I write about things that hold up over a decade.
Most tech content optimizes for this week — the latest model release, the framework that shipped yesterday, the framework that will replace it next month. There is a place for that. This is not it.
caphe.dev is for things that compound: how AI is rewriting the engineering craft, how founders make decisions, and the psychology behind why capable people get in their own way. Choices made in 2026 determine where you stand in 2036.
What I cover
AI and the engineering craft. When machines can write code, knowing many frameworks is no longer an edge. The skill that remains is judgment — when best practices do not apply, and how to build the answer from first principles. Why most engineers stall at mid-level, and the new kind of engineer now emerging.
First principles and simplicity. Reasoning from base truth instead of following best practices. Why simplicity is the hardest skill in design — and why, as AI amplifies both good and bad judgment, the ability to return to first principles matters more than ever.
Founders and the company of one. The new org structure when one person can run the scope of a whole team. Lean organizations, faster decisions, and why most people who try this model will still fail.
The psychology of self-deception. Smart people do not deceive themselves less — they do it more elaborately. Why a high IQ is a multiplier, not a shield, and why every purely internal fix fails without someone willing to tell you you're wrong.
Systems thinking and anti-convergence. Why no living system — person, product, or organization — is allowed to stand still. The shared lesson that neuroscience and the engineering of AI agents arrived at independently.
How I write
Long-form, opinionated, specific. I name real systems, real numbers, real tradeoffs. I do not write about news. I do not write about hype cycles. I do not write listicles.
If a post would not matter in three years, I do not publish it.
I write in Vietnamese and English. Same post, different languages — not separate audiences.
Background
Twenty-plus years building systems. The work I am proudest of is open source, in production at scale, and still using the architectural decisions I made years ago.
I have built and led engineering teams in a market where most playbooks were written for somewhere else. Most of what I write here comes from problems I am working on now, not lessons from a decade ago.
Why caphe.dev
Coffee is where I think most clearly. A black coffee, no rush, no next meeting — that is when the good ideas show up.
This blog should feel the same way. Sit down. Slow down. Think.
AI and how these posts come together
Most posts here come together through dialogue with AI.
Many of the topics I write about — neuroscience, psychology, film, the classics of management — are not areas I am deeply expert in. I have read enough to ask the right questions, not enough to write alone.
The process usually goes like this. I start from an observation in the field — a technical decision, a meeting with a founder, something that just broke in production. I work with AI to name the phenomenon, pull in adjacent disciplines, stress-test the argument, find the theoretical frame that already exists. I keep what matches my experience and drop what does not. I mix sources that do not usually meet — film with neuroscience, scripture with predictive coding, MQTT with KISS. The final judgment is mine. The final structure is mine. The final sentence is mine.
I do not hide this. I think this is how most quality intellectual work will be done over the next decade — and this blog is a live experiment in doing it that way.
In return, I owe the reader two things: only publish what I stand behind, and write in my own voice — not the average voice of the internet.
Contact
Email is the best way: tuan@caphe.dev. I read everything. I do not reply to everything.
Priority goes to specific questions with real context — preferably from someone building something. Generic outreach gets ignored.