High-signal architecture essays.
The LLM doesn't know what's true. It knows what sounds right. Deterministic architecture is the only way to put AI in production without hallucinating money, appointments, or promises the system can't keep.
I built the same FSM four times for four different projects. The fourth version became reactive-fsm — a zero-dependency library for controlling LLM tool access in production.
I deleted a user from AD at 18. Almost cost a company its tax audit trail. The problem wasn't the delete — it was that nobody in the room understood what the data meant.
External APIs fail. A deep dive into exponential backoff, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation in production environments.
Critical state belongs on the server. Examining HttpOnly cookies, server-side sessions, and zero client-side token storage.
LLMs are non-deterministic by nature. How to wrap every model output with Zod schemas and finite state machines to guarantee stability.