Execution Is Free. Alignment Is the Tax Now.
AI made building software almost free. The cost that remains is getting humans to agree on what to build and confirm it is right. That is the new tax.
Engineering the Future
Hi, I'm Royce. A pragmatic builder focused on solving real user needs.
Posts
Browse writing grouped by month or filter to find something specific.
40 posts published
May 2026
4 postsTo Be an AI PM, Be a PM. To Be an AI Engineer, Be an Engineer.
The 'AI' prefix is a multiplier, not a shortcut. AI amplifies the expertise you already have. Without the foundation, it just helps you build the wrong thing faster.
How Singapore Supports AI in 2026
A look at how Singapore has backed AI in 2026 alone: a National AI Council, S$1 billion for research, tax breaks, AI grants, an apprenticeship pipeline, free premium AI tools, a global talent visa, and a May Day pledge to protect every worker.
Why Are CTOs Becoming ICs Again?
In eighteen months, the CTOs of Workday, Instagram, You.com, Adept, and Super.com walked away from C-suite titles. Most went back to building. Why?
April 2026
9 postsAI in April 2026: The Compute Crunch and the Platform Wars
A roundup of April 2026's most important AI developments. GitHub pauses Copilot signups, Anthropic ships Opus 4.7 and Project Glasswing, Google unveils dual TPU v8 at Cloud Next, OpenAI lands on AWS, and SpaceX takes an option on Cursor.
Every Team Needs an AI Builder
Top-down AI mandates create pressure but rarely deliver change. The teams getting AI right have a builder embedded inside them, automating one task at a time.
Ideas Over Hierarchy
The best companies are not run by the most senior person in the room. They are run by whoever has the best idea.
Skills vs CLI vs MCP: Which Do You Pick for AI Agents?
A practical guide to choosing between Skills, CLI, and MCP when giving tools to your AI agents.
Why You Should Aim for Zero Support for Your Products
If users need a support team to figure out your product, the product is the problem. Every ticket is a UX bug in disguise.
From Prompt Engineering to Context Engineering to Harness Engineering
The discipline of working with LLMs has evolved through three distinct phases. Each one moved the locus of value further from the model and closer to the system around it.
Why People Resist Change (And How to Work Around It)
Resistance is rarely about the idea. It is about loss, autonomy, and who gets to be the author. What the research says about working with it, not against it.
Every Employee Gets an AI Teammate
Meta, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Deloitte, Shopify, and more are giving every employee their own AI teammates. The question has shifted from 'should we use AI' to 'what does each person's AI team look like?'
If Code Is No Longer the Moat, What Is?
Writing software used to be slow and expensive. That is what made it feel like a moat. Now code is cheap, and the real sources of defensibility are somewhere else entirely.
March 2026
6 postsAI in March 2026: The OpenClaw Race, the Layoff Wave, and the One-Person Company
A roundup of March 2026's most important AI developments. Companies scramble to catch OpenClaw, Oracle and Dell cut tens of thousands, and China makes the one-person company industrial policy.
The Two Techniques That Make Agentic Engineering Reliable
Agentic coding capability is rising fast, and so are the risks. TDD and spec-driven development are the disciplines that close the gap.
SaaS Is Losing the Interaction Layer. What Comes Next?
AI agents are replacing the interface layer that SaaS companies spent decades building. The companies that survive will look very different from the ones that got us here.
The Rise of the AI Builder
AI is collapsing the walls between product management, engineering, and design. Companies like LinkedIn, Shopify, and Figma are converging these roles into one: the AI Builder.
High Standards and the Cost of Expectations
Having high standards is a strength. But holding everyone to the same bar can become a blind spot.
Advice for Junior Talent and Students in the AI Era
Practical advice for early-career professionals and students navigating a job market reshaped by AI.
February 2026
10 postsAI in February 2026: Swarms, Selloffs, and Consolidation
A roundup of February 2026's most important AI developments, including agent swarms, trillion-dollar selloffs, industry consolidation, and a record wave of new models.
Which AI Model Should You Actually Use?
A practical guide comparing Gemini, Claude, GPT, Grok, and open weight models across use cases, pricing, and real world tradeoffs.
PowerPoint Is Not a Strategy. $30 Billion Lesson from Starbucks.
Starbucks lost $30 billion under a McKinsey-trained CEO. What this tells us about execution, culture, and why the smartest strategy means nothing without the people to carry it out.
How to Overcome the Curse of Knowledge
Why the more you know, the harder it becomes to explain what you know. And what the research says about fixing it.
When Software Is Commoditised, What Is the Value of Low-Code/No-Code?
AI can now write code faster and cheaper than ever. Low-code platforms promised to make software creation accessible. When both solve the same problem, where does each one fit?
End-to-End Agentic AI in the Enterprise: What It Actually Takes
I explore what business leaders and technical teams each need to contribute to make end-to-end agentic AI work in enterprise settings.
Hyper Productivity but at What Cost
AI is driving productivity at incredible speed. But the relationship between AI tools and actual time savings is more complex than it appears.
Software Engineering to Outcome Engineering
Tools like Claude Code have shifted the role of software engineers from writing code to architecting agents that deliver outcomes. The field is being redefined.
The World Is Changing and the Market Has Priced It In
Anthropic's Claude Cowork and OpenAI's Frontier launched back to back. Nearly $1 trillion in software stocks vanished in a week. Let's look at what actually happened and why it matters.
Lessons from Toyota: Looms to Cars and How It Applies to AI
What Toyota's jump from textiles to cars teaches us about the current AI moment.
January 2026
7 postsAI in January 2026: Agents, Models, and Momentum
A roundup of January 2026’s most important AI developments, including agentic browsers, new foundation models, and tools that surged in popularity.
The AI Job Market Paradox for Software Engineers: Fewer Openings, Misplaced Fears
Why software engineering jobs are harder to land and why fears of mass replacement by AI miss the real story.
If You're Not Measuring, You're Guessing
Why data-driven decision making matters, and how I use Cloudflare analytics on my own site to understand what resonates with readers.
You Can Only See What You Know
Experience creates perception, but perception has blind spots. Why smart people make bad decisions and how to see beyond your own lens.
Thinking in First Principles
Before optimizing a process, ask whether the process should exist at all.
Building Products? Stop Making Your Users Think
Stop building products that require a 120 IQ to understand and 10 clicks just to pay.
AI in 2026
A personal take on how AI is shaping up in 2026.
December 2025
4 posts2025 Year in Review
A reflection on the work, lessons, and growth that shaped my year in 2025.
Chunking? Google’s File Search solved that. SAP’s got its own take as well.
Stop worrying about chunk sizes and overlap. Discover how Google's File Search and SAP's Document Grounding Service handle document vectorization automatically - with a working demo you can try today.
Why AI Agents Fail in Production (Even When Benchmarks Look Great)
New research reveals the hidden gap between lab performance and real-world agent deployments.
Welcome to My Journal
Just a casual blog where I share my thoughts, knowledge, and experiences building stuff