When a shared database is not a shared understanding
Multiple services reading the same tables often means nobody owns the invariants. How we surface that during an architecture review.
Field Notes
Field Notes
Notes on backend boundaries, API contracts, and the decisions teams face before a rewrite or a public surface freezes.
Idempotency keys your clients will actually send
An API that documents idempotency but never validates key scope will surprise partners the first time they retry across resources.
Reading a vendor timeout as an architectural signal
A slow partner is not only an ops ticket. It tells you whether your boundary assumed synchronicity the world will not provide.
A pre-launch checklist that includes rollback honesty
Launch checklists love green boxes. Second opinions look for the steps nobody wants to rehearse: partial migration and rollback.