Michael is an exceptionally effective, clear-thinking product and platform engineer.
He blends practicality with taste—fast to ship, careful with systems, and relentlessly user-focused.
He leads with clarity, kindness, and high standards—teams move faster and feel calmer.

Skills & Competencies:
- Customer analytics: Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Metabase; Tinybird; Looker/Tableau
- AI/ML: custom models, CUDA, SageMaker, RAG, embeddings & vector DBs
- Platform/DevOps: multi-region (US/AU/UK/EU, GDPR DE), SRE, eventing
- Product engineering: SaaS, pricing & packaging, experimentation (A/B)
- Integrations: marketplaces, webhook/event architectures, Supabase portals
- Growth engineering: scaled from early traction to tens of millions in ARR
- Domains: structural engineering workflows (calcs.com), martech, CV/ads, data platforms

Full posts:
URL: /blog/best-of-breed-vendors
Title: Best-of-breed vendor stack
Date: 2025-09-15T00:00:00.000Z

---
title: Best-of-breed vendor stack
description: Opinionated picks for startup tooling with quick links.
date: 2025-09-15
---

Here's a current list of vendors I think are doing well.

## Startups who are accelerating

**support** -- [@plainsupport](https://x.com/plainsupport) (sync and push comms to edges - teams/slack/discourse - is next level good)

**docs** -- [@mintlify](https://x.com/mintlify) (Suddenly made all softwares documentation 10x better)

**customer analytics** -- [@tinybirdco](https://x.com/tinybirdco) (IaC for data work, its fast with an excellentlocal experience.)

**auth + subscriptions** -- [@ClerkDev](https://x.com/ClerkDev) 

**Analytics & Product Insights, gating experiments** -- [@statsig](https://x.com/statsig)  (runner up posthog, but statsig is much more precise on hardcore statistics)

**secrets** -- [@doppler](https://x.com/doppler) (excellent syncing experience)

**mail etc.** -- [@resend](https://x.com/resend) (local email experience)

**incidents, ops** -- [@rootlyhq](https://x.com/rootlyhq) (slack driven workflows are top tier)

**ai agents / code** -- [@cursor_ai](https://x.com/cursor_ai) (still winning)

**ticket/agent mgmt + triage etc** -- [@linear](https://x.com/linear) (elite quality)

**hosting/deploys** -- [@Railway](https://x.com/Railway) / [@vercel](https://x.com/vercel) (out-of-your-face infra to stay focussed on customers & product)

**integrations marketplace** -- [@useparagon](https://x.com/useparagon) (iac for integrations, event driven and solid management. even ootb workflow builder canvas)


## Incumbents (who cant seem to be beaten)

**search** -- Algolia

**dataw** -- BigQuery (gsheets native integration can't be beaten)

**payments** -- Stripe (too big to beat)

**internal docs** -- [@NotionHQ](https://x.com/NotionHQ) (sort of incumbent, but cool)

**all ops** -- [@datadoghq](https://x.com/datadoghq) (so feature dense it can't be beaten, esp for speed of getting started)

**code / cicd / automations** -- [@github](https://x.com/github) (native gha mean nothing else needs to be used)

---

URL: /blog/best-llm-ai-ecosystem-stack
Title: Best LLM/AI ecosystem stack
Date: 2025-09-14T00:00:00.000Z

---
title: Best LLM/AI ecosystem stack
description: A living guide to building with LLMs—tools, patterns, and tradeoffs.
date: 2025-09-14
---

The AI tooling & LLM ecosystem moves quickly. As always see x.com/the_mewc for latest commentary.

## General

- Cursor with MCP + background agents for long-running tasks
- Cursor CLI and claudecode cli are good contenders for CI, oai are catching up
- Replit, lovable, v0 and the like are early toys but aren't ready for serious
- builder.io is promising for marketing sites

## Tooling 

- Firecrawl for structured web extraction and crawl orchestration
- AI SDK / OpenAI / OpenRouter clients with retries, timeouts, backoff
- Unify observability: request/response traces, redaction, prompt versioning

## Retrieval & data pipelines

- ETL: Postgres/ClickHouse as the ground truth; CDC for freshness
- Embedding stores with predictable chunking and TTLs; hybrid search where needed
- Permissions in retrieval layer, not in prompts

## Orchestration & agents

- Task graphs > monolithic agents; isolate tools; sandbox risky actions
- Background workers with idempotency keys; retries with dead-letter queues
- Human-in-the-loop for risky or user-facing actions

## Testing, evals & observability

- Golden sets; regression gates in CI; online vs offline evals split
- Diff prompts and models; measure cost, error rate, and outcome quality
- Capture traces; scrub PII; keep reproduction kits for incidents

## Deployment & ops

- Multi-region routing and failover; rate limits and circuit breakers
- Secrets via KMS; key rotation; request signing and audit trails
- Model routing by use case and budget; fallbacks for degraded modes

## Safety, governance & compliance

- Content filtering; jailbreak tests; red-teaming as a practice
- Tenant isolation; retention windows; GDPR/region pinning
- Provenance for prompts and retrieved data

---

I’ll keep this post fresh with concrete vendor picks and example configs.



