Insights

Notes from the work,written to be used.

Short essays on AI models, technology trends, the stacks we build on and the design language we ship. Each one is written for the person who has to make the decision.

30 articles

16 September 2026 Technology trends What changes when software is cheap to write AI coding tools have made producing code dramatically faster. They have not made deciding what to build, checking that it works or running it for years any cheaper — and that shifts where the value is. 2 min read

2 September 2026 Tech stack Choosing a frontend framework is mostly choosing a team The technical differences between mainstream frameworks have narrowed. What still differs is who you can hire, how long the code will be supported, and how much of it you actually need. 2 min read

19 August 2026 Design language Designing interfaces for answers that might be wrong Traditional software is either right or broken. AI features are usually right, sometimes wrong, and always confident-sounding. The interface has to carry the uncertainty the model won't. 2 min read

5 August 2026 AI & models Governing AI use without banning it Staff are already using AI tools, approved or not. A short, practical policy — backed by tools people actually want to use — protects the business better than a prohibition nobody follows. 2 min read

29 July 2026 Technology trends Legacy modernisation without the big bang The rewrite that replaces everything at once is the most reliable way to lose two years. Replacing a system one route at a time is slower to describe and much faster to finish. 2 min read

22 July 2026 Design language A design system for teams without a design team Most organisations that need consistency cannot justify a dedicated design-system group. A small, opinionated kit — and the discipline to keep it small — gets them most of the way. 2 min read

15 July 2026 AI & models Write prompts like specifications The prompts that hold up in production read less like clever incantations and more like a well-written brief for a new colleague. Treat them as code: versioned, reviewed and tested. 2 min read

8 July 2026 Tech stack Observability for teams of five You do not need a platform team to know what your software is doing in production. Four signals, one dashboard and a rule about alerts will cover most of what a small team needs. 2 min read

1 July 2026 Technology trends Passkeys are ready. Your login page probably isn't. Phishing-resistant sign-in now works across the devices your customers already own. The technology is done; what remains is product design and a sensible migration plan. 2 min read

24 June 2026 Tech stack Static first: why our own site ships as plain files No server, no database, no framework runtime — and pages that load before you finish blinking. Static generation is the most underrated architecture for most business websites. 2 min read

17 June 2026 AI & models The real cost of an AI feature The token bill is the smallest line in the budget. Evaluation, review, support and change management are where AI features actually cost money — and where the business case should look first. 3 min read

10 June 2026 Design language Motion with a job to do Animation is either explaining something or getting in the way. A short guide to the motion that earns its milliseconds, and the kind that should be cut. 2 min read

3 June 2026 Data Data contracts: stop fixing pipelines downstream Most broken dashboards were broken upstream, by a change nobody announced. A data contract makes the producer of the data responsible for its shape — and makes the break loud instead of silent. 2 min read

27 May 2026 Strategy & delivery Two weeks to a decision you can defend Why we start almost every engagement with a fixed-fee fortnight, and what a good diagnostic leaves behind even if you never hire us again. 2 min read

20 May 2026 AI & models Small models, local data Not every AI task needs the largest model in the world. For privacy-sensitive, high-volume work, a small model you control is often cheaper, faster and easier to defend. 2 min read

13 May 2026 Technology trends WebGPU and the return of the rich web Real-time 3D, large visualisations and on-device AI now run in an ordinary browser tab. The question is no longer whether the web can do it, but whether your content deserves it. 2 min read

6 May 2026 Design language Let the type do the heavy lifting Illustration budgets shrink and stock photography all looks the same. Typography is the one brand asset that appears on every screen — and most design systems still treat it as an afterthought. 2 min read

29 April 2026 Tech stack Postgres is the default database, and it should be Documents, search, queues, vectors for AI retrieval — one well-run Postgres now covers what used to take four products. The reasons to add a second database are fewer than they were. 3 min read

22 April 2026 AI & models Your AI assistant is part of your attack surface Anything a model can read, an attacker can write to. Prompt injection is not a curiosity; it is the SQL injection of this decade, and it needs the same boring discipline. 3 min read

15 April 2026 AI & models Agents in the back office start with reconciliation The most useful AI agents we have deployed this year do not talk to customers. They match invoices, chase exceptions and hand a person the three cases that actually need judgement. 2 min read

8 April 2026 Strategy & delivery The case against replacing your ERP Most integration pain is process pain wearing a technical costume. How to tell the difference before committing to a migration. 2 min read

1 April 2026 AI & models Evaluations are the new unit tests An AI feature without an evaluation suite is a feature you cannot change safely. Treat the eval set like test code, and most of the fear goes out of shipping. 3 min read

25 March 2026 Tech stack TypeScript everywhere, and where it stops paying Types across the whole stack have been one of the best trades in software this decade. But there is a point where the type system becomes the product, and the product suffers. 2 min read

18 March 2026 Design language The quiet interface Gradients, glass and bounce had their decade. The interfaces aging best in 2026 are the ones that get out of the way — and that restraint is harder to design than decoration. 2 min read

11 March 2026 Strategy & delivery What a technology roadmap owes the board Three questions a roadmap has to answer before it is worth presenting — what stops, what starts, and what it costs to be wrong. 2 min read

4 March 2026 AI & models Retrieval before fine-tuning When a model doesn't know your business, the instinct is to train it. Nine times in ten, the better answer is to hand it the right documents at the right moment. 3 min read

25 February 2026 Data Metrics before models Why the first automation project should be the one nobody wants to demo, and how to sequence the rest behind it. 2 min read

18 February 2026 Design language Design tokens are a contract, not a palette Most token files we inherit are a list of colours with clever names. The useful ones are agreements between design and engineering about what may change, and what must not. 2 min read

11 February 2026 Tech stack The boring stack is winning, and that is good news A relational database, server-rendered pages and one well-understood cloud. The most reliable systems we saw last year were built from parts nobody would put on a conference slide. 2 min read

4 February 2026 AI & models Choosing an AI model is now a procurement decision The leaderboard tells you which model is cleverest in general. It cannot tell you which one is cheapest to be right with, on your data, under your privacy obligations. 3 min read

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