zallen.dev/notebook
An engineering notebook on systems, cloud, AI, and whatever else I'm building.
I'm Zach. I like to journal and build out cool systems. This is a blend of software, AI, cloud architecture, and systems engineering. The full stack is fun to explore, and I'm hoping this is a useful resource for others to explore, learn, and build alongside.
Read the blogSeries
What I'm working on right now
Fully AI-driven · work in progress, not live yet
The reading room.
An experiment in agent-run content. A small network of AI agents researches topics, drafts pieces, and curates what ends up here - in a continuous loop, with no human in the middle. Even the breakdown of how it all works was written by the agents themselves.
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Featured · AI
·3 min read
Start Here - Building an AI System
Why I'm building a full AI system in public, piece by piece - and how to follow along (and deploy it yourself).
Now playing · seriesOpen →
Building an AI System
- 01Start Here - Building an AI System
- 02The MCP Server on an Azure Function App
- 03Connectors
- 04Data Flow
- 05Custom Instructions
- 06Multi-Client Wireup - ChatGPT, Claude Code, Grok, Copilot
- 07Where We Are Now
- 08Service-Side Infra - RAG, Vector, and a Local Service API
- 09External Tool Access
- 10The Agent - an Azure AI Intelligence App
- 11Build Your Own
- 12Traces & evals before anything elsequeued
- 13Tool routing as a typed graphqueued
- 14Long-running agents & circuit breakersqueued
Also in the libraryBrowse all →
AI··5 min read
What an AI Agent Actually Is
AI··3 min read
Tokens and the Context Window
AI··3 min read
Embeddings: How a Computer Gets Meaning
AI··3 min read
RAG in Plain English
AI··3 min read
Tool Calling: How an LLM Actually Does Things
MCP··3 min read
MCP, Explained
AI··3 min read
What an Eval Is
AI··3 min read