Notesfromthestudio.

Engineering deep-dives, design opinions, and lessons from shipping production software.

ML / AI

Why your RAG system is lying to you (and how to catch it)

Most RAG pipelines hallucinate more than teams realize. Here's the eval framework we use on every engagement to measure faithfulness, relevance, and groundedness — before users find the bugs for you.

Jaden M./12 min/Mar 15, 2025

Web Dev

Next.js 15 server component patterns we actually use

Practical patterns for React Server Components in production — data fetching, streaming, error boundaries, and the patterns we've settled on after shipping 10+ Next.js 15 projects.

Tomás R./9 min

Mobile

Offline-first Flutter: our production architecture

How we build Flutter apps that work without connectivity and sync seamlessly — using Drift, background isolates, and conflict resolution strategies tested across three shipping apps.

Rahel T./11 min

Automation

n8n vs Zapier vs Make: when to use what

We've built automations on all three. Here's our honest breakdown of cost, flexibility, self-hosting, and the scenarios where each one wins.

Amani K./7 min

Blockchain

Solidity gas optimization: our 2025 checklist

Practical gas-saving techniques for EVM smart contracts — from storage packing to calldata tricks — with benchmarks from real deployments on Ethereum and Arbitrum.

Kwame O./10 min

DevOps

Terraform patterns for startups that actually ship

You don't need a platform team to use Terraform well. Here are the patterns we use to give small teams production-grade infrastructure without the overhead.

Luna P./8 min

Design

Design systems that survive contact with developers

Most design systems die within a year. Here's how we build component libraries that developers actually use — with tokens, variants, and documentation that stays current.

Nia Z./8 min

ML / AI

LLM agents in production: 5 lessons from real deployments

We've shipped autonomous agents for contract review, customer support, and data extraction. Here's what we learned about guardrails, tool use, and knowing when not to use agents.

Jaden M./14 min

Mobile

We migrated from React Native to Flutter. Here's why.

After three React Native apps, we moved our default mobile stack to Flutter. This is the honest tradeoff analysis — performance, DX, ecosystem, and hiring.

Rahel T./10 min

Business

How we price dev agency work (and why hourly is broken)

Our pricing model, why we moved away from hourly billing, and how fixed-scope engagements make both sides happier. Includes our actual rate card.

Amani K./6 min