# Cemal Önder — complete index

> Every entry on the site. Append nothing: each link already points at the Markdown mirror. English entries live at the root, Turkish under /tr/.

## English (29)

### Essays — `essay`

- [Architecture Is a Story About Trust](https://cmlonder.com/essays/architecture-is-a-story-about-trust.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  Every boundary in a system is a statement about which team you trust to not break you.
- [Leaving the Big Company, Slowly](https://cmlonder.com/essays/leaving-the-big-company-slowly.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solo-company
  Notes on building something of your own without a dramatic exit, and why the slow version might be better.
- [Scale Is a Sequence, Not a Destination](https://cmlonder.com/essays/scale-is-a-sequence.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance, solution-architecture
  Systems do not break at scale. They break in a predictable order, and knowing the order is most of the job.
- [The Agent-Shaped Codebase](https://cmlonder.com/essays/the-agent-shaped-codebase.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solution-architecture
  Codebases are about to be read more often by agents than by people. That changes what "clean code" means.
- [The Review Is the Work](https://cmlonder.com/essays/the-review-is-the-work.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solution-architecture
  When generation is free, the scarce resource is judgement. That reframes what a senior engineer is for.
- [Watch read replicas stop helping](https://cmlonder.com/essays/watch-replicas-stop-helping.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance, solution-architecture
  Replicas fix read saturation and nothing else. Here is the exact point where adding another one stops paying for itself.
- [What Agents Still Cannot Do](https://cmlonder.com/essays/what-agents-cannot-do-yet.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  An honest list, kept up to date, of where the end-to-end agentic workflow still falls over.
- [How One Feature From a Failed Startup Can Become a Billion Dollar Idea](https://cmlonder.com/essays/how-one-feature-from-a-failed-startup-can-become-a-billion-dollar-idea.md) — Aug 30, 2022 — topics: solo-company
  Failed products often contain one feature that was worth more than the whole company around it.
- [How buying an iPhone helped me to land my first job as a Developer?](https://cmlonder.com/essays/how-buying-an-iphone-helped-me-to-land-my-first-job-as-a-developer.md) — Aug 28, 2022 — topics: solo-company
  No, not by writing an iOS application. A story about noticing what nobody else in the room noticed.

### Notes — `note`

- [AGENTS.md is the new README](https://cmlonder.com/notes/agents-md-is-the-new-readme.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  The README was written for a human who would skim it once. This file is read in full, every run.
- [Building in public without a megaphone](https://cmlonder.com/notes/building-in-public-without-a-megaphone.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solo-company
  Wondering whether it is possible to build something of your own quietly, and whether that defeats the point.
- [The context window is a budget, not a container](https://cmlonder.com/notes/context-window-is-a-budget.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  Half-formed thought on why "just paste more" stops working past a certain repo size.
- [I stopped drawing sequence diagrams first](https://cmlonder.com/notes/i-stopped-writing-sequence-diagrams-first.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  Trying to articulate why starting with the failure modes produces a better design than starting with the happy path.
- [Kafka consumers I have regretted](https://cmlonder.com/notes/kafka-consumers-i-have-regretted.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance
  A catalogue of my own mistakes, kept partly as penance and partly as a checklist.
- [p99 is a team boundary, not a metric](https://cmlonder.com/notes/p99-is-a-team-boundary.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance
  Whoever owns the p99 owns the on-call pager. Everything else follows from that.
- [The cost of a half-finished abstraction](https://cmlonder.com/notes/the-cost-of-a-half-finished-abstraction.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solution-architecture
  Unfinished abstractions are worse than none, and agents make them cheaper to create and harder to spot.
- [What I want from an agent harness](https://cmlonder.com/notes/what-i-want-from-an-agent-harness.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  A running wishlist. Mostly about observability and being able to stop the thing mid-flight.

### Playbooks — `playbook`

- [Budget the context before adding tools](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/budget-context-before-adding-tools.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  Every tool definition costs tokens on every turn. Most agent slowdowns are a context problem, not a model problem.
- [Idempotency before retries](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/idempotency-before-retries.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  Adding retries to a non-idempotent endpoint converts a visible failure into an invisible one.
- [Measure before caching](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/measure-before-caching.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance
  A cache added without a measurement is a correctness risk you took for an unknown gain.
- [One writer per table](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/one-writer-per-table.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  The cheapest way to keep a shared database from becoming a distributed monolith.
- [Outbox before dual writes](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/outbox-before-dual-writes.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture, scale-and-performance
  If a write has to land in two places, put it in one place and let a reader fan it out.
- [Read replicas before sharding](https://cmlonder.com/playbooks/read-replicas-before-sharding.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance, solution-architecture
  When read load is the bottleneck, the cheapest correct answer is almost never sharding.

### Signals — `signal`

- [AI is breaking our proxies for expertise](https://cmlonder.com/signals/ai-breaking-proxies-for-expertise.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solo-company
  The signals we used to judge competence — clean code, fast output — no longer carry information.
- [Workflow or agent, and why the distinction matters](https://cmlonder.com/signals/anthropic-effective-agents.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, ai-news
  The clearest public writing on when an agent loop beats a fixed workflow.
- [Don't build tools for AI agents](https://cmlonder.com/signals/dont-build-tools-for-agents.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  An argument that agents should use the tools humans already use, rather than getting bespoke ones.
- [Engineer away the slop](https://cmlonder.com/signals/engineer-away-the-slop.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  On treating low-quality agent output as an engineering problem rather than a model problem.
- [What blog posts influenced your thinking the most?](https://cmlonder.com/signals/influential-blog-posts.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: ai-news
  A long thread of the posts that actually changed how working engineers think.
- [Slow developer experience will bottleneck fast models](https://cmlonder.com/signals/slow-devex-bottleneck.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, scale-and-performance
  If the model is faster than your CI, your CI is now the product constraint.

