Origin & Strategy (Canonical)
7/8/2025 · 4 min
Canonical reference for the early journey. Other posts link here instead of re‑telling the same arc.
1. First exposure (blink before push)
Early anxiety before the first open source PR (Anvil RPC UI) set a pattern: over-prepare privately, ship a coherent slice, treat review as collaborative not adversarial.
2. Stretch task: UUPS upgradeability
26 days later: migrating seven core contracts to UUPS (initializer migration, storage slot preservation, _disableInitializers(), audit-safe authorization). External audit surfaced zero findings—confidence shifted from “can submit” to “can be trusted under economic stakes”.
3. Intentional lane expansion
Targeted three surfaces to maximize cross-surface leverage:
- Payment portal (latency + funds flow UX)
- Directory / task aggregation (data & workflow visibility)
- Kernel / automation (types, policy, context shaping)
4. Execution principles
| Principle | Short form |
|---|---|
| Subtractive design | Remove unnecessary inference / calls / tokens first |
| Bounded uncertainty | Depth caps, timeouts, explicit exit criteria, token budgets |
| User never pays | Transparent retries / rotation; absorb transient failures |
| Deterministic envs | Fork + idempotent funding + stubs + loud logs |
| Thin slice iterate | Ship minimal viable reliability slice then harden |
| Captured rationale | Tiny ADR notes to prevent retroactive scope creep |
5. Pattern seeds (later reused)
- Type subtraction → union simplification & dynamic webhook enum mapping.
- Latency ranking → RPC handler & faster portal bootstrap.
- Token budgeting mindset → LLM context engineering & temporal resistance work.
6. Mentor influence (compressed)
Concise, surgical reviews reinforced prioritizing working slices over speculative rewrites.
Foundational arc distilled—other essays link here instead of retelling.