sota-architecture | System design, service boundaries, monolith vs microservices, DDD, event-driven design, sagas/outbox, resilience (timeouts/retries/circuit breakers), scalability, multi-tenancy, 12-factor/cloud-native, architectural anti-patterns |
sota-code-security | Writing or reviewing code that touches untrusted input, authn/authz, sessions/JWT/OAuth, crypto, XSS/CSRF/CORS, file uploads, deserialization, error/log hygiene, LLM/agent app security |
sota-threat-modeling | Designing a new system/feature with security in mind, drawing trust boundaries and DFDs, STRIDE/LINDDUN, risk rating, reconstructing a threat model from an existing codebase |
sota-secrets-management | API keys, passwords, tokens, signing/TLS/SSH keys, .env files, Vault/cloud secret managers, workload identity (OIDC), secret rotation, leak detection and remediation |
sota-sandboxing | Isolation of untrusted code or input, least privilege, seccomp/Landlock/capabilities, container/K8s hardening, microVMs, WASM sandboxes, subprocess hygiene, sandboxing AI-agent code execution |
sota-performance | Latency, throughput, profiling, memory usage, caching (incl. stampede protection), I/O and network efficiency, Core Web Vitals, performance regression in CI |
sota-async-concurrency | async/await, threads, goroutines, channels, races, deadlocks, event-loop blocking, cancellation/timeouts, graceful shutdown, backpressure, bounded queues |
sota-api-design | REST/HTTP semantics, pagination, idempotency, versioning/deprecation, GraphQL, gRPC/proto evolution, websockets/SSE/realtime, webhooks, API rate limiting and tenant isolation |
sota-devsecops | CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions hardening, supply chain (SLSA, Sigstore, SBOM, dependency confusion), container builds, SAST/secret-scanning gates, Terraform/GitOps, admission control |
sota-databases | Schema design, Postgres/NoSQL choice, migrations (zero-downtime), indexes/EXPLAIN, transactions/isolation, connection pooling, replication/backups, Redis, RLS/DB security, pgvector |
sota-frontend-design | UI/UX, visual design, typography/color/layout, design systems and tokens, components, forms, accessibility (WCAG 2.2), motion/animation design, modern CSS, responsive design |
sota-web-frameworks | React/Next.js and Vue/Nuxt engineering — Server Components & Server Actions, the RSC/client trust boundary, Next caching (use cache/PPR/ISR), Nitro server routes, hydration correctness, SSR state serialization, and framework-specific security & CVEs |
sota-observability | Logging, metrics, tracing (OpenTelemetry), SLOs/error budgets, alerting, health checks, dashboards, debugging production, "can we answer why is this slow?" |
sota-testing | Test strategy (pyramid/trophy), unit vs integration boundaries, test design/smells, mocks/fakes/test data, contract testing, e2e, property-based/fuzzing/mutation testing, flaky tests, coverage policy |
sota-llm-engineering | Building LLM features — evals, prompt/context engineering, structured output, RAG, agents/tool design, MCP, model selection/routing, latency/cost engineering, LLM observability |
sota-ml-engineering | Production ML/MLOps (classical/predictive, not LLM apps) — training→serving→monitoring lifecycle, feature stores & registries, data leakage & train/serve skew, evaluation (ML Test Score, slices), deployment (canary/shadow/rollback), drift monitoring (PSI/KS) & retraining, ML security/governance (poisoning, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF) |
sota-cloud-infrastructure | Cloud accounts/landing zones, cloud IAM, VPC/subnet/DNS/CDN setup, compute selection (serverless vs containers vs K8s), object storage, FinOps/cost, RTO/RPO and disaster recovery |
sota-kubernetes | Kubernetes platform security & ops — RBAC & escalation paths, admission control (PSA/Kyverno/Gatekeeper/VAP, Audit→Enforce), GitOps controllers (Argo CD/Flux, AppProject scoping), operators/CRDs/webhooks, control plane & etcd encryption, Helm supply chain, multi-tenancy, cluster lifecycle, K8s audit logging; self-hosted (Talos/k3s) and managed |
sota-identity-access | Identity infrastructure & access management — OIDC/OAuth2.1/SAML/SCIM protocols, running an IdP (Kanidm/Keycloak/etc.), RBAC/ABAC/ReBAC authorization design, group→role mapping, joiner-mover-leaver lifecycle, deprovisioning, privileged access & break-glass, SPIFFE/workload identity, phishing-resistant MFA/passkeys, federation risk |
sota-network-security | Network security as a discipline — zero-trust (NIST 800-207), segmentation & blast-radius, the world/any over-broad-rule trap, Kubernetes NetworkPolicy depth (Cilium L7, default-deny egress), service mesh & mTLS / internal encryption, edge/ingress/WAF, egress control & metadata-endpoint blocking, DNS/TLS/PKI & cert lifecycle, email auth (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) |
