Table of Contents The Book of Life
Contents
I AI Agents 18 essays II AI & Automation 11 essays III Building 14 essays IV Technology 2 essays V Future & Vision 6 essays VI Philosophy 9 essays VII Human Nature 9 essays VIII Psychology 13 essays IX Football 35 essays X Travel 1 essay The Book of Life 118 essays
The Book of Life, by Orvi
Every chapter
AI Agents 18
How autonomous AI systems behave once they are deployed, coordinated and left to run: what works, and what breaks without anyone noticing.
- Policy as Code for AI Agent Tool Authorization: OPA or Cedar
- AI Agent Rollback: Why the Saga Pattern Fails for Tool Calls
- Least Privilege for AI Agents: Scoping Tools, Keys and Filesystems
- Multiple AI Coding Agents, Same Repository: The Bugs Git Won't Catch
- Context Window Management for Long-Running AI Agents: 4 Patterns That Work
- When Not to Use an AI Agent: The Architecture Decision Nobody Talks About
- Why LLM Agents Fail Silently in Production (And How to Detect It)
- How to Add a Circuit Breaker to an AI Agent Loop (Mine Took 3.5 Days to Get One)
- AI Agent State Management: Why Your Agent Ignores What It Already Knows
- Do Reasoning Models Actually Make Developers Faster? What the METR Study Found
- Semantic Routing: How I Cut LLM Costs 70% in Production
- RAG Hallucination Rate: Why Retrieval Still Fails in 2026
- LLM Hallucination Rates in Production: What the Data Actually Shows
- AI-Assisted vs AI-Autonomous: Where the Line Actually Is and Why It Matters
- Why AI Automation Dies After Go-Live (The Real Reason Isn't Technical)
- LLM Function Calling in Production: Reliability, Failure Modes, and Design Patterns
- Why Multi-Agent AI Systems Fail in Production (And Which Patterns Hold)
- Human-in-the-Loop vs Autonomous AI Agents: A Cost Comparison
AI & Automation 11
Working with AI day to day: coding assistants, vibe coding, LLM graders, context windows, and the jobs AI is changing.
- LLM-as-a-Judge Reliability: Check Your Grader Against Human Labels
- When an Upstream API Changes, Your Agent's Tools Break Silently
- AI-Assisted Coding vs Vibe Coding: The Difference Is Review
- AI Context Window Too Small? Why Long Prompts Lose Accuracy
- Agent Rule Conflicts: Why AI Pipelines Fail Silently
- New Job Titles AI Is Creating, Not Just Destroying
- Is AI Pair Programming Worth It? One Year With Copilot, Cursor and Claude
- Vibe Coding vs AI-Assisted Development: What Is the Difference?
- Silent AI Code Bugs: Passing Reviews, Failing in Production
- What AI Agents Still Cannot Replace About Senior Developers
- How AI Agents Changed My Development Workflow: From 13 Years of Coding to Orchestration
Building 14
What it actually costs to build software products, run companies, and make decisions without a safety net.
- Postgres Row-Level Security for Multi-Tenant SaaS: Design and Pitfalls
- White-Label Client Portal on a Custom Domain: Automating SSL
- Pre-Flight Budget Checks: Blocking an LLM Call Before It Is Billed
- LLM API Spending Limits: Why Alerts Don't Stop the Bill
- Why Does Every SaaS Product Look the Same? (SaaS Commoditization Explained)
- How to Price a SaaS Product When You Have No Competitors to Copy
- How to Run Multiple SaaS Products as a Solo Founder
- Why Does Nobody Use My Open Source Project? 3 Months, Zero Users
- Vibe Coding Technical Debt: How to Build With AI Without Losing Track of What You Are Actually Building
- Bootstrapped Startup Running Out of Money: Loan or Fold?
- Is Building Indie Software Still Viable in 2026?
- The Real Cost of Building a SaaS With No Co-Founder
- What I Would Do Differently If I Started AgencyHandy Today
- Solo Founder Burnout: Why 49% Consider Quitting 4-9 Months After Launch
Technology 2
Developer experience, open source and the economics of the software everyone depends on.
Future & Vision 6
Where work, learning, cities and attention are heading, and what AI changes about each.
- Which Jobs Will Still Exist in 2040? The Careers AI Won't Replace
- Skills AI Can't Replace: What Kids Should Learn Without AI
- What Human Attention Will Be Worth in Ten Years
- What Cities Become When Remote Work Is the Default
- What Learning Without AI Taught the Last Pre-AI Generation
- Splinternet: What Internet Fragmentation Means for Devs
Philosophy 9
Free will, moral luck, meaning, regret and the good life, asked plainly and answered as far as I can.
- What Is the Purpose of Regret? The Psychology Behind It
- What Does It Mean to Live a Good Life, My Incomplete Answer
- Why Stoicism Keeps Finding New Audiences Every Generation
- Why Meaning and Happiness Are Not the Same Thing
- Why Is It So Hard to Live in the Present?
