Writing

• 14 October 2026Cutting my RAG assistant's first word from 50 seconds to 4The first version of the RAG assistant I built for my portfolio kept visitors waiting 25–50 seconds before an answer began. What I measured, what I kept on my server and what I moved to the cloud, and what that decision cost.→
• 14 October 2026Connecting an AI bot to a production database: three layers of read-onlyA support bot had to read live MySQL without ever writing a single row. Why I built three layers instead of trusting one safeguard, and how I masked sensitive data before it could ever reach the logs.→