🌟 Editor's Note
Happy fall (to those in the northern hemisphere). We’re heading into the final months of the year. What’s your number one priority right now on your team? Drop a reply, I’d love to know.
This issue kicks off with our thoughts on where architecture diagrams are heading. Are they dead? Are they still useful? What’s clear is that manually creating diagrams is a thing of the past.
Chris Simon gave an insightful talk with us about technical excellence in the age of LLMs. A fantastic chat with research to back everything up. The recording’s up on our YouTube.
Our team was in conference mode last month at Explore DDD and GOTO. Thanks to everyone we connected with. We enjoyed our time getting our feet on the ground again to hear what’s top of mind.
💀 The death of architecture diagrams
How many times have you joined a new team and noticed that their diagrams are outdated or unclear? How many times have you onboarded a new engineer and had to sketch out parts of the architecture to explain the current full picture? Deep down, engineers view diagrams that haven’t been updated in years the same way they view unmaintained open-source libraries. Unreliable.
These scenarios are not only a byproduct of bad architecture diagrams, but a reflection of why manual diagrams just don’t work. This approach of architecture diagrams is dead, and organisations are realising a need for a better approach.
Now with AI tools, this old way of diagramming is incompatible with how engineers and architects work. At the time of this writing, new agentic workflows are being developed for day-to-day software development (coding, testing, documenting, reviewing PRs or ADRs). Latest examples are Claude Code skills or Cascade Agents.MD files.
So are diagrams truly ‘dead’?
🤓 A defence of technical excellence for lovers and haters of LLMs
Agentic coding tools can produce a lot more code. They also produce more PRs, more churn, more bugs, and a lot more review work. Chris Simon argues that technical excellence comes down to one thing: protecting your team’s theory of the programme, meaning the shared understanding that lets you change software with intent.
So, what does this exactly mean? Chris walks through concepts in systems thinking to explain the wide divergence in perceptions of AI and how technical leaders can thrive in today’s world.
🤓 Reads + finds
Architecting with LLMs: use plain old code when you can, LLMs when you must. Decompose your system first, then give LLMs only the responsibilities you can't write deterministic rules for. Read
Architecture and model diffs via code conventions. Strong codebase conventions can generate an architecture diff on every PR, with no LLM and no hallucination. Read
Five Ways To Use AI Coding Agents to Improve Your Software Architecture. From documenting undocumented legacy services to generating testable Minimum Viable Architectures. Read
Designing MCP Gateway Uber's MCP Management Platform. How Uber went from hundreds of teams hand-wiring MCP integrations to one gateway with built-in discovery, security, and governance. Read
✈ Explore DDD + GOTO Copenhagen
Our team was in Denver for Explore DDD and Copenhagen for GOTO. We had a lot of fun connecting with the community, giving out custom t’s, and another set of Pokémon cards. This time around, we showcased our new skills that allow teams to automate diagram creation (go from code to diagrams automatically with LLMs).
That’s it for us in terms of conferences this year. Where should we head next?
Tim + Dorian at Explore DDD
Jacob, Vic, and Thom at GOTO
Stay chill,