Thoughts penned during leisure (the opinions stated here are solely my own and do not represent the views of my employer).
Sunday, 20 September 2026
The Ladder of Fall
Sunday, 10 May 2026
LeaderNetworkpost Dr.Shivagami Gugan
Sunday, 22 February 2026
The Agentic Age and AI-Driven Development Life Cycle
For decades, software development methodologies evolved incrementally—Waterfall to Agile, long release cycles to sprints, time estimates to story points. Each shift made us faster. But we are now entering the Agentic Age, where AI agents autonomously plan, reason, and execute complex workflows. This is not incremental change. This is a fundamental disruption.
Traditional methodologies are being rendered obsolete by a new paradigm: AI-Driven Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC).
Originally developed by AWS (Raja SP, Principal, DevTx APJ) and documented in the AI-Driven Development Life Cycle blog, AI-DLC reimagines the software development lifecycle with AI as a central collaborator. Rather than weeks-long iterations, AI-DLC operates in Bolts—rapid cycles measured in hours or days. Multi-orchestrated agentic workflows enable teams to develop and validate software at unprecedented speed.
Why Two-Week Sprints No Longer Work
When AI-enabled development produces working prototypes in hours, a two-week sprint is no longer rapid iteration—it is ceremony compliance. When concept-to-code happens within hours, waiting 10-12 days to reach a sprint boundary serves no purpose.
Solving the Context Engineering Problem
One of Agile's biggest challenges is context loss between sprints. Knowledge becomes tacit, decisions go undocumented, and teams face resource dependency. AI-DLC solves this through Specs and Memory Bank—a structured context repository that AI agents can reload across sessions. This provides persistent traceability between requirements, designs, and decisions—eliminating context loss largely and improving knowledge management.
memory-bank/
├── intents/ # What we're building
├── bolts/ # How we built it
├── standards/ # Project decisions
└── operations/ # Deployment contextWith AI-DLC, AI drives the conversation.
There are 3 key changes that we are witnessing with AI-DLC - 1/Near-Instantaneous Code Generation, LLMs enable rapid generation of quality code 2/ Natural Language as primary interface for engineers and 3/Human roles shift from being creators to becoming sophisticated validators.
The Role of the Software Engineer
The Role of the Software Engineer changes drastically in the Agentic age. With traditional Agile, humans plan and use AI tools to assist with coding and testing. In AI-DLC, humans define intent, and AI proposes decomposition, design, and code. AI leads execution; humans validate.
AI: "I've analyzed your intent. Here are 4 Units I propose,
with 16 user stories. I have 5 clarifying questions
before we proceed. Since you haven't specified your preferences yet, let me offer two options:
Option 1: I can proceed with my professional judgment and create the user story that:
Targets a broad tech leadership audience
Balances thought leadership with educational value
Maintains the key insights while improving clarity and flow
Properly incorporates the comparison table
OR
Option 2: You can answer the questions I asked earlier about tone, audience, and emphasis for a more customized approach.
Which would you prefer?
Human: [validates, approves, or redirects]The question hence is no longer, whether AI will transform software development. The question is: Are you ready to abandon legacy methodologies and embrace the next paradigm?
This is not about retrofitting AI tools into your existing software engineering processes anymore. It about reimagining software engineering using first principles for the Agentic Age.
#SoftwareEngineering #AgenticAI #AIDLC #AgileTransformation #DevOps #FutureOfWork #AI-Driven Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC).
Saturday, 3 January 2026
The Ten Commandments of Hinduism
The 10 commandments of Hinduism as follows:
paropakaara punyaaya
paapaaya para peedanam
Hinduism is a practice, the Berock of whose culture is all about giving. Its a Dhaanam culture, its a Tyaagam culture. Punya is paropakaaram (helping others), Paapam is parapeedanam (inflicting others).
The first five are called "Yamah" and the second five are called "Niyamah". The Yamah together with the Niyamah form the ten commandments which will ensure leading a moral life in Hinduism.