> [!note] Snapshot vs narrative
> The homepage section is a quick reference. This post carries the fuller reasoning and tradeoffs.

> [!tip] Defaults
> Start simple. Add complexity only when the bottleneck is proven by traces and cost reports.

> [!warning] Risky actions
> Sandbox tools that can change state, and require human review where appropriate.

### Example code block

```ts
type Vendor = "OpenAI" | "OpenRouter" | "Anthropic";
const chooseVendor = (useCase: string): Vendor => {
  if (useCase === "evaluation") return "OpenAI";
  if (useCase === "cost-sensitive") return "OpenRouter";
  return "Anthropic";
};
```

Line breaks demo:
First line.
Second line after a single newline (should break due to remark-breaks).

Paragraph demo:

This is a new paragraph because there is a blank line above.

---

URL: /blog/intro
Title: async home
Date: 2025-09-14T00:00:00.000Z

---
title: "async home"
description: "operate your home as you do your APIs - async supply"
date: "2025-09-14"
---

# The Async Pantry Life: A Simple Hack to Skip Grocery Drama in Australia
Imagine never having to drag yourself to the supermarket again. No more crowded aisles at Coles or Woolies, no more impulse end-cap buys. That’s the async pantry life: you set up recurring deliveries once, and your staples just keep arriving.

### What this is
- **Non‑perishables on autopilot**: canned goods, coffee, rice, toothpaste, laundry, cleaning. Use Amazon Australia’s Subscribe & Save or equivalent.
- **Fresh on a rhythm**: weekly market box for fruit/veg, plus a recurring butcher/freezer drop for protein.
- **One-time setup, low-touch tweaks**: skip, pause, or push deliveries when stock piles up.

> [!tip] Start small
> Put 3–5 items on a schedule first (e.g., coffee, toilet paper, dish soap). Adjust cadence after the first month.

### Why it works
- **Less context switching**: remove a recurring errand and the planning overhead that comes with it.
- **Fewer impulse buys**: you avoid in‑store traps and the “just in case” mindset.
- **Always‑on inventory**: your base pantry is rarely empty, so weeknights are calmer.

### 3‑step setup (AU examples)
1) **Non‑perishables (monthly/bi‑monthly)**  
   Amazon Subscribe & Save for coffee, grains, tins, soaps, paper goods, batteries. Skip/adjust in two clicks.
2) **Fruit & veg (weekly/fortnightly)**  
   Farmers’ box or local co‑op for seasonal produce. Top up ad‑hoc if needed.
3) **Protein (4–8 weeks)**  
   Butcher/freezer delivery for chicken, beef, or mixed packs. Keep a simple freezer inventory note; adjust cadence when it looks full.

### My baseline template
- Coffee beans — every 4 weeks
- Rice/pasta — every 8–12 weeks
- Paper towels & toilet paper — every 8–12 weeks
- Dish tabs & laundry — every 8 weeks
- Pantry tins (tomatoes/beans/coconut milk) — every 6–8 weeks
- Veg box — weekly
- Meat box — every 6 weeks

> [!note] How I tweak
> If something stacks up, I pause the next delivery or push it back a cycle. Took ~60 seconds last month when tins piled up.

### Time and money back
- Save **60–90 minutes/week** not doing a shop + list.
- Monthly review is **< 5 minutes** to skip/adjust.
- **Lower grocery bill variance** from fewer “random add‑ons.”

### Control panel (quick operations)
- Skip next delivery when stock > 1 month.
- Bring forward by a week if you’re hosting.
- Keep one “overflow” shelf/tub for surplus; if it fills, pause that item.

### Optional automations (nice to have)
- Calendar nudge on the first Sunday monthly: “Pantry review (5 min).”
- Bank/budget rule to tag subscriptions as “Pantry” for visibility.
- Robot vacuum while you’re out; laundry pickup for busy weeks.

### FAQ
- **What if deliveries pile up?** Pause/skip in the app; reduce cadence next cycle.
- **Apartment secure delivery?** Use parcel lockers, concierge, or specify delivery notes; non‑perishables tolerate delays.
- **Prices shifting?** Swap brands or cadence; Subscribe & Save often includes discounts.
- **Dietary specifics?** Lock in your staples and buy specialty fresh items ad‑hoc.
- **Not in Australia?** Use any local grocer with subscriptions + a farm box + a freezer pack.

### TL;DR
Put staples on a recurring schedule, review once a month, and get hours of life back. Less drama, fewer impulse buys, a calmer kitchen.

---

URL: /blog/now
Title: Now
Date: 2025-09-14T00:00:00.000Z

---
title: "Now"
description: "What I'm focused on now."
date: "2025-09-14"
---

# Now

This is a stub MDX page.

- Path: `/blog/now`
- Useful for a /now page content pattern

---

URL: /blog/til
Title: Today I Learned
Date: 2025-09-14T00:00:00.000Z

---
title: "Today I Learned"
description: "Small lessons captured."
date: "2025-09-14"
---

## TIL

This is a stub MDX page to test nested index routing.

- Path: `/blog/til`
- Directory-based route with `index.mdx`

---


Summary: /llms.txt