Ideas, guides
& thinking.
Field notes from eighteen years of shipping software — AI, engineering, consulting strategy, and the architecture decisions that actually matter. Written when we have something to say.
Bad Code Is the Most Expensive It's Ever Been
AI doesn't fix bad developers — it amplifies them. If you're a bad coder, you're now producing bad code at 10x the speed. Software fundamentals have never mattered more than they do right now.
How to Create PRDs for Your App with AI
The traditional PRD process takes weeks of meetings and revision cycles. AI collapses that into hours — generating structured requirements, stress-testing your plan, and creating linked development tasks automatically.
How to Make Sure You're HIPAA Compliant. A Developer's Guide
Building a healthcare app? HIPAA compliance isn't optional — and it's not just a checkbox. Whether you're building a SaaS platform, a patient portal, or a mobile health app, here's what you actually need to do.
What's the First Thing You Check When a Website Isn't Performing Well?
Slow websites lose money. Before you rewrite your frontend or throw hardware at the problem, there's one thing you should always check first — and it's not what most developers think.
How We Cut Our AI API Costs by 80% with RTK and Caveman
Context is expensive. Every prompt you send to an LLM costs money — and if you're not caching aggressively and trimming context intelligently, you're burning budget on redundant tokens. Here's how we built a system that pays for itself.
Stop Fine-Tuning Models. I'm Begging You.
Every week someone asks if they should fine-tune a model. 9 times out of 10, the answer is no. Here's what most companies actually need instead — and why smart architecture beats expensive training runs.
The 5 Stages of Grief When a Client Says 'Just Add AI'
We've mapped the 5 stages of enterprise AI adoption. Spoiler: stages 1-4 cost the average company 3-6 months and $100K+ in wasted effort. Stage 5 is where we come in.
A Day in the Life of an AI Consultant (Honest Version)
8:00 AM — Client emails: 'We need AI.' 8:05 AM — I ask: 'What problem are you solving?' 8:06 AM — Client: 'Our competitors have AI.' The unsexy version of AI consulting that actually ships.
5 Signs Your AI Vendor Is Wasting Your Money
Apptivity gets hired to clean up these situations so often we had to say something. From vendors who skip problem definition to those who can't explain your costs — here are the red flags.
Things Software Architecture School Doesn't Teach You
The client's real problem is never the one in the brief. It's always three conversations deep. Lessons from years of consulting that nobody puts in the textbooks.
The Real Cost of AI Prototypes vs. Production Systems
Your hackathon demo cost $200 and impressed the board. Making it production-ready will cost 50x that — not because of the AI, but because of everything around it. Here's the breakdown.
How to Make Sure You're SOC 2 Compliant
Building a SaaS product? Your next enterprise customer is going to ask for your SOC 2 report. Here's what SOC 2 actually requires, what it costs, and how to not lose six months and a quarter-million dollars figuring it out the hard way.
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