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Previous Issues of
The Modern Engineer

Issue #43: Feature-Flagged AI Runtime Controls
August 29, 2026
Build a local Python runtime-control layer that uses feature flags to select model routes, prompt versions, tool authority, retrieval corpora, reasoning modes, and kill switches before an AI workflow executes.

Issue #42: AI Data Contracts for RAG and Agent Context
August 22, 2026
Build a .NET data-contract pipeline that admits only fresh, owned, audience-safe, lineage-backed insurance policy documents into RAG or agent context.

Issue #41: Chain-of-Thought Control Contracts for AI Systems
August 15, 2026
Turn chain-of-thought from a prompt habit into an AI engineering contract with private reasoning modes, visible rationales, evidence, logging policy, and evaluation checks.

Issue #40: The Portfolio That Proves You Can Build AI Systems
August 8, 2026
A practical guide to building an AI engineering portfolio that demonstrates system judgment, operational tradeoffs, and production readiness without relying on flashy demos.

Issue #39: Tool Result Admission Gates for Production AI Agents
August 1, 2026
Build a Python tool-result admission gate that rejects unsafe tool output, redacts sensitive fields, packs only admitted context, and uses Microsoft Foundry for final synthesis.

Issue #38: Golden Dataset Governance for AI Evaluation Systems
July 25, 2026
Build a markdown-first governance package that treats golden eval cases as controlled production assets with labeling rules, adjudication, versioning, leakage controls, and release evidence.

Issue #37: Two-Layer Content Moderation Gates for AI Systems
July 18, 2026
Build a Python moderation gate that scores text with Detoxify, asks a local Ollama model for structured review when policy requires it, and keeps the final content-risk decision in deterministic code.

Issue #36: Agent-Readable Documentation and Context Packs
July 11, 2026
Design a markdown-first documentation context package with llms.txt, source ownership, freshness rules, exclusions, and eval questions so agents can use docs without treating the whole site as context.

Issue #35: Designing Control Loops for AI Agents
July 4, 2026
Loop engineering moves AI work from one prompt at a time to bounded control systems with triggers, gates, state, budgets, and escalation paths.

Issue #34: Prompt Format Languages for AI Engineering
June 27, 2026
JSON, XML, YAML, TOML, and TOON each carry different signals inside a prompt. Knowing what the model actually does with each format is how you make format a deliberate engineering decision instead of an afterthought.
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