/dev · the engineering room
This page is for engineers who want to see the choices behind the choices. Not linked from the nav. Indexed by Google because the brand is honest.
2026-04-26
built
18
pages
22
components
6
case studies
Hand-curated retrieval corpus over vector index
For a portfolio with ~6 topical entries, similarity search adds latency and failure modes for no quality gain. The corpus is 10 entries, indexed by keyword overlap. Zero embeddings, zero magic, zero hallucination.
Edge runtime for /api/ask
Cold-start kills agent UX. Edge keeps p99 under 300ms even on the first request after a deploy.
Lab is dynamic({ ssr: false })
Three.js is ~600 KB gzipped. The recruiter path (`/`) should never pay that cost. The lab loads only when its route is requested.
Footer is a client component that returns null on /lab
The lab is a fixed-positioned 3D world. A normal flow Footer would overlay it. Cleaner than fighting z-index across the whole stack.
Suspense boundary around /work
The page uses useSearchParams for the discipline filter (?d=ai|systems|...). Next 14 requires Suspense for static prerender. Server shell + client child.