Foundation series
The AI Mainframe Trap
Enterprises are bolting AI onto their systems the way they once bolted everything onto the mainframe: no boundaries, no lineage, no governance. We learned this lesson once and spent decades refactoring our way out. The AI era is rhyming.
Read essay →FoundationVertical AI Foundation
Enterprise architecture patterns for governed AI systems: Steps and States, Causal Lineage, Control Plane isolation, AI Airlocks, and Contract-First Models. The way out of the mainframe trap isn't better prompts. It's architecture.
Read essay →Frontier series
AI Eval against Causal Generators
A right answer can describe impossible dynamics. Causal generators test AI claims against validated models of mechanisms, with explicit limits and room to say inconclusive.
Read essay →FrontierStewardship
The human role in a vertical system is not oversight. It is authorship. The steward is the discipline, not the safety net.
Read essay →FrontierReading an Essay's Lineage
Every essay here carries its own production lineage. This one is built around that lineage: the causal graph is the argument, and the prose walks you through it node by node.
Read essay →Patterns
Thin Boundary
Share governed capabilities while letting teams compose the behaviour their work requires.
Open pattern →PatternControl Plane vs. Execution Plane
Keep policy and authority in trusted services; give each execution only the context and capabilities its task requires.
Open pattern →PatternCausal Lineage
Preserve the evidence connecting a decision to its inputs, permissions, actions, and observed outcomes.
Open pattern →PatternAI Airlocks
Validate a proposed action before granting it authority to change anything.
Open pattern →