Essays · Field notes · Occasional tricks

Notes on code, craft, and small wonders.

Engineering leader by trade. Magician by habit. Writing about building things, breaking things, and the quiet trade-offs in between.

Alex Massaad Alex Massaad Fergus, Ontario RSS LinkedIn
♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

The programme

22 essays · est. 2023

The Status Page Is the Real Architecture Diagram

I was mid-session in Claude Code when everything died. Not just my session: claude.ai, the API, the whole consumer fleet, red across the board. One row on the status page stayed green...

Agentic Filmmaking: What Comes After AI Video Generation

Watching what’s happening to video production right now feels like rewatching a movie I’ve already seen. A few years ago, agents came for software engineering and everyone argued about whether “agentic” meant...

AI Brought Me Back to Filmmaking (Through TypeScript)

I studied film at Carleton. Then I spent a decade at Shopify, then another stretch building TypeScript applications for merchants. Filmmaking became the thing I used to do. The thing I told...

Agentic Engineering Is Vibe Coding in a Blazer

Every few months tech gives an old thing a new name and acts surprised when the old problems show up. “Vibe coding” got rebranded to “agentic engineering” sometime in February. It sounds...

— Intermission —

AI doesn't reduce work, it intensifies it

The people burning out on AI tools aren’t the ones who refuse to use them. They’re the ones who are best at it. A BCG survey of nearly 1,500 workers found that...