Notes from
the shipping floor.
Plain-language writing on mobile, AI, real-money gaming, auctions and culture-forward product engineering — by the people who ship.
How to hire a custom software development company in 2026
The signals to look for, the red flags that hide in the sales deck, and the questions that separate a shipping team from an agency that will disappear after month three.
Build vs buy: when to build custom software in 2026
The single most misdiagnosed decision in enterprise software. Here's the framework we use with every client — and the four cases where 'build' is almost always the right answer.
SaaS MVP development in 90 days — the actual playbook
The MVP that ships is the one you scoped honestly on day one. Here's the exact week-by-week plan we use with VC-backed founders to get to a paying customer in a quarter.
Legacy modernization without the big-bang rewrite
The rewrite is the wrong instinct. Here's the strangler-fig pattern applied to real enterprise codebases — with a working 24-month roadmap and the traps that kill most modernization projects.
HIPAA-compliant software development — what actually matters
BAAs, encryption, audit trails and 'HIPAA compliance' — separating the substance from the compliance theatre. What auditors actually check, and what shipping teams should actually build.
FHIR-first — building modern healthcare integrations in 2026
HL7 v2 is the past, FHIR is the present, and every serious healthcare integration project in 2026 is at least partly on FHIR. The pragmatic starting guide.
AI in healthcare — five use cases that actually ship (and five that don't)
The healthcare AI hype is bigger than the market. Here are the LLM and ML use cases we've seen deployed to production in real health systems — and the ones that reliably die in pilot.
Prior authorization automation with AI — the practical playbook
The most annoying task in US healthcare admin. LLMs are unusually well-suited to it — if you deploy them correctly. Here's the pattern we've seen work in production.
What is EDI? The 2026 guide to Electronic Data Interchange
EDI still moves trillions of dollars of B2B trade every year — and quietly runs healthcare, banking, retail and logistics. A plain-language guide to what it is, how it works, and where it's going next.
EDI vs API integration in 2026 — when to use each
'Just use an API' works when both sides agree. When your trading partner is a 40-year-old distributor with an AS2 endpoint and a phone number, EDI still wins. Here's how we decide.
EDI modernisation with AI — what actually works
Trading-partner mapping in minutes instead of weeks. Rejection triage in plain English. Anomaly detection that fires on Monday morning, not Wednesday. The pragmatic AI wins for EDI teams.
EDI 850 Purchase Order — a plain-language explainer
The single most common B2B document in North American retail. What every segment means, why the format looks the way it does, and how to send one that doesn't get rejected.
HL7 vs X12 — the two EDI worlds inside healthcare
The same claim moves through both. HL7 handles clinical data; X12 handles the money. Confusing the two is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility in a healthcare integration meeting.
Why mobile-first is still the right call in 2026
The web got fast again and AI got useful, but the first tap of the day still happens on a phone. Here's how we think about mobile-first for culture-forward brands.
Shipping LLM features without shipping a demo
Most LLM features look great in a demo and fall apart in production. Here's the observability, eval and rollback stack we wrap around every AI feature.
Class II vs Class III: what operators actually need
A plain-language walk-through of Class II bingo mechanics and Class III RNG — and the engineering surface that each one demands.
Auctions are a design problem before they're an engineering one
What we learned building HipHopGrails — why bid mechanics, anti-snipe and event run-of-show are UX concerns first, systems concerns second.
Why .NET + Azure is still the right call for high-value auctions
Node and Postgres get the blog posts. For high-value auction platforms, the boring stack is still winning — and here's why we doubled down on .NET and Azure for HipHopGrails.
The case for senior-only delivery — what 7 years and 40 engineers taught us
Most agencies sell juniors at senior rates. We sell seniors at senior rates and ship in a quarter what pyramid agencies ship in a year. Here's why the model works.
How we evaluated React Native vs native after 9 mobile builds
We've shipped 9 production mobile apps in the last 4 years — some React Native, some fully native. Here's the decision framework we now use, with the trade-offs that actually matter.