Field notes

Notes on platforms, AI, and engineering leadership.

The arguments Diogo Esteves keeps making about frontend platforms, AI-native UX, and leadership.

Nothing is published here yet. What follows is what I would write about — the arguments I keep making in RFCs, design reviews, and hiring conversations after eleven years of platform work.

  • Platform

    Design systems that survive their founders

    What makes a component library outlast the product line — and the people — it was born with.

  • AI

    Agentic UX, honestly

    What breaks when LLM workflows meet real users, and the human-in-the-loop patterns that hold.

  • Leadership

    From IC to VPE and back

    What changes — and what doesn't — when you move between engineering altitudes in eighteen months.

  • Strategy

    The frontend is the product

    Why treating the UI as a thin layer over an API is how good products quietly die.

  • The short version
  • Ask me about any of these