Technical Decisions
19 recent decisions
AI Governance Single-Track Pivot for ISO 42001
Mar 13, 2026 · technical · high91% confidence
Pivoted AI governance from dual-track (internal vs products) to single rigorous model because CIQ products (RLCAI, Fuzzball, Werewolf) now directly integrate AI, changing the liability profile.
People: Steve Wallace, Stephen Moody, Brady Dibble, Chris Baek, Ryan Smith, Tabatha Wilmot, Brian Dawson, Michelle Novicio
Asset Management — Backend-First, Bridge to Views
Mar 11, 2026 · technical · low74% confidence
Advocated for deciding where the asset management backend should live first, then building bridges to expose it wherever needed (Jira, Rippling). Explicitly disagreed with Greg's framing that building bridges adds unnecessary complexity.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Christina, Mariah Rippee
Toyota POC — No Hotfix, Demo MPI and PBS Separately
Mar 5, 2026 · technical · high82% confidence
Decided NOT to rush a hotfix for Toyota's urgent out-of-scope MPI-via-PBS request before their Thursday director meeting. Team will demo MPI and PBS as separate working components, explain the integration bug is known, and commit to fix in ~1 week by the March 17 Reno meeting.
People: Chris Wolford, Jonathan Anderson, Bjorn Hovland, Art Tyde, Yoshi
Demanded measurable success criteria for LinuxLM project
Mar 3, 2026 · technical · medium69% confidence
Greg proposed training/fine-tuning a Linux-expert foundation LLM (LinuxLM). Peter pushed back by demanding explicit success criteria — deployment plan, evaluation methodology, and clear value proposition — before endorsing the project.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
Assign Max as RLC-AI benchmarking plan owner with RHEL comparisons
Feb 20, 2026 · technical · medium65% confidence
Assigned Max Spevack as owner of the RLC-AI benchmarking plan in response to Greg's question about ownership. Directed that RHEL comparisons be added to exit criteria. Bjorn owns product definition (what to benchmark), Max owns technical execution (how to benchmark accurately). Max will create a one-page methodology document for the Humane pitch.
People: Max Spevack, Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Nathan Blackham, Damon
Directed Fuzzball team to improve logging and error observability
Feb 20, 2026 · technical · medium81% confidence
After AMD MI300 troubleshooting meeting, directed Fuzzball team (Jonathon Anderson, David Horn) that the product needs better logging and error visibility. Customers should be able to self-diagnose issues via log files instead of requiring live troubleshooting meetings with CIQ engineers.
People: Jonathon Anderson, David Horn, Chris Wolford
AMD RLC Plus Strategy: Speed-to-Market with Minimal Scope
Feb 4, 2026 · technical · high90% confidence
Decided to prioritize speed-to-market for the RLC Plus AMD co-marketing launch. The initial build will use upstream AMD packages (pre-built ROCm), the kernel driver (not upstream DKMS), and enable EPEL. Deferring the more robust in-house rebuild until market traction is proven. Justin Haynes to draft proposal and decision matrix.
People: Justin Haynes, Nathan Blackham, Brady Dibble, Brian Dawson, Peter Nelson
AI-First PR Process - Tests Over Human Review
Feb 3, 2026 · technical · medium85% confidence
Decided that PR process should evolve to prioritize automated test suites over human code review for AI-generated code. If a comprehensive test suite passes, the code is considered production-ready regardless of its origin.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Cedric
Project Shackleton - RESF contingency infrastructure
Jan 30, 2026 · technical · medium95% confidence
Build a parallel mirror of all RESF infrastructure in AWS (Git repos, Koji, vault/pub, Mattermost history) with goal of restoring Rocky Linux builds within two weeks if Lewis triggers his kill switch. Everything built with CDK and Ansible for repeatable deployment.
People: Nathan Blackham, Dieter, Peter Nelson, Max Spevack
PR standards in AI era - own the test suite, not the code
Jan 30, 2026 · technical · medium88% confidence
In an AI-enabled world, engineers should own the test suite and exit criteria, not necessarily every line of code. Quality comes from tests passing, not from reading every line. Engineer accountability shifts from I wrote this code to I own that this code passes these tests.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Justin, Peter Nelson
CVE automation architecture - simple state machine, 1 CVE per commit
Jan 30, 2026 · technical · high92% confidence
CVE automation should be built as a simple state machine with clear exit criteria at each step. Each commit addresses exactly one CVE. The orchestrator should be stupid-simple - just moving between states. Steps: Research -> Rebase -> Build -> Test -> MR -> Final Build -> Integration Test -> Promote to Beta -> Integration Test -> Production.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, David Gomez
Committed to ensuring Greg technical direction reaches Justin
Jan 26, 2026 · technical · medium82% confidence
Committed to redirecting Justin to follow Greg architectural guidance on object storage/depot, and to be the conduit ensuring Greg technical direction reaches engineering clearly. Greg flagged that depot work was not in line with past directives.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Justin Haynes, Nathan Blackham
Approved proceeding with x86 RESF shadow infrastructure first
Jan 22, 2026 · technical · medium80% confidence
Approved Jonathan Dieter proceeding with the RESF shadow infrastructure build using x86 architecture first, deferring non-x86 builders (S390X, RISC-V, PPC64LE) to address later. The 4-week MVP timeline is feasible for x86.
People: Jonathan Dieter
Koji Build System Priority - RESF Risk Mitigation
Jan 13, 2026 · technical · high75% confidence
Directed Nathan to prioritize Koji cluster standup with Dieter. Goal is to have independent build infrastructure in place so CIQ is not dependent on RESF. Asked for timeline if this became top priority, and indicated Dieter should reprioritize accordingly.
People: Nathan Blackham, Dieter
Partner/User Management Tech Debt - Accept for Speed
Jan 12, 2026 · technical · medium95% confidence
Explicitly acknowledged and accepted that Partner Portal, Fuzzball SaaS, and Portal Depot will have separate user/account systems rather than integrating them. Flagged the future cleanup cost but chose speed over architectural purity.
People: Lindsay Aamodt, Tabatha, Dave Dickerson, Ramesh
CVE Strategy - Eventually Consistent Model
Dec 29, 2025 · technical · high78% confidence
Aligned with Max on new approach to CVE patching: adopt an eventually consistent model that prioritizes rapid patching over perfect upfront testing. Accept a small error rate (e.g., 5%) as a necessary trade-off for speed, with fixes handled by COE.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Jeff Uphoff, David Gomez
AI Bot Architecture Decision
Dec 28, 2025 · technical · medium73% confidence
Decided to build a web app to front the AI bot, allowing curated outputs to be shared with Sarah and others without granting direct data access to underlying Slack/email/Jira data.
People: Stephen Moody, Sarah Almaraz
CVE Remediation - Direct Intervention Required
Dec 24, 2025 · technical · high79% confidence
Identified unacceptable lack of urgency from Nathan team on NARF-created CVEs. Will take direct action to address performance issues next week.
People: Nathan Blackham, Max Spevack, Brady Dibble
RLC 9.7 Launch Path Decision
Dec 19, 2025 · technical · high78% confidence
Participated in RLC 9.7 Launch planning meeting to decide path forward on release and rework priorities.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Max Spevack, Brady Dibble, Sarah Almaraz, Brian Dawson