Do Nots:
1) Himsaa varjanam.– varjanam means avoidance. Himsaa means violence. Avoidance of all forms of violence. Physical verbal and mental violence towards others including krodha (anger/revenge), matsarya (jealousy). Do praayaschitham for unavoidable violence (example is you are fighting for a country in a war by profession). Praayaschitham is through "Pancha Maha Yagnya" Here yagnya denotes duties towards Deva (almighty), Pithru (ancestors), Manushya (fellow human beings), Bhoota (animals & plants) and Brahma (gaining knowledge through systematic study of scriptures).2) Asathya varjanam - avoid all avoidable lies, as this a paapam. Unavoidable lies for general welfare should be followed by praayaschitham which is again through pancha maha yagnya.
3) Stheyavarjanam - stheya varjanam. In simple language it is astheyam – which means avoidance of stealing. So stealing means not just burglary, any illegitimate possession comes under stealing.
4) Maithuna varjanam – maithunam means inappropriate sexual relationships, avoidance in thoughts, words and deeds.
5) Parigraha varjanam - Avoidance of over possession. hoarding, amassing, etc. To put it in positive language, simple living. To the extent possible, simple living and sharing with others. Avoidance of kama (lust/desire), lobha (greed), moha (delusion/attachment) and mada (pride/intoxication).
These are the five avoidances - himsa varjanam, asathya varjanam, stheya varjanam, maithuna varjanam and parigraha varjanam.
Dos:
Then there are five positive things to be followed in the Hinduism practices.
6) Shaucham - Shaucham means purity both outside and inside purity. Inside in terms of body, mind and thoughts.7) Santosha - Positive contentment with whatever I acquire through legitimate methods. Positive contentment and being happy. "Yallabhase nija kamo paatham vitham thena vinodhaya chitham".
9) Swaadhyaaya– scriptural study is very important, as it refines ones mind and intellect. Gets the focus on the right things that matter spiritually. Scriptural study is an important discipline or value called swaadhyaayaand.
10) Eshwara prannidhaanam - this means surrender to the Lord by which accepting every experience as a karma phalam which is coming as a gift from God. Having patience and courage to accept every experience and not allowing the experience to generate negative emotion.
* * * * * * * * * *
Monday, 29 December 2025
Implementing GenAI Cost Optimization strategies
Implementing GenAI Cost Optimization strategies
As organizations increasingly adopt generative AI capabilities into their operational workflows, managing and optimizing inference costs becomes as crucial as traditional cloud cost management.
P95
latency per dollar spent is an important metric for evaluating the
latency-cost tradeoffs for GenAI applications. P95 latency (the 95th percentile
of response times) per dollar spent, provides a direct measure of the value
received in terms of performance relative to cost for GenAI applications.
This blog explores practical approaches to balance cost
considerations with performance requirements to maintain P95 latency per dollar
when deploying GenAI Solutions.
Developing token efficiency systems while maintaining
effectiveness.
- Develop
token efficiency systems by using token estimation and tracking,
context window optimization, response size controls, prompt compression,
context pruning, and response limiting to reduce foundation model costs
while maintaining effectiveness.
- Implement
the token counting capabilities to accurately estimate and track token
usage before making API calls, allowing for better cost prediction and
optimization. Using
model-specific tokenizers is an effective approach for accurately
estimating token counts. Different foundation models use different
tokenization algorithms, so using a specific tokenizer for your chosen
model ensures that your token estimates closely match how the model will tokenize
your input, enabling more precise cost estimation and context window
management.
Create cost-effective model selection frameworks.
·
It is critical to understand and create
cost-effective model selection frameworks by using cost capability tradeoff
evaluation, tiered foundation model usage based on query complexity and response
quality. One such example is right sizing the model/s selection and
implementing tiered model usage based on query complexity. By implementing logic so that simple queries route
to smaller, less expensive models that can adequately handle straightforward
requests, medium complexity queries direct to mid-tier models that balance cost
and capability, and complex queries are served by the most powerful but
expensive models, costs can be optimized.
Develop high-performing GenAI systems that maximize
resource utilization and throughput for workloads.
