Field Notes

Blog

Engineering insights on Xperience by Kentico, AI-driven development, and agent commerce

4 of 34 articles

Field notes from production work: Xperience by Kentico architecture, AI-assisted engineering with Claude Code, and commerce built for AI agents.

The Other Softwar: Economic Cost as an Access Primitive at the Application Layer

cryptography

May 18, 2026 - Mike Rahel

The Other Softwar: Economic Cost as an Access Primitive at the Application Layer

Lightning Enable's pitch is "monetize your API." But L402 does something deeper: it turns a payment into a cryptographic proof of economic cost, makin...

The Internet Has an AI Spam Problem. Bitcoin Proof-of-Work Is the Original Solution.

authentication

Feb 15, 2026 - Mike Rahel

The Internet Has an AI Spam Problem. Bitcoin Proof-of-Work Is the Original Solution.

How L402 paywalls turn the economics of spam against the spammers — and why this was always the point of proof-of-work.

An AI Agent Just Bought a T-Shirt. Now a Community Is Designing Them. Here's Why Both Matter.

cryptography

Feb 10, 2026 - Mike Rahel

An AI Agent Just Bought a T-Shirt. Now a Community Is Designing Them. Here's Why Both Matter.

An AI agent just bought a physical product using Lightning. That moment exists because HTTP status code 402 — Payment Required — has been waiting for ...

When Bitcoin Meets Enterprise Security: WS-Federation Through a crypto(graphy) Lens

authentication

Dec 18, 2025 - Mike Rahel

When Bitcoin Meets Enterprise Security: WS-Federation Through a crypto(graphy) Lens

You know that moment when you're troubleshooting authentication errors at 2 AM and suddenly realize you've been thinking about certificates all wrong?...