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Notes from the studio.

Writing on technology, design, VR, AI — and what it takes to ship them. Mostly long, sometimes short, occasionally wrong.

8 MIN

Why transactional email goes to spam — and how to fix deliverability

Transactional email goes to spam mostly because of broken authentication, not bad words. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC correctly, send from a verified domain, and align your Return-Path — here's the honest checklist we use with Resend.

EmailDeliverabilitySPFDKIM
8 MIN

The EU AI Act for teams shipping ML features: a builder's orientation

Most ML features you ship are minimal or limited-risk under the EU AI Act, but you still owe users transparency. Here is how the risk tiers actually map to product decisions — from an engineering team, not a law firm.

EU AI ActAIMachine LearningCompliance
7 MIN

Do you need an AI agent? Mostly no.

Most features founders want to make "agentic" are better as a scripted workflow, a form, or a small ranker — cheaper, testable, explainable, and deterministic in production. Here's where an AI agent actually earns its place, and where it doesn't.

AI AgentsAIAutomationProduct
8 MIN

The Carbon Cost of a Website: How Much CO2 a Page View Really Produces

A website's carbon footprint comes from moving and processing bytes — server energy, network transfer, and the visitor's device. Page weight and JavaScript are the main levers. Here's how to measure it and ship leaner.

SustainabilityGreen WebPerformanceWeb Vitals
8 MIN

Virtual Tours That Convert: A Practical Playbook

Do virtual tours increase conversions? Sometimes — when the space is the product and the embed is built to be found, fast, and accessible. Here's our honest playbook on when a 3D tour earns its place and when it's just expensive decoration.

Virtual Tours3D CaptureMatterportGaussian Splatting
8 MIN

How to Make Your Site Answerable by AI: A Practical Guide to Generative Engine Optimization

To get your site cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, write answer-shaped content, ship clean semantic HTML and JSON-LD, and publish an llms.txt directory plus a dynamic llms-full.txt. Here is the practical checklist we run on our own site.

GEOAILLMSEO
8 MIN

A Headless CMS With No Build Step: PHP + Cockpit, Server-Rendered

You can run a headless CMS without a JS build step. Here's how we pair Cockpit v2 with server-rendered PHP, FTP deploys, and zero npm pipeline.

Headless CMSCockpitPHPArchitecture
8 MIN

GDPR-compliant analytics without cookies: what we built and why there's no banner

GDPR-compliant analytics without cookies is possible when you collect no PII and set no client-side identifier — which is exactly why our sites carry no cookie banner.

PrivacyAnalyticsGDPREngineering
4 MIN

The chocolate house that hides its machinery

A recommender, a members-only world, a build-your-own-box atelier, a subscription engine and a closed-loop commission workflow — all hand-built. The story of Delicious Diamonds is invisible complexity in service of effortless luxury.

Web EngineeringLuxury BrandingCreative DevelopmentBespoke Web