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Field NoteEngineering3 min read
The question that started PDLC: why does this feature exist
A field note on losing traceability, and why I built a lifecycle engine instead of shipping faster.
Richa Shah
Read field note →Field Notes
Practical observations, lessons learned, and technical notes from the field, captured as they happen.
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agent-fabric
· 4 partsMore field notes
Field NoteAuditabilityDeveloper Experience4 min read
Coding assistants don't over-comment. They re-derive.
One morning a prose reduction run cut 87 lines of comment and docstring from a codebase a coding assistant had written. By evening it had put 318 back.
auditabilityagent-contracts
Field NoteEngineering11 min read
Put the Guardrail in the Validator, Not the Prompt
A mid-market UK wealth manager wanted an assistant to triage its shared operations inbox, not a model it had to trust with judgement calls. The build that stuck
guardrailsai-agentsfinancial-services
Field NoteGovernance4 min read
Local inference on developer laptops did not pay for itself in agent SDLC
Local inference on 16GB developer laptops missed the performance bar; the hosted control it meant to replace matched its accuracy for pennies.
governance
Field NoteIncremental DeliveryAuditabilityStandardsintermediate10 min read
Turning Database Schema Changes into Release Artefacts with Flyway
How a small Spring Boot Flyway service turned PostgreSQL schema changes into versioned, reviewable release artefacts across regulated Kubernetes environments.
flywaypostgresqlrelease-engineering
Field NoteCode GenerationTestabilityGovernanceintermediate3 min read
AI Code Review in Regulated CI/CD
AI code review became useful only after we made it policy-aware, evidence-led, and subordinate to human ownership.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NotePlatform ThinkingGovernanceDomain Alignmentintermediate3 min read
Choosing an AI Engineering Partner in Financial Services
Financial services teams need AI partners who can leave governed systems behind, not black-box dependency or slideware.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteSynthetic DataAuditabilityRuntime Integrityintermediate3 min read
Detecting AI-Generated Identity Documents in a KYC Pipeline
AI-generated identity documents require evidence-led detection, human escalation, and replayable checks inside the KYC workflow.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteEvent DrivenAuditabilityRuntime Integrityintermediate3 min read
Multi-Agent Financial Crime Detection Architecture
Multi-agent financial crime systems need role separation, shared evidence, and a deterministic orchestration layer to stay defensible.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteDomain AlignmentEvent DrivenAuditabilityintermediate3 min read
Credit Decisioning Platform: 20 Microservices in Four Months
A credit decisioning platform reached production by narrowing domains, using event contracts, and making every decision explainable.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteGovernanceAuditabilityZero Downtimeintermediate3 min read
GitOps in Regulated Environments: Change Control Without Delay
GitOps can satisfy regulated change control when every environment change is reviewed, replayable, policy-checked, and reversible.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteRuntime IntegrityGovernanceAuditabilityintermediate3 min read
Agentic AI in Tier 1 Banking: Architecture Lessons
Agentic AI in tier-1 banking works when autonomy is constrained by domain boundaries, event records, and human escalation paths.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteObservabilityTestabilityRuntime Integrityintermediate5 min read
When a Model Upgrade Breaks Production
A Gemini 2.5 Pro upgrade caused a regression in our evidence extraction pipeline. Context adherence dropped. Structured outputs degraded. The benchmarks said it was better. Our production data said otherwise.
enterprise-aimodel-governanceproduction-engineering
Field NoteCode GenerationTestabilityDeveloper Experienceintermediate3 min read
Engineering Agents on Production Tasks
Engineering agents helped on production work only after we narrowed scope, encoded boundaries, and measured integration quality.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteEvent DrivenPlatform ThinkingModularityintermediate8 min read
10 Days to Hours: Screening Platform
Discover how a major UK bank's screening platform leveraged AI governance in financial services to reduce commercial customer onboarding from 10 days to under 12 hours, with vendor-agnostic architecture and zero unplanned incidents.
event-driven architecturefinancial servicesscreening
Field NoteCode GenerationTestabilityGovernanceintermediate3 min read
Prompts as Production Artefacts
Production prompts need versioning, tests, ownership, and rollback because they change system behaviour as surely as code.
financial-servicesengineeringregulated-delivery
Field NoteDelivery VelocityResilienceTestabilityintermediate9 min read
Build Once, Deploy Everywhere: Re-Engineering CI/CD
Re-engineering CI/CD for a regulated UK bank's 25+ microservice platform: parallel deploys, immutable artefacts, Helm, GitOps, fix-forward branching.
ci-cdmicroservicesgitops
Field NotePlatform ThinkingModularityStandardsintermediate9 min read
Building an Internal Developer Platform in 4 Months
How we built an internal developer platform that shipped 20 microservices to a UK neobank in 4 months: 12-15 deploys/day, 47-minute lead time, zero incidents.
platform engineeringinternal developer platformDORA metrics
Field NoteGovernanceAuditabilityTestabilityintermediate8 min read
Building Governed AI Delivery Pipelines
Master building governed AI delivery pipelines with AI engineering methodology. Bugni Labs' proven approach delivers 4-month concept-to-production for financial services, with zero incidents and 3-5x velocity.
platform engineeringAI governanceregulated delivery
Field NoteInfrastructure As CodeDelivery VelocityGovernanceintermediate8 min read
LEGO-Style Terraform: Building a Greenfield GCP Platform
How we built a regulated UK retail bank's GCP platform with LEGO-style Terraform: independent modules, per-module CI, InSpec policy gates, three-tier pipelines.
infrastructure-engineeringterraformgcp
Field NoteExperimentationModel EvaluationPrototypingbeginner4 min read
Getting Started with LLMs for Call Transcript Analysis
An exploratory field note: prototyping LLM-powered fraud-relevant extraction from call transcripts, comparing local Mistral and Qwen against Gemini.
llmsprototypingfraud-detection