Engineering

Notes from the build.

Architecture, trade-offs, and the decisions that were harder than they looked. Written for people who will have to make the same ones.

The model writes the plan, not the SQL

Insighter's analysis SQL is assembled by rules from an approved catalogue rather than authored by the language model. That choice looks conservative and is mostly about being able to sleep.

Why a human has to approve every metric

Letting a model infer what your columns mean is the fastest path to a demo and the slowest path to a system anyone will trust. Here is the trade we made instead, and what it costs.