architecture / systems design

Enterprise agent architecture.

Boundaries before scale.

Large agent systems fail in predictable ways: too many moving parts, vague tool permissions, weak ownership, and rollout rules that do not exist. I fix the structure before those failures become routine.

What I design

Agent and tool routing

  • which agent does what
  • which tools are exposed
  • where policy is enforced instead of implied

Failure and escalation design

  • retries and human handoff
  • auditability and stop conditions
  • fallbacks for when the model should not improvise

Observability and incident readiness

  • traces that explain behavior
  • diagnostics that point to the failure
  • runbooks that shorten incidents

Phased rollout strategy

  • controlled release steps
  • eval-backed expansion
  • less confidence theater

What breaks first

  • every team gets its own routing logic
  • tool permissions exist only in people's heads
  • fallback paths appear after incidents
  • rollout policy is just optimism with a calendar

Defaults beat options. Boundaries beat hope.

If you need this work applied to a live product, see how I work with teams on architecture, evals, and release discipline.

[ Hire Max Howell ]