Architecture
23 guides tagged “Architecture”.
- What Is an Agent Runtime? An agent runtime is the service that runs the loop: it schedules steps, enforces tool policy, stores state, and records what happened.
- Agent Skills vs MCP vs AGENTS.md: What's the Difference? AGENTS.md sets standing rules, Agent Skills package one procedure, and MCP connects tools and data. They solve three different problems.
- How to Connect an AI App to Production Data Securely Do not hand the model a database credential. Put a scoped tool layer between model and data, with tenant filters and an audit trail.
- What Is Model Routing (and When Should You Downgrade)? Model routing sends each request to the cheapest model that can handle it, with a fallback. It needs per-route evaluation, not a hunch.
- Spec-Driven Development vs TDD: Which Comes First? TDD drives design with failing unit tests; spec-driven development fixes behaviour and contracts first. They operate at different altitudes.
- What Is a Design Doc (and Do You Need One)? A design doc records the problem, options, decision, and trade-offs. It is where architecture reasoning survives after the chat window closes.
- What Is an AI Gateway? An AI gateway centralises provider keys, routing, limits, caching, logging, and fallback. It also concentrates secrets and prompts in one place.
- What Is a Decision Model? Jev, Laya, and Typed Answers Instead of Parsed Prose A decision model returns a typed choice, score, or yes/no probability instead of generated text. How Jev, Laya, and Clef work, and when to use one.
- What Is a Message Queue (and When Do You Actually Need One)? A message queue decouples work from the request that created it. Learn what one is, when you need it, and how RabbitMQ, SQS, and Kafka differ.
- How to Choose an Authentication Method for Your App: A Decision Guide Sessions, JWTs, OAuth, passkeys, magic links, or SSO — the six questions that decide your auth method, a comparison table, and the cases where each option is the wrong pick.
- How to Choose a Database for Your App: A Decision Guide Workload, consistency, data shape, scale, and ops burden — the five questions that decide which database you should use, with a comparison table and the cases where each option is wrong.
- What Are the Different Types of Databases (and What Is Each One For)? Relational, document, key-value, wide-column, graph, time-series, search, and vector databases — what each data model is, the use cases it fits, and the ones it breaks.
- Eventual Consistency vs Strong Consistency: What's the Difference (and When Does It Matter)? Strong consistency guarantees all readers see the same data immediately. Eventual consistency saves latency and availability but lets reads return stale data. Here's when each is the right call.
- Software Engineering for AI Builders: The Concepts Your Coding Assistant Won't Teach You Your AI writes the code, but it doesn't teach you testing, architecture, databases, or Git. Learn every software engineering concept you need to go from vibecoding to shipping. 45+ linked guides.
- What Is an API Gateway (and When Do You Need One)? An API gateway is a single entry point that routes, authenticates, and rate-limits all your API traffic. Learn what it does and when it's overkill.
- Monolith vs Microservices: Which Should You Start With? For most projects, start with a monolith and split later. Microservices solve scaling and team problems you likely don't have yet. A direct comparison.
- What Is the Twelve-Factor App Methodology? The Twelve-Factor App is a set of principles for building portable, cloud-native software — from config in the environment to stateless processes.
- How to Structure a Python or Node.js Project From Scratch A clean project structure for Python and Node.js: separate source, tests, and config, with a layout that scales and that AI agents can navigate.
- What Is Eventual Consistency (and Why Do My Reads Return Stale Data)? Eventual consistency means a write becomes visible everywhere after a delay. Learn why distributed systems use it and when stale reads are a problem.
- What Is Sharding? Sharding splits one large dataset across several databases so no single machine has to hold it all. It is a last resort, and the shard key is the decision you live with.
- REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC: Which API Style Should You Use? REST, GraphQL, and gRPC each fit different needs: simple HTTP, flexible queries, or high-performance service-to-service calls. A comparison table.
- What Is a Read Replica? A read replica is a copy of your database that follows the primary. It scales reads, and it introduces replication lag — which is a correctness problem, not just a delay.
- What Is the Circuit Breaker Pattern? A circuit breaker stops your app from hammering a failing dependency. Learn the three states, why backends fall over, and when to add one.