- Develop high-performance foundation model systems by using batching strategies, capacity planning, utilization monitoring, auto-scaling configurations, and provisioned throughput optimization to maximize resource utilization and throughput for GenAI workloads.
- For workloads that don't require real-time inference responses, batch processing can reduce foundation model costs while maintaining output quality. For example, pre-generating product descriptions in nightly batch jobs rather than generating them on-demand.
Create intelligent caching systems to reduce costs and
improve response times.
- Create
intelligent caching systems such as semantic caching, result
fingerprinting, edge caching, deterministic request hashing, and prompt
caching to improve response times and avoid unnecessary foundation model
invocations.
You may also try other
techniques such as implementing recursive summarization techniques to
compress long documents while preserving key information before submitting inputs
to foundation models, using prompt templates that prioritize the most relevant information
at the beginning to ensure critical content is processed even with truncation, using
context pruning algorithms to compress prompts while maintaining their
effectiveness, and using response size control mechanisms that
limit output token generation while maintaining answer quality.
Cost optimization is an
ongoing process that should evolve with your GenAI application's needs and usage
patterns. By regularly monitoring model performance and inference costs against
established metrics, and by keeping a tab on future model releases and pricing
changes - you can optimize costs while
maintaining the effectiveness of your GenAI investments.
Saturday, 21 June 2025
Strands Agents – An Open-source python SDK for building agents
Strands Agents – An Open-source
python SDK for building agents
According to Gartner, over a
third of all enterprise apps will be powered by Agentic AI by 2028. This evolution isn’t a roadmap of the future.
It’s already happening today.
There are many ways of building
agents on the AWS platform. The key proposition is to meet the customer, wherever
they are in their agentic AI journey, whether through out-of-the-box agents,
custom development or options to build DIY agents, or a combination of these.
· You can use out-of-the-box Specialized Agents with
Amazon Q – customers who are looking to immediately deploy agentic
experiences with minimal technical overhead, Amazon Q Business and Amazon Q
Developer allows you to immediately test and deploy agentic AI or further
customize to meet specific needs of your business.
· Or build your Agentic AI application with Gaurdrails
and fully managed for you using Amazon Bedrock. Fully Managed agents that
you can build, that integrates with your systems and data, and tools, giving
you the flexibility to test different foundation models in a secure managed environment,
with a comprehensive toolset to build, deploy, operate, maintain, and scale
trusted, high-performing AI agents in Amazon Bedrock.
· Or DIY agents by providing a model-driven
approach to building AI agents in just a few lines of code, using Strands
Agents.
What are Strands Agents?
Strands Agents is an Open-source python SDK for building agents using just a few lines of code. It takes a model-driven approach and uses the automated reasoning capabilities of models to build agents. It allows the agent to perform complex, multistep reasoning and actions, and is built for developers by developers, and open-sourced by AWS.
· Strands simplify agent development by embracing
the capabilities of models to plan, chain thoughts, call tools, and reflect. Like
the two strands of DNA, Strands connects two core pieces of the agent together:
the model and the tools.
·
Get started quickly: With Strands,
developers can simply define a prompt and a list of tools in code to build an
agent, then test it locally and deploy it to the cloud.
· Model driven approach: Strands plans the
agent's next steps and executes tools using the advanced reasoning capabilities
of models.
· Highly flexible: For more complex agent
use cases, developers can customize their agent's behavior in Strands.
·
Model Agnostic: Strands can run anywhere
and can support any model with reasoning and tool use capabilities, including
models in Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, Ollama, and other providers through
LiteLLM.
· Deploy anywhere: Deploy and run agents in
any environment where you run Python applications and deploy on ECS, Lambda,
and EC2.
· Built-in MCP: Native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling access to thousands of pre-built tools. Strands also provides a natively a number of pre-built tools, examples: image_reader to process and analyze images, use_aws to interact with AWS services and http_request to make API calls, fetch web data, and call local HTTP servers.
Core Working Principle: At the
heart of Strands' capabilities lies the agentic loop, a continuous cycle where
an agent interacts with its model and tools to accomplish a task prompted by
the user. This loop leverages the remarkable advancements of LLMs), which can
now reason, plan, and select tools with native proficiency.
