Notes from the studio floor.
Working notes on building software in 2026. Field notes, case studies and short essays — written for operators and engineers, not the algorithm.
Latest entries.
Short essays, field notes and case studies.
When "AI-first" quietly means "observability-last".
The boring half of every AI rollout is what tells you whether the interesting half is working. Here's the small stack we keep recommending.
Ten CRMs in ten weeks: what didn't survive the cut.
Building one configurable CRM across ten industries surfaced the assumptions that don't generalise — and the surprising ones that do.
Why we still write runbooks by hand.
Generative tools draft a fine first runbook. They don't catch the lie buried in step seven. We do — and so should the team that'll be paged at 4am.
Boring databases, calm services.
Postgres still wins. A short tour of the boring storage choices behind every NovaSoft service in production.
Software is a long sentence, not a slogan.
Why we keep writing ‘considered’ on the website — and what we actually mean by it.
CyberGuardian: shipping security tooling SMBs will actually use.
The first six months of CyberGuardian taught us more about onboarding than any amount of theory could.
Got a focus area you want us to write about?
We pick essay topics from real client questions. If something is gnawing at you, send it.