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Featured/AI & ML/6 min read

Rules vs. ML for Architecture Health Scoring: The Auditability Argument

PK

Piyush Kumar

Co-founder · BackArch · Sep 3, 2026

An ML model gives you a health score of 67 and no way to explain it. A rule engine gives you the same score and the exact list of checks that fired. For a system that influences engineering decisions, that difference isn't cosmetic, it's the whole product requirement.

Latest posts

9 articles

AI & MLSep 3, 2026

Rules vs. ML for Architecture Health Scoring: The Auditability Argument

An ML model gives you a health score of 67 and no way to explain it. A rule engine gives you the same score and the exact list of checks that fired. For a system that influences engineering decisions, that difference isn't cosmetic, it's the whole product requirement.

SystemsAug 31, 2026

Your Architecture Diagram Is a Lie

It was accurate the day you drew it. Then three people changed the system and none of them updated the picture. That isn't a discipline problem. It's that the diagram is the only artifact in your stack with no consequences attached to being wrong.

BackendAug 27, 2026

JSONB vs Normalised Tables: The Question Isn't "Which Is Better"

JSONB and typed columns aren't competing strategies. They're tools for different access patterns. The right question isn't which is better, it's how you actually query the data.

BackendAug 24, 2026

When One Table Serves Two Masters: CQRS at the Database Level

A point lookup and a range scan against the same table have opposite indexing requirements. Building one table to serve both shapes optimises for neither. The fix is splitting the write model from the read model.

BackendAug 19, 2026

The TimescaleDB Extension RDS Wouldn't Install (And What We Used Instead)

The migration worked perfectly in local Docker. On RDS, it failed with a missing extension error. After removing that line, it failed again. This time trying to drop an index that had never been created.

BackendAug 17, 2026

RDS SSL and the Connection String Parameter That Changed Names Between Drivers

The application health check was green. Alembic was silently failing. Two drivers, one protocol, two different parameter names for the same setting. And a bug that passes every test until your first production deploy.

BackendAug 13, 2026

The Timing Attack Hiding in Your Login Endpoint

If your login endpoint takes measurably different amounts of time to respond to "email not found" vs "wrong password," an attacker can enumerate every valid email on your platform without ever seeing an error message.

DevOps & InfraJun 3, 2026

Your CI and Your Deploy Are Racing. CI Is Losing.

The default on: push trigger fires CI and deploy simultaneously. If your tests take four minutes and your deploy takes two, broken code reaches production before the first test result comes in.

BackendJun 1, 2026

Structure Your FastAPI Backend by Feature, Not by Layer

The layered structure every FastAPI tutorial teaches looks clean in a screenshot. It falls apart the first time you add soft deletes and have to touch five directories for one logical change.

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