Field reports from the TechKis team.
Engineering notes, architecture deep-dives and honest takes on what we’re learning while shipping AI-first software.
Top highlights
- 9 min read·AI EngineeringCostEngineering Practice
What an AI pilot actually costs — a line-item breakdown
Most AI pilot budgets are wrong because they only price the build. Here's the honest line-item breakdown — discovery, data prep, evaluation, build, inference and the run cost nobody quotes — and where pilots quietly overrun.
Read post - 9 min read·PerformanceCore Web VitalsSEO
A Lighthouse 100 doesn't mean your site is fast
Lighthouse is a lab simulation on a throttled mid-range phone. Google ranks on field CrUX p75 for LCP, INP and CLS. Here's why the two disagree, and what to measure instead.
Read post - 9 min read·AI EngineeringSEOContent
Getting cited by AI search — how to be the answer, not the tenth blue link
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite sources instead of listing links. Here's how answer engines pick what to quote, and how to be the citation.
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29 posts · page 4 of 5
- 8 min read·API DesignArchitectureBackend
API-First Development — why the contract should come before the code
API-First means designing the contract before writing the implementation. Here's why that order matters, what it changes about how teams work, and the practical workflow that makes it work without slowing you down.
Read post - 9 min read·ArchitectureDDDStartups
Domain-Driven Design for startups — the parts worth keeping, the parts worth skipping
DDD is a powerful set of ideas buried under a lot of enterprise ceremony. Here's what's genuinely useful for a startup — bounded contexts, ubiquitous language, aggregates — and what you can safely skip until you need it.
Read post - 8 min read·ArchitectureHexagonal ArchitectureSoftware Design
Hexagonal Architecture without overengineering — ports, adapters and the line you shouldn't cross
Hexagonal Architecture is one of the most useful ideas in software design. It's also one of the most over-applied. Here's what the ports-and-adapters model actually buys you, where it becomes ceremony, and how to apply it without drowning in abstractions.
Read post - 9 min read·ArchitectureClean ArchitectureBackend
Clean Architecture in real projects — what survives contact with a deadline
Clean Architecture looks elegant on a diagram. In production it gets messy. Here's what the layers actually buy you, where the theory breaks down, and the pragmatic version we apply on real client work.
Read post - 10 min read·ArchitectureMicroservicesBackend
Monolith vs Modular Monolith vs Microservices — picking the right shape for your stage
A practical breakdown of when a monolith is the right call, when to modularise it, and when microservices actually earn their operational cost — with the signals that tell you it's time to move.
Read post - 9 min read·LangGraphLangChainOpenAI
LangGraph vs LangChain vs raw OpenAI SDK in 2026 — what we actually pick
An opinionated, code-first comparison of LangGraph, LangChain and the raw OpenAI / Anthropic SDKs for shipping production agents in 2026 — when each one earns its keep, where they bite, and what we default to on new client work.
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