In each iteration of the loop, Strands
engages the LLM with the user's prompt, agent context, and a description of the
available tools. The LLM can respond in various ways, including in natural
language for the end user, outlining a series of steps, reflecting on previous
actions, or selecting one or more tools to utilize. When the LLM chooses a
tool, Strands seamlessly executes it and returns the result to the LLM. Once
the task is complete, Strands delivers the agent's final outcome.
Join the Strands Agents community
Strands Agents is an open-source project licensed under the
Apache License 2.0. Contributions are welcome to the project, where developers
can add support for additional models and tools, they can
collaborate on new features or expand the documentation. If they find a bug, or have a suggestion, or have something to
contribute, they can join the project on GitHub.
Wednesday, 2 April 2025
Understanding Agentic AI through MCP (Model Context Protocol)
art by: J. Sridharan, Dubai
Agentic AI Orchestrator Protocols in Simple Terms
Earlier in Nov 2024, Anthropic open sourced MCP (Model Context Protocol) - an open standard that enables developers to build secure, two-way connections between their GenAI applications and the tools and data sources. MCP is an open-source protocol that simplifies connections between AI systems and various data sources to help deliver faster innovation in context-aware Agentic AI applications.
What are Agentic AI Orchestrators
Agentic AI is seen as the second big evolution of GenAI, and
Agentic AI orchestrators are seen to be the enablers of this evolution. As LLMs
continue to evolve providing multi-modal and extended built-in capabilities - in
bare terms, LLMs are good in the predictability of the next word, which makes
them great poem reciters and essay writers or converting text to visuals or translating
languages and many more standalone tasks. But there is a fundamental limitation – LLMs cannot
take any intelligent action unless they are integrated with tools and data
sources – for example: if you ask an LLM any information that it was not trained
on (for example: current stock market trends) - unless it is connected to a web
search engine – it cannot provide you with an accurate answer.
- Task to accomplish,
- The model/s or Agent/s,
- Tools it needs to accomplish the task
- Answer the agent provides.
Without standardized protocols, the following are few of the key challenges to accomplish TATA.
- Custom built implementations required significant engineering effort to plumb tools and data sources. In addition, consider the re-engineering efforts when sources change.
- When connecting multiple agents, inconsistent prompt logic with different methods for accessing and federating tools and data will provide inefficient answers.
- The Scale problem - "n times m problem" - where a a large number of client applications interacting with a mesh of servers and tools will result in a complex web of integrations, duplicity, each requiring specific integration efforts.
MCP allows AI Agents to use tooling, resources and even
prompt libraries in a standardized manner, thus extending the Agentic AI capabilities significantly to
build more meaningful GenAI applications.
Just to keep the MCP architecture simple, MCP uses a client-server architecture, primarily at a high level, the key components being an MCP client, the MCP server and the MCP communication protocol. Developers expose their data through lightweight MCP servers. For example, Anthropic has released a few popular MCP server codes already such as for Google maps, or Slack. By connecting to these MCP servers, you can easily build an Agentic AI MCP client following the MCP protocols.
MCP Architecture
MCP
uses a client-server architecture that
contains the following components and is shown in the following figure:
- Host: An MCP host is a program or AI tool that requires access to data through the MCP protocol, such as Claude Desktop, an integrated development environment (IDE), or any other AI application.
- Client: Protocol clients that maintain one-to-one connections with servers.
- Server: Lightweight programs that expose capabilities through standardized MCP, allows access to data sources tools and even prompt libraries.
- Local data sources: Your databases, local data sources, and services that MCP servers can securely access.
- Remote services: External systems available over the internet through APIs that MCP servers can connect to.
MCP, thus by providing an open-source protocol and a universal standard that simplifies connections between AI systems and various data sources - will deliver agility in building efficient and context-aware AI applications. Consequently, this will enable AI agents to autonomously perform complex tasks.
