Bassam Ismail
Engineering leader. Lifelong tinkerer. Occasional writer.
I lead engineering teams and shape technical direction. I started hands-on and never fully put it down. I still build small tools and run a few services of my own. I write here about the work, the decisions, and the people behind both.
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When Bot Mitigation Is Just Observation: Hardening Meridian Without Bot Management
Bot mitigation can work without Bot Management when Cloudflare rules stay narrow, telemetry stays honest, and carve-outs protect real users.
Tracking what the LLM costs in a one-person app
The thing that kills a hobby project that talks to a paid API is not a single expensive call. It is the slow leak you do not notice: a loop that runs more often…
Ask the app: a Q&A agent over a kid's school year
Every feature so far answered a question I could predict. What is due, what happened this week, what does this note mean. I knew the question at build time, so I could fetch exactly…
Parent-friendly summaries without paying the LLM twice
The cheapest language model call is the one you do not make. That sounds like a cost cutting tip. It is actually the central design constraint of every parent facing summary in this app,…
Teaching an LLM to ignore the recap and surface the homework
How a school assignment assistant uses a strict LLM prompt to ignore classroom recaps and surface only what parents need to act on.
NowUpdated June 2026
Leading
Engineering at Axelerant, working across the stack, end to end.
Mentoring
Growing engineers into their first lead and manager roles.
Tinkering
Distributed systems, storage internals, and self-hosting.