sota-confidential-computing | Protecting workloads/data from the infrastructure operator — TEEs (AMD SEV-SNP, Intel TDX, ARM CCA, SGX enclaves, Nitro Enclaves, confidential GPUs), remote attestation (RATS, attest-then-release), confidential VMs/nodes/containers on K8s (CoCo/Kata/Trustee), and cryptographic PETs (FHE, MPC, ZKP, PSI) when hardware trust is off the table |
sota-detection-engineering | Detective controls, SOC & IR — detection-as-code, Sigma/YARA/Suricata/Falco/Tetragon rules, ATT&CK coverage, SIEM & telemetry coverage, alert tuning/SOAR, threat hunting & intel (STIX/TAXII), deception/honeytokens, incident response (NIST 800-61), detection validation (Atomic Red Team/Caldera) |
sota-data-engineering | Data pipelines, ELT/orchestration, dbt, Kafka/streaming, CDC, schema registry, lakehouse (Iceberg/Delta/Parquet), data quality/contracts, warehouse modeling |
sota-privacy-compliance | PII inventory/classification, privacy by design, consent, DSAR/deletion architecture, retention, GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA/PCI/AI Act engineering obligations, SOC 2/ISO 27001 audit readiness, breach response |
sota-security-compliance | Cybersecurity control frameworks & product-security regulations as engineering — NIST CSF 2.0, SP 800-53, 800-171/CMMC, SSDF (800-218), FedRAMP, EU Cyber Resilience Act (SBOM/CVD/signed updates), ISA/IEC 62443 (OT zones & conduits, Security Levels); control-framework-as-code crosswalks, CUI boundaries, FIPS-validated crypto |
sota-mobile | iOS/Android/cross-platform apps — stack choice, offline-first/sync, push, mobile security (Keychain/Keystore, attestation), performance budgets, store requirements, staged rollouts |
sota-cli-ux | CLI/developer-tool design — flags/subcommands, config precedence, stdout/stderr and --json contracts, exit codes, TTY detection, signals, completions, distribution |
sota-shell-scripting | Bash/sh scripts, CI run blocks, entrypoints, Makefiles — safety baseline (quoting, set -euo pipefail, traps), injection, secrets in scripts, shellcheck/shfmt |
sota-docs-workflow | Documentation (Diátaxis, READMEs, runbooks, API docs, changelogs, AGENTS.md), code review/PR workflow, commit/branch/release discipline |
sota-ux-writing | Any user-facing interface text — microcopy, button/label wording, error messages, empty states, onboarding copy, notifications, tone of voice, terminology, alt text, i18n-ready strings |
sota-copywriting | Outward-facing content — landing pages, headlines/CTAs, value propositions, SEO content, testimonials/social proof, claim substantiation, email marketing, app-store listings |
sota-rust | Any Rust code — ownership/API design, error handling, unsafe discipline, tokio/async, supply chain (cargo audit/deny/vet), performance, clippy/CI |
sota-golang | Any Go code — errors, package/interface design, goroutines/channels/leaks, net/http hardening, security (os/exec, os.Root, govulncheck), pprof/performance, golangci-lint/CI |
sota-c-cpp | Any C/C++ code — RAII/idioms, memory safety (UAF/overflow/sanitizers), undefined behavior, security (CERT/MISRA, banned APIs, OpenSSF hardening flags), concurrency/atomics, CMake/clang-tidy/fuzzing CI, performance |
sota-jvm | Any Java/Kotlin code — modern idioms (records/sealed/pattern-matching, Kotlin null-safety/coroutines), API/null/immutability design, concurrency (virtual threads, JMM, j.u.c, coroutines), security (deserialization/JNDI/XXE/injection, JCA crypto), GC/JFR/GraalVM performance, Maven/Gradle supply-chain & CI |
sota-python | Any Python code — uv/ruff/typing setup, idioms/pitfalls, asyncio, security (pickle/subprocess/SQL), performance, FastAPI/Django/pytest |
sota-javascript-typescript | Any JS/TS code — strict tsconfig/type design, idioms, promises/AbortController, Node backend hardening, XSS/supply-chain security, bundle/React performance, vitest/ESLint |
sota-dotnet | Any C#/.NET code — modern idioms (records, nullable reference types, pattern matching, spans), API/disposal/DI design, async/await & concurrency (ConfigureAwait, cancellation, channels), security (EF/Dapper SQL, deserialization, ASP.NET Core auth, crypto), GC/Span/AOT performance, NuGet supply chain & analyzers/CI |
sota-php | Any PHP code — strict_types/modern idioms (enums, readonly, match), security (PDO/SQLi, XSS escaping, uploads/LFI, unserialize/Phar, sessions, password_hash/sodium), framework-neutral web hardening, Composer supply chain, PHPStan/Psalm, OPcache/FPM/JIT performance |
sota-ruby | Any Ruby code — idioms (frozen strings, pattern matching, RBS/Sorbet), security (AR/SQLi, ERB escaping, strong params, Marshal/YAML.load, command injection, ReDoS), Bundler supply chain (bundler-audit, lockfile checksums), RuboCop/Brakeman, GVL/Ractors/YJIT performance |