Engineering notes on architecture, internal platforms, product systems, AI tooling, and leadership.https://suneltr.com/https://suneltr.com/blog/multi-agent-systems-production-crewai/https://suneltr.com/blog/multi-agent-systems-production-crewai/What CrewAI gave us in production, what it did not, and the real lessons from running a hierarchical multi-agent trip-planning system with real users.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/13-years-what-id-tell-junior-developer/https://suneltr.com/blog/13-years-what-id-tell-junior-developer/What turned out to matter across 13 years of building systems, tools, products, and teams, and what I would focus on if I were starting again.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/macos-developer-runtime-manager-go-tauri/https://suneltr.com/blog/macos-developer-runtime-manager-go-tauri/Why we started building Bloat, why Docker stopped fitting our local workflow, and how the daemon, desktop app, DNS, TLS, and signed runtime manifests came together.Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/engineering-leadership-staying-close-to-code/https://suneltr.com/blog/engineering-leadership-staying-close-to-code/What staying technical actually looks like while managing a 20-person team, and the tradeoffs required to keep judgment grounded in real engineering work.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/fine-tuning-support-model-sql-dump-lora/https://suneltr.com/blog/fine-tuning-support-model-sql-dump-lora/A practical walkthrough of turning support chat SQL dumps into a fine-tuned LoRA adapter, including extraction, canonicalization, shard processing, and training decisions.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/dspy-production-llm-output-consistency/https://suneltr.com/blog/dspy-production-llm-output-consistency/How DSPy helped fix score collapse in Sherpa when smaller self-hosted LLMs kept returning safe middle-range values instead of real differentiation.Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/self-hosting-first-philosophy/https://suneltr.com/blog/self-hosting-first-philosophy/Why I increasingly prefer self-hosting when the protocol is open, the service is understandable, and ownership buys real control without forcing client rewrites.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/building-mcp-server-app-vortex/https://suneltr.com/blog/building-mcp-server-app-vortex/What it meant to add MCP tools to Vortex, the Laravel MCP package, how tools are structured, what good tool design actually requires, and what changed when an AI could operate the release workflow directly.Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/cqrs-laravel-graphql-what-we-split/https://suneltr.com/blog/cqrs-laravel-graphql-what-we-split/Why plato-next splits reads and writes across GraphQL Yoga + Laravel, what each side owns, how the Prisma schema bridges them, and where the complexity is actually worth it.Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/prisma-single-source-of-truth-codegen/https://suneltr.com/blog/prisma-single-source-of-truth-codegen/How we structured Prisma in plato-next to drive code generation across five outputs, TypeScript client, Pothos GraphQL types, Zod validation, Eloquent models, and test data, and what that buys a polyglot stack.Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/designing-react-native-sdk-reusable-library/https://suneltr.com/blog/designing-react-native-sdk-reusable-library/What changed when chat became a reusable React Native library instead of app-specific code, the API design decisions, the imperative ref pattern, Sockudo integration, and what self-hosting as an SDK forces you to think about.Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/self-hosting-sockudo-dropping-pusher/https://suneltr.com/blog/self-hosting-sockudo-dropping-pusher/The full story of replacing Pusher with Sockudo, why protocol compatibility made this migration a config change, and what a year of running your own WebSocket server actually looks like.Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/stitches-to-tailwind-what-we-kept/https://suneltr.com/blog/stitches-to-tailwind-what-we-kept/What the migration from Stitches-based Atom to Tailwind taught me about where the stable layer in a design system actually lives, and why Radix UI survived the whole transition untouched.Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/module-scoped-jotai-atoms-large-app/https://suneltr.com/blog/module-scoped-jotai-atoms-large-app/Why module-scoped Jotai atoms worked better for Plato than one large global store, and how the boundaries held up as the app grew to 30+ pages.Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/staying-technical-engineering-manager/https://suneltr.com/blog/staying-technical-engineering-manager/Three months into engineering management, writing this to understand what staying technical actually means when the calendar suddenly has eight hours of meetings in it.Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/building-design-system-from-scratch-2022/https://suneltr.com/blog/building-design-system-from-scratch-2022/Why we built Atom instead of adopting a large UI library, how the package layers worked, and what I learned from making that architectural bet.Mon, 14 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/react-native-bootstrap-setup-order/https://suneltr.com/blog/react-native-bootstrap-setup-order/The order I follow when bootstrapping a production React Native app, and why the sequence matters more than the exact library choices.Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/aop-php-aspect-me/https://suneltr.com/blog/aop-php-aspect-me/What aspect-oriented programming means in plain terms, why method interception is useful in PHP, and how aspect-me fits into that problem.Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/php-8-features-i-actually-use/https://suneltr.com/blog/php-8-features-i-actually-use/The PHP 8 features that changed my day-to-day code most, and the ones I still find less relevant in ordinary web applications.Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/code-review-at-scale-three-years/https://suneltr.com/blog/code-review-at-scale-three-years/How my view of code review changed after years of leading reviews across a multi-brand platform and using review as a teaching tool instead of a gate.Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/developer-to-lead-first-six-months/https://suneltr.com/blog/developer-to-lead-first-six-months/What surprised me in my first six months as a lead, especially around communication, reviews, and the shift from shipping code to enabling a team.Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/eav-laravel-package-what-i-built-why/https://suneltr.com/blog/eav-laravel-package-what-i-built-why/Why I built an EAV package for Laravel, what Magento taught me about the pattern, and how I wanted the API to feel cleaner in Eloquent.Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/subtree-splits-monorepo-separate-packages/https://suneltr.com/blog/subtree-splits-monorepo-separate-packages/Why I used subtree splits for mods-framework packages, how the workflow works, and when the extra maintenance is worth it.Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/building-modular-application-framework-laravel/https://suneltr.com/blog/building-modular-application-framework-laravel/A technical look at how I structured mods as a modular application framework on top of Laravel, including discovery, theming, and package splitting.Sun, 25 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/upgrade-safe-extension-points-laravel/https://suneltr.com/blog/upgrade-safe-extension-points-laravel/Why framework extension points break so easily, and how I started thinking about safer ways to extend behavior with layout-core and aspect-me.Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/why-i-started-building-my-own-php-framework/https://suneltr.com/blog/why-i-started-building-my-own-php-framework/Why I started the mods-framework experiment: not to replace Laravel, but to make modular application architecture a first-class idea.Sun, 12 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/agency-to-enterprise-consulting-what-changes/https://suneltr.com/blog/agency-to-enterprise-consulting-what-changes/What changed for me moving from agency delivery at BORN Group to long-term enterprise consulting work at Cognizant.Mon, 05 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/building-mapemall-magento-500-brand-retailer/https://suneltr.com/blog/building-mapemall-magento-500-brand-retailer/What changed when Magento had to support the catalog complexity of a 500-brand retailer like Mapemall.Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/inheriting-magento-codebase-vs-building-from-scratch/https://suneltr.com/blog/inheriting-magento-codebase-vs-building-from-scratch/What I learned from working with both clean and tangled Magento codebases, and how I decide whether a system is worth saving.Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/magento-multi-currency-multi-region-middle-east/https://suneltr.com/blog/magento-multi-currency-multi-region-middle-east/What I learned building Magento stores across UAE and Indonesia: multi-region commerce is much more than translation and exchange rates.Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/magento-performance-production-xcite/https://suneltr.com/blog/magento-performance-production-xcite/What I learned about Magento performance once Xcite.com traffic made development-time assumptions stop working.Wed, 18 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/eav-magento-why-it-exists-when-it-hurts/https://suneltr.com/blog/eav-magento-why-it-exists-when-it-hurts/After spending enough time inside Magento's catalog model, I finally started understanding why EAV exists, where it helps, and where the tradeoff starts getting expensive.Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/database-design-social-network-tripzar/https://suneltr.com/blog/database-design-social-network-tripzar/The database decisions I made while building tripzar.com, especially around social relationships, feeds, and linking traveler content to places and trips.Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/designing-hotel-reservation-api/https://suneltr.com/blog/designing-hotel-reservation-api/What I learned while designing a hotel reservation API for ofertadeldia.com, especially around availability, reservation states, and the parts I got wrong the first time.Fri, 20 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMThttps://suneltr.com/blog/building-your-first-magento-module/https://suneltr.com/blog/building-your-first-magento-module/The Magento 1 module concepts that confused me most when I started building extensions at Contus, and the mental model that finally made them click.Sat, 15 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT