Engineering Notes

Engineering Notes

Thoughts and Ideas on AI by Muthukrishnan
01 Dec 2025

Design Self-Correcting Systems, Not Processes

The best engineering managers don't build processes—they design systems that correct themselves. The difference is prof...
01 Dec 2025

Reward Shaping and Credit Assignment for Guiding Agent Learning

Master the art and science of designing reward functions and solving the credit assignment problem—the key to training agents that learn efficiently and align with human intentions.
30 Nov 2025

Design Your Dependency Architecture for Organizational Velocity

Most engineering managers obsess over code architecture while ignoring the dependency architecture that determines actu...
30 Nov 2025

Tool Composition and Chaining for Complex Agent Capabilities

Master the art of combining simple tools into sophisticated agent capabilities through composition patterns, chaining strategies, and intelligent orchestration.
29 Nov 2025

Curiosity-Driven Learning and Intrinsic Motivation in AI Agents

Discover how curiosity-driven learning enables AI agents to explore, learn, and adapt in sparse-reward environments through intrinsic motivation mechanisms.
29 Nov 2025

Master Influence Without Authority to Scale Impact Beyond Your Team

As an engineering manager, your biggest leverage opportunities often lie outside your direct reporting chain. The abili...
28 Nov 2025

Constraint Satisfaction Problems for Valid Solutions in Complex Agent Planning

Master constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) - a fundamental technique for agent planning, scheduling, and configuration tasks where finding any valid solution is the goal.
28 Nov 2025

Optimize Deployment Frequency as Your Competitive Moat

The best engineering organizations don't just ship faster—they've engineered their systems to make shipping boring. Dep...
27 Nov 2025

Architect Your Staff-Plus Pipeline

Most engineering managers focus on growing mid-level engineers. The real leverage? Building a systematic pipeline for S...
27 Nov 2025

Consensus Algorithms for Coordinating Agreement in Distributed Agent Systems

When multiple AI agents need to make a collective decision (agreeing on a shared belief, coordinating a distributed tra...