I spent 20 years in safety-critical software. Now I'm applying that rigor to AI applications.
I am a Systems Engineer by trade. I’ve spent decades ensuring that planes don’t fall out of the sky and medical devices don’t fail patients. My philosophy has always been: Clean Architecture, strict boundaries, and zero tolerance for "magic."
But the world is changing. The rise of AI and "vibe coding" tempts us to trade architecture for speed. I believe we can have both.
This blog documents how safety-critical engineering principles adapt to AI systems, where generation is cheap but correctness is not. It is the story of how I am bootstrapping complex, full-stack AI platforms (like FRAKTAG and AMODX) without sacrificing engineering discipline.
Here, I dissect the move from Monoliths to Microservices, the integration of RAG pipelines into Java Spring Boot, and the reality of building serverless architectures on AWS.
I am building in public. I am sharing the code, the architecture decisions, and the painful lessons learned. Welcome to The Foundry.
The new section on AI-assisted coding - as I lean into it I discover what works, what doesn't, and how we can improve thigs
What Comes After Vibe Coding
AI solved code generation. It did not solve orientation, trust, or control. Repo-graph is a deterministic engineering substrate for the layer that chat tools, search, and RAG cannot fill
Missing Links In Agentic Coding
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry There is a distinct lifecycle to adopting AI in software engineering. Phase one is the dopamine rush. I wrote a
Building ZapEngine: From Plant Simulator to WebGPU Game Engine in One Week
Built ZapEngine game engine in one week. Monday: Plant simulator. Tuesday: Tile-based tree. Wednesday: Hit PixiJS limit. Thursday: Ported iOS game to WebGPU + WASM. Friday: Extracted engine with working examples. All production-deployed.
Showing My 12-Year-Old How to Guide AI: Build a Plant Simulator
Teaching a 12-year-old how to guide AI to build accurate plant growth simulator. Built in one day using TypeScript, PixiJS, and real biology equations. Not game theater. Actual simulation.
The Great Refactor: Migrating a CRM from Spring Boot to Serverless
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry In my "Mission" manifesto, I outlined three capabilities I am developing at The Foundry. The second was System
I Built an AI Coach in 2 Months. AI Engineering is Engineering.
Two months ago, ARDA was just an idea born from a 20-year-old dream: an AI coach that could provide the brutally honest, reality-based relationship advice I w
"Vibe Coding" Like A Professional
"Vibe coding" is the new high. The dopamine rush of brainstorming with a Large Language Model (LLM), copy-pasting a near-perfect snippet, and watching a feature
Here are my articles on AMODX
Cloudflare Just Validated AmodX Too
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry On April 1, 2026, Cloudflare announced EmDash. Open source. TypeScript from scratch. Serverless. Sandboxed plug
AMODX Sprint 5: Physical Goods Commerce Engine
Sprint 3 added digital goods. Sprint 4 added visual polish. Sprint 5 is about enabling physical goods e-commerce.
AMODX Sprint 4: From Functional CMS to Commercial-Grade Operating System
AMODX Sprint 4 summary. Implemented versioning, content graph, SEO fixes, 1024MB Lambdas, and Research Signals module. Moved from functional CMS to commercial-grade operating system.
AMODX Sprint 3 - Added Commerce, Teams, and "God Mode"
Sprint 3 added commerce, RBAC, themes, and blogging to AMODX. We moved from prototype to production-grade agency operating system. Zero plugins. Pure serverless.
AMODX Sprint 2 Completed: The Agency Operating System is Production-Ready
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry AMODX started as a question: "What if we rebuilt WordPress today, knowing what we know now?" The answer is amo
WordPress Hosting is a Grift. I Built a Serverless OS to Escape It.
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry I remember the exact moment I decided to burn the ships. I was looking at a renewal invoice from Bluehost. I ha
AMODX Wordpress Alternative: Why Agencies Need an "AI Operating System"
By Andrei Roman Principal Architect, The Foundry For the last 15 years, the answer to "I need a website" has been "WordPress." It powers 40% of the web. It is t
By the way, this blog is entirely hosted on AmodX.
Here are my articles on FRAKTAG
FRAKTAG Evolution: From RAG Script to Modular Knowledge Engine
FRAKTAG architectural evolution solving six technical problems: stochastic LLM outputs, runtime portability, vector search limitations, conversation performance, GPU thrashing, and context overflow.
Introducing FRAKTAG: The Fractal Knowledge Engine
FRAKTAG: A fractal knowledge engine with human-supervised ingestion. Five days from prototype to functional. Replaces flat RAG with structural navigation and strict data taxonomy.
FRAKTAG now replaces the earlier coaching system by constraining retrieval to structured sources instead of injecting the entire knowledge base. The result is lower cost and more predictable behavior.