https://federal.ai/notes Short engineering notes from Cleared FDE practice: security-cleared forward-deployed AI engineering for federal missions. en-us Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 https://federal.ai/notes/how-to-buy-ai-without-a-competition https://federal.ai/notes/how-to-buy-ai-without-a-competition Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000 SBIR Phase III explained for contracting officers and program offices: sole source, no ceiling, any agency or prime, and what the file needs. https://federal.ai/notes/before-ares-arrives https://federal.ai/notes/before-ares-arrives Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 System of record versus decision layer, and the twelve months a flying wing controls before migrating to the Air Force's new Aerospace Readiness Enterprise System. https://federal.ai/notes/live-ai-without-burning-tokens https://federal.ai/notes/live-ai-without-burning-tokens Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Four-layer cost-control design for public AI demos: small model with a hard output cap, per-visitor caps, deterministic fallback, and a provider spend ceiling. https://federal.ai/notes/readiness-ai-wrong-systems https://federal.ai/notes/readiness-ai-wrong-systems Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Why mission-fit AI must classify systems as core, supporting, or peripheral, and push back on wrong scope.