https://hfares.com/blog/ Posts on applied AI, agent harnesses, system design and technical leadership. en Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://hfares.com/blog/v3-portfolio/ https://hfares.com/blog/v3-portfolio/ Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT V1: 3 days on Replit. V2: an afternoon and 87 cents. V3: two hours of my time, Claude Opus driven from my phone, and I never read a single diff. claude-code agentic-ai building-in-public web-development performance posthog https://hfares.com/blog/the-squirrel-burger-story/ https://hfares.com/blog/the-squirrel-burger-story/ Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT The Scrum trainers' favorite story, scene by scene, plus its real origin in Ken Schwaber's blog and why a missing squirrel teaches software risk. Agile Scrum Quality Technology History Software Development https://hfares.com/blog/veilllm-local-dlp-proxy-ai-harness/ https://hfares.com/blog/veilllm-local-dlp-proxy-ai-harness/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT I built a local reverse proxy that masks PII and secrets before they leave your machine, and restores them on the way back. One config change. AI privacy open-source LLM security https://hfares.com/blog/lost-in-the-context/ https://hfares.com/blog/lost-in-the-context/ Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT AI can hold a million tokens. You can meaningfully review about 400 lines. Someone is going to ship what the other couldn't read. ai code-review software-engineering ai-assisted-development pull-requests https://hfares.com/blog/system-design-interview-prep/ https://hfares.com/blog/system-design-interview-prep/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT What a few system design interviews taught me about showing your reasoning, collaboration, and problem solving in a structured way. system design interviews career software engineering preparation https://hfares.com/blog/personal-ai-assistant-stack-for-less-than-a-sandwich-a-month/ https://hfares.com/blog/personal-ai-assistant-stack-for-less-than-a-sandwich-a-month/ Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT How I run a Hermes Agent on AWS for under $10/month: EC2, two Lambdas, pay-as-you-go LLMs, least-privilege access, and auto-shutdown when idle. ai-agent hermes serverless aws least-privilege deepseek cost-optimization https://hfares.com/blog/owasp-llm-top10/ https://hfares.com/blog/owasp-llm-top10/ Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT A visual breakdown of the 2025 OWASP Top 10 for LLM applications. Each vulnerability explained through how the attack actually works, not metaphors. LLM security OWASP AI safety infosec prompt injection https://hfares.com/blog/the-harness-portfolio-v2-87-cents/ https://hfares.com/blog/the-harness-portfolio-v2-87-cents/ Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT V1 of my portfolio was vibe-coded for $15. For V2, Claude Code running DeepSeek V4 Pro fixed a full SEO and UX audit for 87 cents. The harness is the value. agentic-ai claude-code deepseek vibe-coding seo ux web-development https://hfares.com/blog/interview-questions-blog/ https://hfares.com/blog/interview-questions-blog/ Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT The end of an interview is the one moment you hold the power. Five questions that surface what companies hide in plain sight. interviewing career job-search engineering culture https://hfares.com/blog/ic-interview-ai/ https://hfares.com/blog/ic-interview-ai/ Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Three companies, three senior IC interviews: a full-app challenge, LeetCode, and a live system design session. Only one tested the job that actually exists. software engineering AI coding agents technical interviews career Claude Code https://hfares.com/blog/managed-services/ https://hfares.com/blog/managed-services/ Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Lambda is 11 years old, so why do seed-stage startups still start with Kubernetes and $140K DevOps hires? The case for managed services, and where it breaks. managed services startup devops cloud infrastructure serverless https://hfares.com/blog/production-grade-what-vibe-coders-dont-know/ https://hfares.com/blog/production-grade-what-vibe-coders-dont-know/ Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT The media blamed AI for deleting a company database in nine seconds. The real failure was an engineering checklist from 2005 that nobody ran. vibe coding AI software engineering production security devops https://hfares.com/blog/my-ai-journey/ https://hfares.com/blog/my-ai-journey/ Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT My honest timeline of learning generative AI hands-on: a talk in Alexandria, failed hardware bets, cloud LLMs, and agentic workflows, with real costs. generative-ai agentic-workflows local-llm ai-tools personal-journey https://hfares.com/blog/architecting-agentic-ai/ https://hfares.com/blog/architecting-agentic-ai/ Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT Raw LLMs answer one prompt and forget. Agentic AI adds memory, planning, tools and self-checks. A walkthrough of a blog post co-pilot built from small agents. Agentic AI LLM DevOps Workflows Agentic AI design patterns https://hfares.com/blog/tech-engineers-survival-guide-in-workplace/ https://hfares.com/blog/tech-engineers-survival-guide-in-workplace/ Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Why emotional intelligence matters for engineers: levels of listening, empathy, office politics, building trust, and handling people who shift blame. software development leadership communication Emotional intelligence https://hfares.com/blog/the-12-factors-app/ https://hfares.com/blog/the-12-factors-app/ Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT A practical guide to the 12-Factor App principles: codebase, dependencies, config, backing services, stateless processes, logs, and more, with diagrams. 12FactorApp CloudDevelopment DevOps SoftwareEngineering https://hfares.com/blog/the-liver-sandwich-and-software-quality/ https://hfares.com/blog/the-liver-sandwich-and-software-quality/ Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT A fictional story about the trap software developers fall into when they push too much work, sacrifice quality, and how to deal with such a situation. Agile Scrum Software Development Technology History Quality https://hfares.com/blog/when-not-use-eventsourcing/ https://hfares.com/blog/when-not-use-eventsourcing/ Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Event sourcing earns its place when you truly need the full history of state changes. Otherwise it adds complexity, storage, and ops cost. Think twice. EventSourcing CQRS SoftwareArchitecture DesignPatterns TechDebt https://hfares.com/blog/the-phoenix-project/ https://hfares.com/blog/the-phoenix-project/ Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT A practical guide for DevOps and IT teams drowning in messy workflows and endless IT problems, told through the story of The Phoenix Project. Project Management Digital Transformation DevOps Success Stories Crisis Management Teamwork Continuous Improvement The Phoenix Project Parts Unlimited Bill’s Journey Workplace Culture Leadership Team Management Kaizen Organizational Change https://hfares.com/blog/pragmatic-programmer-stories/ https://hfares.com/blog/pragmatic-programmer-stories/ Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT The stories and analogies from The Pragmatic Programmer, from broken windows to stone soup, and the practical lessons they still teach developers today. software-engineering best-practices programming-philosophy career-development pragmatic-programming https://hfares.com/blog/birth-of-agile/ https://hfares.com/blog/birth-of-agile/ Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT The story of the manifesto that transformed the software industry - from an email idea to a global revolution in the Utah mountains in 2001 agile scrum software development tech history project management https://hfares.com/blog/how-i-built-my-website/ https://hfares.com/blog/how-i-built-my-website/ Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT How I built a professional bilingual website with modern tech stack, AI assistance, and automation - going from concept to production in just 3 days for $15. web development ai coding automation cloudflare replit