TL;DR I moved from operations / systems engineering into the software side via AI collaboration. Part 1 of this series ( the entity resolution case study ) is the build; this is the methodology. Five practices and five anti-patterns, filtered through an ops lens — but the lessons generalize. Not "AI tips you've heard." Patterns that fall out naturally if you treat AI sessions like config reviews, runbooks, and validation procedures. Each piece is paired with a real misstep I made building Part 1. Each part of this series stands alone. Read in any order. Why an "Operations Discipline" Lens Operations engineers spend their careers internalizing four habits: Plan before you build — designs, runbooks, change requests. Verify before you declare done — validation procedures, post-change checks. Document state — configs, design docs, postmortems. Suspect numbers — every monitoring datapoint hides an artifact. These habits transfer directly to working with AI coding assistants.…