The success and widespread adoption of protocols like MCP depends upon industry participation and standardization efforts on interoperability and portability, and adherence to common standards, allowing AI applications to operate across different platforms and jurisdictions, crucial for global companies and responsible AI.
MCP will help build trust by ensuring AI systems are transparent, reliable and secure. The clarity provided by the MCP protocol guidelines will reduce compliance complexity, will lower barriers to innovation and will foster faster development of AI products.
Saturday, 26 October 2024
Tuesday, 24 September 2024
Key differences between a Transformer Architecture and a State space model Architecture for Building LLMs
A transformer architecture primarily focuses on capturing local relationships within a sequence by using attention mechanisms, while a state space model architecture is designed to model the evolution of a system over time by maintaining a fixed-size "state" that represents the current system status, making it more efficient for handling long sequences but potentially limiting its ability to capture fine-grained details within the data; essentially, transformers excel at short-range dependencies while state space models prioritize long-range dependencies and overall system dynamics.
Key differences:
Attention mechanism:
Transformers heavily rely on attention mechanisms to weigh the importance of different parts of an input sequence when generating the output, allowing for flexible context understanding. State space models typically do not use attention mechanisms in the same way.
State representation:
In a transformer, the "state" is essentially the current hidden representation at each layer, which can dynamically change with the sequence length. In a state space model, the "state" is a fixed-size vector representing the system's current status, which is updated based on input and system dynamics.
Handling long sequences:
Transformers can struggle with very long sequences due to quadratic computational complexity, while state space models are generally better suited for handling long sequences because of their fixed-size state representation.
Applications:
Transformers are widely used in natural language processing tasks like machine translation, text summarization, and question answering due to their ability to capture complex relationships between words. State space models are often applied in areas like time series forecasting, control systems, and scenarios where tracking the evolution of a system over time is crucial.
Recent developments:
Mamba Model: Researchers have developed architectures like "Mamba" which attempt to combine the strengths of transformers and state space models, leveraging attention mechanisms while still maintaining a fixed-size state to handle long sequences more efficiently.
Sunday, 21 July 2024
The Impact of GenAI on DevSecOps
The Impact of GenAI on DevSecOPs
DevSecOps, is inevitably impacted in this age of GenAI. As AI transforms the way we work, here are some areas where GenAI can be used in DevSecOps.
Integration with DevSecOps
tools: GenAI can integrate with DevSecOps tools, enabling real-time feedback
and continuous monitoring of security posture throughout the software
development lifecycle. This can help ensure that security is integrated into
the development process, reducing the risk of security breaches.
GenAI based coding assistants: Many organizations have already embraced AI-powered coding assistants such as Amazon Q and GitHub Copilot to improve the developer experience and speed time to deployment of software. A recent McKinsey study found developers can complete coding tasks up to twice as fast with generative AI. Coding assistants can perform at various levels of capabilities the following tasks:
- Diagnose
common errors.
- Turn comments
into code
- Completing
your next line or function in context
- Bring
knowledge to you, such as finding a useful library or API call for an
application
- Transform Legacy code into later versions of software
- Add comments
- Rewriting
code for efficiency
- Write
Software based on prompts
- Chat about
Code.
- Provide inline code suggestions.
- Scan code
for security vulnerabilities.
Automated Security Testing: GenAI can significantly enhance automated security testing by analyzing code, identifying vulnerabilities, and providing real-time feedback to developers. This can lead to faster and more accurate detection of security flaws, reducing the risk of security breaches.
Intelligent Anomaly Detection: Incorporating Generative AI into DevSecOps enables intelligent anomaly detection in real-time. AI models can continuously monitor system behavior, user activity, and network traffic, promptly identifying suspicious patterns and potential security breaches. This enhances proactive threat mitigation and incident response.
Intelligent Threat Detection:
GenAI-powered threat detection systems can analyze vast amounts of data,
identifying patterns and anomalies that may indicate potential security
threats. This can help security teams respond more effectively to emerging
threats and reduce the risk of attacks.
Enhanced Incident Response:
GenAI can help streamline incident response by analyzing large amounts of data,
identifying the root cause of incidents, and providing actionable insights to
security teams. This can lead to faster and more effective incident response,
reducing the impact of security breaches.
