Research-to-Build Playbooks
Practical workflows for moving from idea to build direction, without overbuilding or blind architecture choices.
Workflows
Step-by-step playbooks for moving from AI research to build decisions and execution.
Monolith to Microservices: 4 Migration Plans After Reading the Original Codebases
Monolith-to-microservices migrations fail in well-known ways: wrong service boundaries, distributed transactions where there should be none, the 'distributed monolith' antipattern. We read four real monoliths mid-migration and extracted what separates the plans that ship from the plans that produce a worse system.
We Read 5 JavaScript→TypeScript Migrations. Here's What Actually Slipped.
JS-to-TS migrations look straightforward in tutorials. In real codebases, the slippage shows up in five predictable places. We read five real migrations (totaling ~400K LOC) and identified the patterns that ship vs the ones that drag.
Legacy Code Modernization: What 3 Real Codebases Taught Us When We Read Them
Legacy modernization projects fail in predictable ways: scope creep, missing tests, undocumented business logic, the original team has left. We read three real legacy codebases mid-migration and extracted the patterns that actually ship — and the patterns that don't.
Product Research for Vibe Coders: The 48-Hour Framework Before Your First Prompt
Most vibe coding guides start at 'open Lovable.' This one starts earlier. Here's the 48-hour research framework that separates vibe coders who ship products from vibe coders who rebuild the same thing three times.
How to Build an App Like Linear: Architecture, Stack, and Tradeoffs (2026)
Linear reached $35M ARR with 3 engineers by making one architectural bet: responsiveness above all else. Here's a founder-focused breakdown of Linear's sync architecture, the two honest v1 paths, and what to copy vs what to leave for v2.