Mehdi Akiki

Writing archive

Everything published under Writing, newest first. Each entry is labelled as part of an investigation, an article or reference. Short engineering notes have their own archive.

  • Published on

    Article · Through the layers

    Why Aho–Corasick Streaming Still Needs a Buffer

    An automaton can recognize a cross-chunk match with little state, yet a streaming API may still need bytes. The missing distinction is recognition state versus output state.
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    Article · Interrupted execution

    A Durable Cursor for Incremental API Synchronization

    A crash-safe checkpoint design for incremental API synchronization, including atomic progress, cursor invalidation, poison records, leases, and full-sync recovery.
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    Article · Measurement

    Golden Tests for Non-Deterministic AI Outputs

    A graded assertion approach for regression-testing variable AI outputs without comparing every generated word to one frozen answer.
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    Investigation · Part 5 of 10 · Types under the hood

    Behavior Without Shape: Traits, Interfaces, and Types That Own No Bytes

    A trait is the behavior half of a type with no shape at all. I measured a type of zero bytes carrying a trait, a million of them in a Vec with zero allocations, and a door that cannot be walked through while closed, all with nothing left in the binary. This is the kind of type I think most code does not use enough.