- Toxic Positivity vs. Optimism: What the Research Says
- What Is Moral Luck? How Where You're Born Shapes Who You Become
- Does Free Will Exist If AI Can Predict Your Next Decision?
- Why Does the Universe Have Laws?
Human Nature 9
Needs, dignity, ambition, love and agency: what people want, and why it is rarely what they say.
- What Is Human Dignity? Why People Quit Jobs and Lose Money to Protect It
- Why Celebrating Small Wins Isn't Enough: The Science of Ritual
- Does Ambition Make You Happier? What 70 Years of Data Says
- Why Rest Is the Most Productive Thing I Do
- How to Build Personal Agency: Why It's Not About More Choices
- Why Do I Feel Empty Even Though I'm Always Busy?
- 7 Core Human Needs: How to Tell Which One Is Missing
- Does True Love Last Forever? Science and One Reunion
- What Does It Mean to Dream About Racing a Train?
Psychology 13
How the mind actually makes decisions, processes experience, and constructs the story it tells about itself.
- Does Social Proof Actually Work? What 8.57 Million Households Show
- Cognitive Load in UX: What the Research Actually Says
- Behavioral Economics in B2B Sales: The Patterns That Actually Close Deals
- Why People Don't Cancel Unused Subscriptions: The Endowment Effect in Software
- The Psychology of Waiting: Why Perceived Wait Time Is the Only Wait Time That Matters
- Base Rate Neglect in Product: What Google Flu Trends Got Wrong
- Does Fake Scarcity Marketing Still Work If You Know It's Fake?
- Paradox of Choice in SaaS Product Design: Why More Pricing Tiers Convert Worse
- How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit? What the Science Actually Says
- Status Games: Why People Buy Things They Do Not Need and What That Means for Builders
- Commitment and Consistency: Why Small Yeses Lead to Big Ones, and When They Backfire
- Decision Fatigue Is Real and Your Product Is Probably Making It Worse
- Why Do Product Redesigns Fail? What Snapchat and New Coke Reveal About System 1
Football 35
The beautiful game through the lens of psychology, identity, and what it means to belong to something bigger than yourself.
- How Arne Slot Changed Liverpool's Press Without Destroying What Klopp Built
- Why Brazil Lost to Norway at the 2026 World Cup: What the xG Missed
- France at World Cup 2026: The Numbers That Show How Dangerous Their Mbappé Dependency Is
- Why AC Milan 1988-1994 Was the Last Real Football Dynasty
- Set Pieces Won Euro 2024. The Data Says We Still Don't Take Them Seriously Enough
- The Inverted Winger in 2026: Why Every Top Team Runs This Role and How to Stop It
- Ajax 1970-1974: How Total Football Won Three European Cups
- USA World Cup 2026 Tactics: Where Pochettino's Block Broke
- The Greatest Football Teams of All Time, Ranked by Margin Over Their Field
- South American Ultras: Why Away Teams Fold in Buenos Aires
- Does Crowd Noise Affect Home Advantage? What African Fans Did to the World Cup
- How to Break Down a Low Block: The Data Behind Football's Hardest Problem
- Penalty Shootouts Are Not Random. The Psychology Data From 500 Shootouts Proves It
- Why Did Germany Lose at the 2026 World Cup? The Nagelsmann Rebuild Never Fixed 2018
- The Back Three Revolution: How Wing-Backs Became the Most Important Position in Modern Football
- Dortmund Yellow Wall Capacity: Does It Actually Change Results?
- The Psychology of a Comeback: Which Teams Come Back From Two Goals Down and Why
- The 4-3-3 Keeps Dying and Coming Back. Here Is Why
- Why Do Teams Play a High Defensive Line? The Tactic Explained
- Gegenpressing Explained: Why Most Teams Get It Wrong
- Did UEFA Ban Tiki-Taka? What Actually Killed It
- Real Madrid Counter-Attack Tactics: How They Win the Champions League Without the Ball
- Iceland at Euro 2016: A Tactical Breakdown of the Greatest Upset in Modern Football
- Hungary 1954 World Cup: What If the Mighty Magyars Had Won?
- The Yugoslavia Golden Generation: The Football Dynasty That Died With a Country
- Spain at World Cup 2026: The Tactical Blueprint After Winning Euro 2024
- Why World-Class Players Disappear in World Cups: The Psychology Behind Tournament Pressure
- Football After Messi and Ronaldo: Who Replaced Them?
- Guardiola's Positional Play Explained: The Pressing Trap Behind the Possession
- What Is the Half-Space in Football? Why Occupying It Became a Trap
- Galatasaray Stadium Atmosphere: The 131.76 dB Record Explained
- Does High Pressing Win Trophies? Ten Years of PPDA Data
- The False 9 Is Dead. Here Is What Killed It and What Replaced It
- Was Brazil 1970 the Best Team Ever? The Formation and the Case
- Why We Support Countries We've Never Lived In: Bangladesh's Obsession with Brazil and Argentina
Travel 1
Notes on travelling slowly, working remotely, and what moving through new places does to how you think.