Notes & essays.
Field notes on Forward Deployed Engineering, AI engineering, system design, and algorithms — turning messy real-world problems into production systems. Written as I learn.
- Forward Deployed Engineering13 min read
The Go/No-Go Decision: How Forward Deployed Engineers Decide Whether to Build at All
A go/no-go decision asks whether an AI project should exist at all. Here's the gate forward deployed engineers run before committing to build — and when to say no.
- Forward Deployed Engineering16 min read
How Forward Deployed Engineers Stop Scope Creep on AI Projects
Scope creep on AI projects doesn't start when a client asks for more — it starts when you never wrote down what you agreed to build. Here's the contract that stops it.
- Forward Deployed Engineering7 min read
The Discovery Call: How Forward Deployed Engineers Find the Real Problem
Most AI projects die in the first conversation, not in the model. How forward deployed engineers run discovery calls that find the real problem.
- Forward Deployed Engineering8 min read
Root Cause Analysis for Forward Deployed Engineers: How to Diagnose Before You Build
When production breaks, a forward deployed engineer runs root cause analysis before building a fix: triage the problem, bucket the symptoms, and narrow to the true cause.
- Forward Deployed Engineering8 min read
Client Psychology for Forward Deployed Engineers
Most AI deployments fail on people, not models. Client psychology — knowing the human before the problem — is the skill that gets a forward deployed engineer's system shipped.
- AI Engineering10 min read
The Evolution of AI: From Expert Systems to AI Agents
The evolution of AI is one ladder: expert systems, machine learning, neural networks, transformers, generative AI, and agents — each rung fixing the last one's limit. Forward Deployed Engineer - Hemanth.
- Forward Deployed Engineering8 min read
How to Scope an AI Agent Before You Build It: A Forward Deployed Engineer's Playbook
Before writing any code, a forward deployed engineer scopes the AI agent: run discovery, rank problems by volume and AI risk, then map the integration.
- Forward Deployed Engineering8 min read
When to Use an LLM: How a Forward Deployed Engineer Decides
When should you use an LLM, and when is it overkill? A forward deployed engineer's decision rule, drawn from a real financial-data project that failed first.
- Forward Deployed Engineering7 min read
What Separates a Developer from a Forward Deployed Engineer
Most engineers can build what they're told to build. A forward deployed engineer decides what's worth building — and that gap defines the entire role.