Model choice is the fun meeting. The meeting that saves you is the one about IAM, logs, and which subnet is allowed to call an external API. AI on AWS is still AWS: identities, environments, and bills that need an owner. Decide where the tokens
App Store aisles are full of “AI shopping assistants.” Most of them add a script, a monthly fee, and another thing that fights your theme for Core Web Vitals. Useful AI on Shopify is quieter: better search, better drafts for support, better internal tools for
You already have users, roles, and a database. The AI feature should look like every other feature: an endpoint, a queue job, a UI state, and a way to turn it off. Wrapping ChatGPT in a new microservice that ignores your session cookie is how
Fine-tuning sounds serious. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) sounds like a research paper. Most commercial software needs the second, a small amount of the first, and a lot of boring engineering in between. What RAG is for Your policies, catalog, tickets, and runbooks change weekly. You do
A chat bubble in the corner is the fastest way to look like you “did AI.” It is also the fastest way to train customers to ignore you. Before you buy a widget or fine-tune a model, decide whether the job is a conversation —
How US and UK teams should think about nearshore vs offshore: overlap hours, language, IP, and when a Pakistan-based squad is the right model.
A no-theatre AWS checklist for product teams: accounts, IAM, environments, CI/CD, observability, and cost before you scale the wrong thing.
How to vet a WordPress agency: child themes vs page-builder sprawl, plugin hygiene, WooCommerce, performance, and handover.
When Shopify is enough, when Plus still needs custom apps, and when a fully custom stack is the cheaper five-year decision.
A practical checklist for US and UK teams hiring a custom software partner: discovery, team shape, IP, QA, and communication.