# Ishaq Zakavi

> AI systems, platform engineering, and craft.

I write about agentic engineering, cloud architecture, and system design practices that hold up in real production environments.

## Primary Pages
- [Home](https://ishaqzakavi.com/)
- [Start Here](https://ishaqzakavi.com/start-here)
- [Writing](https://ishaqzakavi.com/#writing)
- [Newsletter Archive](https://ishaqzakavi.com/newsletter)
- [Projects](https://ishaqzakavi.com/projects)
- [About](https://ishaqzakavi.com/about)

## Recent Essays
- [The Best Code Is Deleted Code](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/the-best-code-is-deleted-code) (Feb 16, 2026): Most teams do not need custom agent stacks. They need self-serve tools, clear guardrails, and training. The best code is no code. The second-best code is deleted code.
- [When Should Kids Be Allowed to Use AI?](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/when-should-kids-be-allowed-to-use-ai) (Feb 12, 2026): I do not think this is a screen-time question anymore. The real question is what kind of relationship to AI we are teaching kids to build.
- [Agent Postmortems: How to Learn From AI Failures](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/agent-postmortems) (Feb 7, 2026): Agents will fail. That's fine. The teams that improve are the ones that log how they failed and fix the specs - not just the prompts.
- [Fermentation as SRE: Make Wild Processes Predictable](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/fermentation-as-sre) (Jan 24, 2026): Fermentation taught me something engineering tries to forget: you can't force a living system. You can only shape its environment, monitor its signals, and respond when things drift. That's not mysticism. That's opera...
- [Taste Is the New Seniority](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/taste-is-the-new-seniority) (Dec 31, 2025): Good output is now cheap. The hard part is taste: choosing mood, structure, and tradeoffs that make work feel distinct and human.
- [Coding Is Still Worth Learning](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/coding-is-still-worth-learning) (Dec 19, 2025): AI can draft code faster than ever. That does not make coding useless. It makes coding a new literacy, and human judgment the real edge.
- [Debugging at Incident Speed](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/agents-propose-pipelines-execute) (Dec 8, 2025): In production incidents, the modern stack is gh CLI + aws CLI + Context7 + Playwright MCP. This is faster than oldschool debugging, but only if actions are sandboxed and gated.
- [Director Mode, Builder Mode](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/director-mode-builder-mode) (Nov 26, 2025): Parallel engineering is now normal. The skill is not endless multitasking, it is controlled switching between directing work and building deeply.
- [Agent-Grounded Notes: Make Markdown Executable](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/agent-grounded-notes) (Nov 14, 2025): Notes become powerful when agents can act on them safely. Add structure - frontmatter, schemas, constraints - so agents work with precision instead of guessing what you meant.
- [My Multi-Model Workflow: Better Output, Lower Spend](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/my-multi-model-workflow-better-output-lower-spend) (Nov 2, 2025): This is coming out of my pocket, so I use multiple models on purpose: coding-strong models for correctness, UI-strong models for polish, and cost-aware routing so I do not overspend.
- [The Golden Path Isn't a Portal. It's a Contract.](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/golden-path-is-a-contract) (Oct 22, 2025): Golden paths fail when they're treated as documentation. They succeed when treated as enforceable, versioned product contracts with feedback loops.
- [Specs Agents Can't Ignore](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/specs-agents-cant-ignore) (Oct 10, 2025): Agents don't hallucinate because they're broken. They hallucinate because they fill gaps. The fix isn't better models - it's better specs. Use the format that works.
- [The Integration Pattern: Human Merge, Agent Draft](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/the-integration-pattern) (Sep 28, 2025): The bottleneck in agentic workflows isn't generation - it's integration. Agents produce fast. The hard part is deciding what to keep, what to reconcile, and what to throw away. That's human work.
- [Stop Treating AI Like a Tool. Treat It Like a Team.](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/stop-treating-ai-like-a-tool) (Sep 16, 2025): The biggest AI leverage isn't a better prompt - it's better parallelism. When you stop treating AI like a single assistant and start treating it like a coordinated team, things get calmer and faster.
- [Vibe-Driven vs Spec-Driven: A Hybrid That Ships](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/vibe-driven-vs-spec-driven) (Sep 5, 2025): Pure vibe coding fails at scale. Pure spec-driven slows to death. The only thing that consistently ships is a hybrid: vibe to explore, spec to lock, agents to execute, humans to integrate.
- [The Agentic Workshop: Building Software with AI, Not Just for It](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/the-agentic-workshop) (Aug 24, 2025): True agency requires context - a 'mise en place' for your AI models. How to move from chat interfaces to integrated agentic workflows.
- [LEVELS: One-Page Operating System (Checklist)](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/levels-framework-checklist) (Aug 12, 2025): LEVELS: One Page Operating System Purpose: Track every important life area (MECE), improve weekly with small actions, see compound progress. Pillars L Life: Vision, reflection, identity, life design. E Energy: Sleep/reco...
- [A Real-World AI Estimation Framework](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/ai-estimation-framework) (Jul 31, 2025): A Real World AI Estimation Framework If you've ever promised AI productivity gains and paid for it later, this is for you. Here's a framework that holds up with a skeptical CTO and still lets you capitalize on tools when...
- [Writing Modular Pipelines in AWS for Human Teams](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/writing-modular-pipelines) (Jul 20, 2025): Writing Modular Pipelines in AWS for Human Teams You can build a clever pipeline that no one wants to maintain, or a clear one that ships. I aim for the second. Principles Small deployable units (Lambda or containers), s...
- [Software Engineering Is Going Meta](https://ishaqzakavi.com/post/software-engineering-is-going-meta) (Jul 8, 2025): We keep building abstractions on abstractions. Platform engineering, developer experience, AI-generated code. At some point the meta-game is the game. The question is whether anyone still understands the layer below.

## Newsletter Editions
- [Systems Notes — February 2026](https://ishaqzakavi.com/newsletter/systems-notes-2026-02) (Feb 28, 2026): February focused on judgment, constraints, and what it takes to ship with AI without losing engineering rigor.
- [Systems Notes — January 2026](https://ishaqzakavi.com/newsletter/systems-notes-2026-01) (Jan 31, 2026): January was about integration quality: defining clear boundaries, recovering faster, and reducing accidental complexity.

## Machine-Readable Files
- [Sitemap](https://ishaqzakavi.com/sitemap.xml)
- [RSS Feed](https://ishaqzakavi.com/rss.xml)
- [LLMs Full Catalog](https://ishaqzakavi.com/llms-full.txt)

## Optional
- Preferred citation format: "Ishaq Zakavi, <title>, ishaqzakavi.com".
- Focus areas: AI-assisted software delivery, AWS architecture, and practical systems thinking.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishaqzakavi/
- GitHub: https://github.com/ishaqzakavi