## Türkçe (18)

### Yazılar — `essay`

- [Mimari, Güven Hakkında Bir Hikâyedir](https://cmlonder.com/tr/essays/architecture-is-a-story-about-trust.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  Bir sistemdeki her sınır, hangi ekibin seni bozmayacağına güvendiğinin ifadesidir.
- [Büyük Şirketten Yavaşça Ayrılmak](https://cmlonder.com/tr/essays/leaving-the-big-company-slowly.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solo-company
  Dramatik bir çıkış yapmadan kendi işini kurmak üzerine notlar, ve yavaş versiyonun neden daha iyi olabileceği.
- [Ölçek Bir Varış Değil, Bir Sıra](https://cmlonder.com/tr/essays/scale-is-a-sequence.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance, solution-architecture
  Sistemler ölçekte bozulmaz. Tahmin edilebilir bir sırayla bozulur ve o sırayı bilmek işin çoğudur.
- [Agent Biçimli Kod Tabanı](https://cmlonder.com/tr/essays/the-agent-shaped-codebase.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solution-architecture
  Kod tabanları artık insanlardan çok ajanlar tarafından okunacak. Bu, "temiz kod"un ne demek olduğunu değiştiriyor.
- [Asıl İş İnceleme](https://cmlonder.com/tr/essays/the-review-is-the-work.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, solution-architecture
  Üretim bedavaysa kıt olan kaynak muhakemedir. Bu, kıdemli mühendisin ne işe yaradığını yeniden tanımlar.

### Notlar — `note`

- [AGENTS.md yeni README](https://cmlonder.com/tr/notes/agents-md-is-the-new-readme.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  README bir kere göz gezdirecek insan için yazılmıştı. Bu dosya her çalıştırmada baştan sona okunuyor.
- [Megafon olmadan açıkta inşa etmek](https://cmlonder.com/tr/notes/building-in-public-without-a-megaphone.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solo-company
  Kendi şeyini sessizce kurmak mümkün mü, ve bu işin amacını baltalıyor mu?
- [Context penceresi bir kap değil, bir bütçe](https://cmlonder.com/tr/notes/context-window-is-a-budget.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  "Daha fazla yapıştır" belli bir repo boyutundan sonra neden çalışmıyor — yarım kalmış bir düşünce.
- [Pişman olduğum Kafka consumer'ları](https://cmlonder.com/tr/notes/kafka-consumers-i-have-regretted.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance
  Kendi hatalarımın kataloğu; yarısı kefaret, yarısı kontrol listesi.
- [p99 bir metrik değil, bir ekip sınırı](https://cmlonder.com/tr/notes/p99-is-a-team-boundary.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance
  p99'un sahibi kim ise nöbet telefonunun sahibi de o. Gerisi bundan türüyor.

### Playbook'lar — `playbook`

- [Tool eklemeden önce context bütçesi](https://cmlonder.com/tr/playbooks/budget-context-before-adding-tools.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  Her tool tanımı her turda token yiyor. Ajan yavaşlamalarının çoğu model sorunu değil, context sorunu.
- [Retry'dan önce idempotency](https://cmlonder.com/tr/playbooks/idempotency-before-retries.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture
  Idempotent olmayan bir endpoint'e retry eklemek, görünür bir hatayı görünmez bir hataya çevirir.
- [Çift yazımdan önce outbox](https://cmlonder.com/tr/playbooks/outbox-before-dual-writes.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: solution-architecture, scale-and-performance
  Bir yazım iki yere düşecekse tek yere yaz, oradan bir okuyucu dağıtsın.
- [Sharding'den önce read replica](https://cmlonder.com/tr/playbooks/read-replicas-before-sharding.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: scale-and-performance, solution-architecture
  Darboğaz okuma yüküyse en ucuz doğru cevap neredeyse hiçbir zaman sharding değildir.

### Sinyaller — `signal`

- [Workflow mu agent mı, ve bu ayrım neden önemli](https://cmlonder.com/tr/signals/anthropic-effective-agents.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, ai-news
  Bir ajan döngüsünün sabit bir akıştan ne zaman iyi olduğuna dair en net yazı.
- [Ajanlar için tool yazmayın](https://cmlonder.com/tr/signals/dont-build-tools-for-agents.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  Ajanların kendilerine özel tool yerine insanların zaten kullandığı araçları kullanması gerektiği savı.
- [Slop'u mühendislikle çözmek](https://cmlonder.com/tr/signals/engineer-away-the-slop.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development
  Düşük kaliteli ajan çıktısını model sorunu değil mühendislik sorunu olarak ele almak üzerine.
- [Yavaş geliştirici deneyimi hızlı modelleri tıkayacak](https://cmlonder.com/tr/signals/slow-devex-bottleneck.md) — Sep 15, 2026 — topics: agentic-development, scale-and-performance
  Model CI'ından hızlıysa artık ürünün kısıtı CI'dır.