Writing about APIs, developer tools, AI, and open source.https://wtrocki.com/https://wtrocki.com/blog/curating-ai-skills-productivity/https://wtrocki.com/blog/curating-ai-skills-productivity/Borrowed AI skills promise productivity but often deliver hidden costs. A practical guide to curating skills, the case for agents over skills, and why your own skills are the ones worth keeping.Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/from-ai-assistant-to-engineering-infrastructure/https://wtrocki.com/blog/from-ai-assistant-to-engineering-infrastructure/AI is moving beyond code generation into the systems that shape architecture, performance, and engineering standards. A maturity model for making engineering judgment executable.Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/does-scaffolding-matter-in-the-era-of-ai/https://wtrocki.com/blog/does-scaffolding-matter-in-the-era-of-ai/A practical look at whether traditional scaffolding tools still matter when AI can generate code. Covers where scaffolding beats AI, where AI beats scaffolding, and the durable model that pairs both.Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/ai-log-analysis-build-systems/https://wtrocki.com/blog/ai-log-analysis-build-systems/Practical lessons from building an automated build reasoning system on top of Evergreen using AI agents and MCP. Learn how to move from raw log ingestion to structured, agentic log analysis that actually works.Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/platform-engineering-metrics-alerting-as-service/https://wtrocki.com/blog/platform-engineering-metrics-alerting-as-service/Why platform teams need a unified metrics strategy built on counters, gauges, and histograms — and how a single Prometheus histogram can replace fragmented dashboards, enable shadow rollouts, and power trustworthy SLOs.Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/rollout-is-the-new-deployment/https://wtrocki.com/blog/rollout-is-the-new-deployment/Why safe rollouts need shadow mode, kill switches, circuit breakers, and runbooks you actually test. A practical framework for treating rollout as a platform primitive.Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/platform-engineering-foundation-autonomous-agents/https://wtrocki.com/blog/platform-engineering-foundation-autonomous-agents/As AI accelerates product delivery, platform engineering must absorb the reliability burden. This post explores the shifting responsibilities of platform teams, the five pillars of the platform contract, and how operational excellence keeps product and platform aligned.Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://wtrocki.com/blog/first-post/https://wtrocki.com/blog/first-post/Introducing a new centralized space for technical writing — reflections on two decades of publishing across platforms, why I still write manually in the age of AI, and what this blog is (and isn't) about.Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT