Writing

Field notes from running AI agent fleets, shipping products, and turning messy operations into systems — plus the restored archive of the original 2013–2016 blog, original dates preserved. Factual, specific, no slogans. Everything is written from operating experience: every system described here is one I run or ran myself. If a claim can't be verified, it doesn't get published. New pieces land here first and go out by RSS; no newsletter, no gating, no tracking.

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Featured

I've been shipping software with AI since 2018

From production NLP before LLMs to operating agent fleets — Joseph Dattilo on what actually changed and what never did.

July 10, 2026

Featured

Determining trace length for an Aluminum Resistor 1 Micron thick and 10 Microns wide

How long a 1-micron-thick, 10-micron-wide aluminum trace must be to form a 100-ohm on-chip resistor, with scaling math and high-frequency cautions. (from the archive)

June 7, 2014

Featured

How to control Temperature & humidity levels with a DHT11/DHT22 relays and a FAN & Heater

Arduino/Versalino sketch that reads a DHT11 or DHT22 and switches relay-driven fan and heater to hold humidity and temperature thresholds. (from the archive)

February 18, 2014

Featured

Writing a Bluetooth Packet based Arduino sketch for the Versalino Control board

Building the joystick-to-rover control sketch for the Versalino Control: analog mapping, dead zones, and VirtuabotixPacket commands over a BT2S link. (from the archive)

September 2, 2013

Topics

• AI & agent fleets (2)

  Running AI coding agents against production repositories, every working day.

• Arduino & embedded (9)

  The Virtuabotix years, firsthand.

• Hardware & teardowns (4)

  Hands-on engineering outside the software: build logs, teardowns, and electronics that goes as deep as sizing an on-chip aluminum resistor at the micron level.

• Software & business (1)

  Turning real operations — factory floors, painting crews, radar rooms — into software an industry actually runs on.

The fiction

I'm also a published science-fantasy author — the Nemia Rising series, written as Joseph Anthony Dattilo — and a lifelong roleplayer. That isn't a side note to the AI work; it's part of the toolkit. Building an agent that stays coherent over thousands of interactions is a character problem before it's an engineering problem: a personality needs anchors, motivations, boundaries, and a consistent voice, or it drifts into mush. Worldbuilding taught me to design rule-systems that stay internally consistent under pressure; roleplay taught me how a character holds its identity in unscripted situations. When I design agent personas, I'm using both.

Everything, by year