prevent It

Why AI assistants forget what you told them, and practical strategies to prevent it. The difference between context that survives and context that gets lost.

December 18, 2025·5 min read

The Foundation-First Pattern

Why the most effective AI-assisted projects start with humans writing code by hand. The counterintuitive pattern that makes everything else work.

December 14, 2025·6 min read

How Claude's Memory Actually Works (And Why CLAUDE.md Matters)

Understanding Claude's context architecture changes how you work with it. The tradeoffs between automatic continuity and on-demand depth explain why persistent

December 12, 2025·7 min read

What OpenAI's Sora Build Teaches Us About Synthesis Coding

Four engineers shipped a #1 Play Store app in 28 days using AI agents. Their approach validates the patterns I've been writing about — and adds new ones worth s

December 10, 2025·6 min read