Welcome
I'm Hugues Clouâtre, a technology executive specializing in AI and platform engineering. Former AWS and Oracle, now at Slalom.
Practical insights for CTOs and engineering leaders. Check out my About page to learn more.
Featured
-
AI Adoption in Engineering: Breaking the 50% Plateau
• UpdatedPurpose-built AI tooling cuts per-task cost 21-68%. Three-cohort model and four-phase operating framework for engineering leaders past the 50% adoption plateau.
-
AI Delivery Decision Frameworks: Type 1, Type 2, DACI
• UpdatedMisclassifying reversible decisions costs more than the decision itself. Four frameworks unblock AI delivery: Type 1/Type 2, Eisenhower, DACI, and PMBOK.
-
SRE for AI Agents: Error Budgets, Trust, and 90 Trials
• UpdatedCan an AI agent predict scope without hallucinating? We ran 90 trials. It added 1.7 phantom files per change. Error budgets and trust ladders are the gate.
-
RAG for Legacy Systems: 7,432 Pages to 3s Answers
• Updated7,432 pages to 3-second answers. Production RAG for legacy systems with model-agnostic reranking. No vendor lock-in, validated across 4 LLM families.
-
Orchestrating AI Agents: A Subagent Architecture
• Updated50% cost reduction with subagent architecture for AI coding. Capable models for planning, fast models for building. Real metrics from Goose.
-
AI-Assisted Development: The Accountability Layer
• UpdatedAI made writing code faster. Without governance controls, it makes reviewing and understanding code slower. The accountability layer is the structural response.
Recent Posts
-
What a Null Result Taught Us About AI Agent Evaluation
• UpdatedWe tested prompt repetition on 20 parallel AI agents. Ceiling effects dominated both experiments. The null result is a finding about evaluation design.
-
Why Your AI Agent Failed in Production
• UpdatedWhy your AI agent failed: missing decision provenance, not metrics. The 3 observability gaps traditional monitoring won't catch.
-
AI Agents in Legacy Systems: ROI Without Modernization
• UpdatedLayer AI agents over legacy systems without modernization. 30-80% productivity gains in 3-6 months. Patterns that bypass technical debt.
-
AI Supply Chain Attacks: New Vectors in Dependencies
• UpdatedSlopsquatting: attackers register packages AI hallucinates. XZ Utils showed the stakes. A framework to assess your AI supply chain exposure.