https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/ Measured field reports, working artifacts, and practitioner notes from Derek Ciula. en-us Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/the-day-the-labels-fell/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/the-day-the-labels-fell/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT A two-day field note on inherited impossibility: four 'unsupported / blocked / too slow' labels dismantled by measurement on one all-Intel workstation, and the two walls that turned out to be real. Signed predictions, same-day retractions, a 40x runtime peel on a 13-TOPS NPU, and the discipline that decides when to stop. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/what-consumer-hardware-actually-does/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/what-consumer-hardware-actually-does/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Twenty-nine indexed local-model labs plus the August rebuild and Qwen 3.8 campaigns: measured inference, training, concurrency, memory placement, context depth, and the configuration choices that mattered more than new hardware. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/vulkancliff/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/vulkancliff/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT A local-AI multitasking ceiling of exactly 8 survived a full machine rebuild, because it was one line of llama.cpp source. Finding it, proving it by dose-response across seven models, and moving it: the 9th parallel request gets 6.7x faster on the same Intel Arc GPU. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/solving-the-job-shop-problem/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/solving-the-job-shop-problem/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT A 2019 article on solving the job shop scheduling problem with Google OR-Tools and CP-SAT, republished with a 2026 coda: the same solver, the same three constraints, now scheduling AI agents and GPU model-loads instead of factory machines. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/build-your-own-hearth/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/build-your-own-hearth/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT A step-by-step tutorial: build a local MCP gateway for Claude Code on a Windows machine with an NVIDIA GPU — every tool call logged to a ledger, a local model on tap, and a test gate at every step. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/a-fire-that-tends-itself/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/a-fire-that-tends-itself/ Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Two weeks building mechnet: a distributed AI build-laboratory that plans, schedules, watches, and improves itself on consumer hardware I already own. The arc from a memory bottleneck to a lab that runs while I sleep. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/functional-enterprise-architecture/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/functional-enterprise-architecture/ Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT The kind of enterprise architecture that works is smaller and humbler than a binder: a handful of document formats in tools you already know. The formats, the lifecycle, and the one command that makes them a habit. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/find-every-reason-to-dismiss-me/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/find-every-reason-to-dismiss-me/ Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT I commissioned an adversarial AI review of my own code, instructed to find every defensible reason to dismiss it. Why I published the result unedited. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/flowing-water-stuck-agents/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/flowing-water-stuck-agents/ Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT A debugging methodology for when AI tells you it can't be done. Three patterns — persona-shifted critics, structured pushback, predictive self-critique — from one hard night of multi-card GPU debugging on consumer Windows. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/five-layer-build-blueprint/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/five-layer-build-blueprint/ Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Four parallel AI-builder streams shipped clean in one night. The pattern that made it possible — context tiers, bootstrap protocol, collaboration loop, automation boundary, human-in-the-loop — generalizes to any disciplined AI-assisted build. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/demo-launch/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/demo-launch/ Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Three standalone sample pages that explain the demo narrative, guardrails, and local restart loop. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/field-notes-precheck/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/field-notes-precheck/ Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Eight field notes from a real repository. The receipts behind the Mech Suit Methodology. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/when-in-doubt-build-more-observation-early/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/when-in-doubt-build-more-observation-early/ Sat, 09 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT For agent-built integrations in unfamiliar tech, ultra-loud in-product logging is a more trustworthy verification primitive than unit tests written in the same uncertainty. A spread-order bug surfaced in two seconds because the overlay made the contract violation visible. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/the-tight-loop/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/the-tight-loop/ Thu, 07 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Field test for the Mech Suit Methodology. A 3D replay viewer built in two slices over two days, with the receipts. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/dispatch-maf-otel-stack/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/dispatch-maf-otel-stack/ Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT The complete multi-agent build-and-run stack: Cowork desktop for parallel build sessions, Microsoft Agent Framework for runtime agent orchestration, and OpenTelemetry as the unified observability substrate that spans both layers. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/threat-trace/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/threat-trace/ Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT A working multi-agent log-analysis pipeline. Three streams under attack, three discrete agents, one cross-stream layer that catches the false-positive trap a single-prompt scanner walks into. Open it in your browser. No install. https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/desire-trace-demo/ https://steppeintegrations.com/articles/desire-trace-demo/ Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT The desire trace demo as it ran the first day it worked. One form, one trace, one local store. Published unfinished on purpose.