Why architecture notes, onboarding docs, and AI instructions should overlap, but not be the same thing
Thomas Byern's Field Notes
Practical writing on self-hosting, privacy, software engineering, maintainable systems, and AI.
This is Thomas Byern's Field Notes, a brand new site by Thomas Byern that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!
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A practical guide to liveness, startup order, and the difference between a process existing and an app actually being usable
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Turning vague preferences into concrete, scoped instructions an AI agent can really follow
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A practical guide to APT, trusted package sources, safer update habits, and the host-versus-container decision
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The hard part is rarely writing instructions. The hard part is deciding which instructions deserve to live where.
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A beginner-friendly guide to the directories you keep seeing, why they exist, and how they make a Linux server less mysterious.
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What a VPN is, how private tunnels work, and why private access is often the simplest good answer
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Databases for self-hosters: what they are, why apps need them, and why they change your backup story
SQLite vs PostgreSQL in beginner language, plus the operational habits databases quietly require
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