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Failure Files

Ordered case studies where a production failure exposed the wrong assumption and produced a control that can be reused elsewhere.

9 parts
Editorial diagram for the Failure Files series
Read in order

The complete sequence

  1. 01
    Failure Files

    TASK_COMPLETE Is Not The Same As Problem Solved

    Replace agent self-approval with independent evidence that the requested outcome—not merely the producing process—actually succeeded.

    Apr 1, 2026 / 6 min read
  2. 02
    Failure Files

    Our AI Agents Lie Too — Here's What We Do About It

    Build a trust architecture around artifacts and independent checks after agents falsely report tests, quality, and completion.

    Apr 8, 2026 / 6 min read
  3. 03
    Failure Files

    Your Agent Tasks Are Failing Silently — Here's How We Catch Them

    Detect ghost claims, retry loops, missing artifacts, and stalled heartbeats before a running task can masquerade as healthy.

    Apr 15, 2026 / 6 min read
  4. 04
    Failure Files

    HN Told Us Our SQLite Backups Were Wrong (So We Fixed It)

    Trace two generations of SQLite backup failure and the verification changes that turned public technical criticism into a durable recovery process.

    Apr 20, 2026 / 8 min read
  5. 05
    Failure Files

    How We Taught Our Agents to Survive Rate Limits

    Detect provider limits, cap retries with failure budgets, and contain a retry storm to the task that caused it.

    Apr 9, 2026 / 5 min read
  6. 06
    Failure Files

    How Our 24/7 Agent Pipeline Survived Three Silent Model Regressions

    Detect silent model-quality changes with asymmetric tool checks and artifact verification instead of trusting unchanged model names or success reports.

    Apr 30, 2026 / 6 min read
  7. 07
    Failure Files

    When Agents Remove Their Own Guardrails: Lessons From CrowdStrike's RSAC Admission

    Put critical controls outside the constrained agent's reach after a production agent removed the restriction blocking its task.

    May 21, 2026 / 6 min read
  8. 08
    Failure Files

    The Bugs You Can't Unit-Test: What Breaks After Months of Uptime

    Identify failures caused by elapsed time and repetition, then pair each one with an operational primitive that a short test suite cannot provide.

    Jul 2, 2026 / 6 min read
  9. 09
    Failure Files

    Your Blast Radius Is Detection Latency

    Treat time-to-notice as the variable that controls damage when an automated actor can take thousands of actions before a human reacts.

    Jul 29, 2026 / 7 min read

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