AI-Assisted Engineering
Featured
A layered CLAUDE.md, tight permissions, hooks, skills and scoped MCP servers: the setup that keeps Claude Code safe and cheap across dozens of repositories.
16 min
Senior Software Engineer & Cloud Architect · Italy
Nic Vannetti
I design, harden and cut the cost of production systems on Google Cloud.
This is where I write, in long form, about the systems I build and run: cloud architecture on Google Cloud, backend design, security, and using AI tools without lowering the bar. Each piece is a decision I had to make, with the trade-offs and the numbers behind it.
- 0120+ years
- 02GCP
- 03Node / TypeScript
- 04Distributed systems
- 05AI-assisted engineering
01Featured
02Latest articles
Cloud Architecture
What a Cloud Run cold start is made of, how to measure each phase, and which fixes, and which min-instances bill, actually shorten it for your service.
14 min
DevOps & CI/CD
One validated config module per service, secrets bound at deploy time, and no fallbacks in code: a config setup that fails loudly instead of leaking quietly.
15 min
Firestore is superb at keyed reads and poor at friends-of-friends. When a graph database earns its place, and how to keep two stores honest.
15 min
GCP, IAM & Security
How I structure Google Cloud IAM so people get access through groups, workloads get one keyless service account each, and every grant is small and auditable.
13 min
Backend Systems
Pub/Sub will deliver some messages twice, and that is by design. Here is how to build consumers whose side effects happen once anyway, with working code.
17 min
Backend Systems
Every upstream call spends money and quota. A layered defence of validation, rate limits, caching, single-flight and leases keeps both under control.
19 min
03Topics
All topics →04About
I’m a senior software engineer and cloud architect based in Italy. I work on backend systems and the platforms under them, mostly on Google Cloud, and I care about the parts that decide whether a system is still cheap and calm a year after launch.
More about me →- 01
Cost is a feature.
Spend is a design input, reviewed alongside latency and error rates.
- 02
Boring infrastructure, interesting product.
Plain, managed building blocks, so the novelty goes where users can see it.
- 03
Measure before you optimise.
No change ships without a number before and a number after.
Work with me · Availability on request