All Articles
Ordering Six App Updates for the API Level 36 Deadline, and Sizing Each Staged Rollout
Google Play's API level 36 requirement lands on every app you own with the same date. When the deadline is fixed, the only thing left to decide is the order. Here is how I ranked six apps by fragility and worked each rollout step backwards from the observations I actually needed.
How Far to Narrow an Agent's Choices in a 30-Category Wallpaper Classification Pipeline
Asking an agent to pick one of 30 categories per image means re-running every image the moment a definition changes. Here is the reasoning and the implementation behind switching to closed-vocabulary tags plus a deterministic rule mapping.
Which Device Gets the iOS 27 Public Beta? Choosing a Test Phone When There's No Way Back
The iOS 27 public beta arrived on July 13 carrying the same build number as developer beta 3. Starting from that one detail, here is how I decide which device gets it, what to archive first, and where to look in my own app.
After Compose-First: Choosing Which View Screens to Migrate, Ranked by Churn Instead of Count
Google has declared Android development Compose-first. Here is how I rank View-based screens for migration using git history rather than screen counts, with the scoring script I actually ran and the three places partial migration quietly duplicates state.
Android 17's Local Network Permission: Inventory Every LAN Call Site Before You Hand the Fix to an Agent
Apps targeting the new API level need explicit permission to reach the local network. A grep for private IPs found 2 of my 11 LAN paths. Here is the detector that found all 11, and how I turned its output into eleven checkable tasks for an agent.
Quarantining the Dependencies Your Agent Adds, Before They Install
When an agent adds a dependency overnight, nobody reviews the lifecycle scripts that run at install time. Here is how I turned the default off and built a quarantine score to let the safe ones through.
Protecting Screenshot Tests for AdMob Screens from Ad Nondeterminism
Screens with ads turn red on every screenshot run, and eventually nobody reviews the diffs. Here is a design that seals off AdMob banner nondeterminism and leaves only real layout breaks in your checks, with Compose code and Antigravity-driven diff triage.
When the Deploy Was Green but Users Still Saw the Old Build: Field Notes on a Gate That Verifies Your Shipped Commit Reached the Edge
When a deploy reports success but production keeps serving the old build, a post-deploy gate that verifies your shipped commit actually reached the edge via a build stamp closes the gap. Field notes with real operational numbers.
The Gate That Stops Visual Damage Before You Hand Bulk Image Optimization to an Agent
When an agent bulk re-encoded a few hundred wallpaper assets, a handful came back with dulled color. Size-reduction alone cannot catch that. Here is how to design a gate that stops bad conversions before merge using three axes — SSIM, ΔE, and file size — with a checker that runs on Pillow and scikit-image.
An Agent's ORM Code Made p95 Five Times Slower — Measuring Query Counts and Blocking Them in CI
N+1 queries slip past code review because the code looks correct. Here is a CI gate that measures query counts and judges them by their slope against input size, with working code and real numbers.
Deciding When to Stop a Staged Rollout, Before You Have To — Agents Watch, I Halt
Field notes on building a Google Play staged-rollout watcher with Antigravity. Crash rate as a ratio to baseline, delayed ANR evaluation, and an explicit insufficient_data verdict — with the halt action kept in human hands.
Background Refresh May Never Run — Measuring Execution Opportunity and Redesigning Around Freshness
Scheduling a BGTaskScheduler or WorkManager job is a request, not a guarantee. Here is how I instrumented execution opportunity, defined freshness as an SLO with p50 and p90 targets, and rebuilt the update path into three layers that hold up when background work never runs.