Improved Compliance: GenAI
can help organizations comply with regulatory requirements by automating
compliance checks, identifying potential non-compliance issues, and providing
recommendations for remediation.
Predictive Maintenance:
GenAI can predict potential security threats and vulnerabilities, enabling
proactive measures to mitigate risks. This can lead to reduced downtime,
improved system reliability, and enhanced overall security.
Enhanced Collaboration:
GenAI can facilitate collaboration between security teams, developers, and
other stakeholders by providing a shared understanding of security risks and
vulnerabilities. This can lead to more effective communication, reduced
miscommunication, and improved overall security.
Continuous Monitoring:
GenAI can continuously monitor systems, networks, and applications, identifying
potential security threats and vulnerabilities in real-time. This can help
security teams respond quickly to emerging threats and reduce the risk of
security breaches.
Reduced False Positives:
GenAI can help reduce false positives in security systems, reducing the risk of
false alarms and improving the overall effectiveness of security measures.
Improved Security
Orchestration: GenAI can help orchestrate security tools and systems,
enabling more effective incident response, threat hunting, and security
operations.
Automating Security Patching: GenAI can expedite security patching by automating the analysis and application of patches. AI models can scan codebases, identify vulnerabilities, and suggest appropriate patches, accelerating the patching process and reducing the window of exposure to potential threats
As GenAI continues to evolve, its applications in DevSecOps will help organizations stay ahead of emerging threats and vulnerabilities. The integration of generative AI into DevSecOps promises a future of faster, more secure, and more efficient software development. By automating tasks, enhancing security, and improving software quality, generative AI empowers developers build faster, cheaper and better.
The risks of over reliance remains, developers and security teams must remember that AI coding tools are not a substitute for human oversight and testing. For example, a code generated by an AI assistant cannot be merged to the master blindly without proper validation by a human. Being aware of the limitations enables DevSecOps teams gain efficiencies.
Wednesday, 22 November 2023
Airport Metaverse Mundane Benefits
Here are some potential benefits of using metaverse technologies for airports:
- Improved passenger experience. The metaverse could allow passengers to virtually navigate airports before their trip. This could help reduce confusion and stress upon arrival. Passengers could find gates, shops, restaurants, etc. in a realistic 3D environment.
- Enhanced wayfinding. Detailed 3D maps and guides in the metaverse could make it easier for passengers to find their way through large, complex airports. Real-time directions, notifications, and maps could minimize getting lost.
- New advertising and retail opportunities. Airports could showcase stores, products, and services in immersive 3D spaces. Passengers may be more inclined to shop or browse offers in a fun, engaging virtual environment. Retailers gain new ways to promote their brands.
- Remote assistance solutions. Passengers could access live virtual assistants, information booths, or customer service representatives within metaverse airports no matter their physical location. This could help address questions or issues without having to search the actual airport.
- Environmental impact reduction. The metaverse may allow some passenger interactions, simulations, or information sharing to occur remotely rather than requiring physical presence. This could potentially reduce congestion, energy use, emissions from travel to/from airports in some situations.
- Training and education benefits. Airports could use metaverse platforms to provide virtual training to employees, demonstrate new procedures before implementation, or educate passengers on airport policies and processes in an immersive way.
- Future testing ground. The metaverse may give airports an environment to experiment with and test potential future technologies, designs, or operational changes before physical implementation. This can inform long-term strategic planning and capital investment decisions.
The Ladder of Fall
The "Ladder of Fall" (sometimes written phonetically as fall or falldown) refers to two highly celebrated, interconnected ver...
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Nidhidyasanam is referenced in many areas in Vedanta, the reference here is from the great Brihadaraynaka Upanishad - widely acknowledged ...
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The 10 commandments of Hinduism as follows: paropakaara punyaaya paapaaya para peedanam Hinduism is a practice, the Berock of whose culture...
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The schools have started again and the traffic is all over the place. It has once again gotten busy in the mornings. Like at mine, the Mor...











