Nick TsianosNotes on software architecture, engineering leadership, and building systems that stay boring in the best way.https://www.nicktsianos.comThe Missing Layer Between AI Sessions: ADEs and Beyondhttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/claude-todo-the-missing-layer-between-ai-sessionshttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/claude-todo-the-missing-layer-between-ai-sessionsAI agents moved the bottleneck from writing code to tracking the work they do on our behalf. Building a weekend app to manage that started as modelling terminal state and turned into modelling my own SDLC.Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTGating The Quiet Decay of Healthy Domainshttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/gating-the-quiet-decay-of-healthy-domainshttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/gating-the-quiet-decay-of-healthy-domainsWhy quality gates should help engineers think, not just comply — and how coupling and cohesion metrics in CI catch structural drift inside a domain.Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTMeasuring What Matters: Using LLMs to Understand Your Change Failure Ratehttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/measuring-what-matters-using-llms-to-understand-your-change-failure-ratehttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/measuring-what-matters-using-llms-to-understand-your-change-failure-rateHow we classified 3,500 pull requests with LLMs to trace bugs to root causes, and found configuration was a far bigger driver of failures than expected.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTDataloaders with @nestjs/graphql in a Federated Setuphttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/dataloaders-with-nestjsgraphql-in-a-federated-setuphttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/dataloaders-with-nestjsgraphql-in-a-federated-setupA complete end-to-end implementation of dataloaders inside the NestJS lifecycle, including the federated call chain from router to @ResolveReference.Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTScaling Node Applications: Playing Defensehttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/scaling-node-applications-playing-defensehttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/scaling-node-applications-playing-defenseNode is single-threaded by design. Two rules, the metrics that matter, and real cases of scaling IO-bound and CPU-spikey services defensively.Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTOptimizing Engineering Documents for the Readerhttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/optimizing-engineering-documents-for-the-readerhttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/optimizing-engineering-documents-for-the-readerFiling everything under RFC makes readers do the sorting. How to match document type to reader intent so engineering writing actually gets acted on.Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Hidden Cost of BFFs: Why We're Moving Beyond the Backend-For-Frontend Patternhttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/backend-for-frontends-improvehttps://www.nicktsianos.com/blog/backend-for-frontends-improveWhy we are deprecating the Backend-for-Frontend layer in favour of a 2.5-tier architecture: frontend apps, a federated GraphQL router, and domain services.Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT