Andrew Hunter
andrewphunter.com Systems, Architecture, and Engineering Governance Est. 2021
Enterprise Architect — Systems, Governance, and Engineering Organizations

Architecture is a practice, not a diagram.

Most architectural failure isn’t dramatic. It accumulates quietly — in deferred decisions, implicit assumptions, and systems that work until they have to explain themselves.

I focus on the discipline of building systems that remain knowable and changeable as they grow. The writing here examines where that discipline holds, where it breaks, and what it costs when it doesn’t.

Applications — practitioner diagnostics. Theory — foundational work, longer horizon.

I take a small number of fractional advisory engagements. Advisory →

Latest
10
March 24, 2026 — Applications
When AI Systems “Dream”: A Failure of Architecture, Not Models
A surprising number of AI failures in production are not hallucinations. They are systems behaving correctly inside the wrong structure.
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Applied Architecture
10 essays
March 19, 2026
Governance Under Scale — Part II: Monitoring Is Not Control
In Part I, we showed that human override, when examined under scale, does not function as an external safeguard. It operates within the system itself—as a delegation surface …
AI GovernanceEnterprise RiskControl SystemsOperating Models
March 17, 2026
Agents Are Actors With Intent, Not Guarantees
“Agent” has become the default term for a new class of AI systems. Agentic workflows. Autonomous tools. Systems that can “think” and “act.” The language suggests something …
AI SystemsAgentsDistributed SystemsSoftware Architecture
March 10, 2026
Ghost in the Machine: Adversarial Priors in AI Systems
Large language models are often described as neutral systems that require alignment. The idea is simple: train a powerful model on large amounts of human text, then apply …
AI SystemsMachine LearningLLMsAI Alignment
March 2, 2026
Governance Under Scale — Part I: Human Override Is Not Governance
In most enterprise AI deployments, “human in the loop” is invoked as a safety guarantee. The presence of a reviewer is assumed to transform probabilistic output into accountable …
AI GovernanceEnterprise RiskAuthority DesignOperating Models
February 24, 2026
AI in Regulated Systems: Where Architecture Becomes Governance
AI is already operating inside regulated control environments. The risk surface is larger than most teams realize. In financial services, payments, lending, and compliance-heavy …
AI ArchitectureFinTechRegulated SystemsAI Governance
February 17, 2026
AI Is Increasing Your Delivery Velocity — and Moving Your Problems Downstream
AI didn’t remove your architecture problems. It moved them. AI has increased how quickly most teams can produce working software. Features move from idea to demo in days instead of …
ArchitectureAI GovernanceDeliveryEngineering Leadership
February 1, 2026
Dreaming Systems and the Misdiagnosis of AI Failure
Section 1: Hallucination vs. Dreaming When an AI system produces an incorrect result, the industry almost universally labels the behavior a hallucination. The term has become a …
January 24, 2026
When Inference Becomes Control
1. Observation: AI Feeding on AI Across the industry, a familiar pattern is emerging. Systems built with AI components increasingly rely on other AI systems to supervise, evaluate, …
January 6, 2026
AI Is a Delivery Tool, Not a Strategy
AI is best understood as a delivery accelerator — not a replacement for architectural thinking, not a substitute for engineering judgment, and not a shortcut around discipline.
ArchitectureDeliveryAI Governance