# Staff Engineering — Daine Mawer > Technical direction, cross-team leverage, the work beyond a single codebase. 11 articles filed under Staff Engineering. ## Articles - [Next.js 15 Is Out of Support. Here's a Patch Policy for What Comes Next](https://www.dainemawer.com/nextjs-patch-policy-after-15-end-of-support.md): Published 2026-10-23. 7 min read. Two critical advisories landed a week before Next.js 15's support window closed. A written patch policy turns the next one into a routine upgrade instead of a scramble. - [Your AI Coding Agents Need a Circuit Breaker, Not a Lower Budget Cap](https://www.dainemawer.com/ai-agent-circuit-breakers-not-budget-caps.md): Published 2026-10-07. 6 min read. Uber and Microsoft both capped per-engineer AI spending in 2026 after burning through annual budgets in months. A smaller number doesn't stop one run from looping for hours. An execution pattern borrowed from site reliability engineering does. - [Hardening Your JavaScript Stack Against the Next npm Supply Chain Worm](https://www.dainemawer.com/npm-supply-chain-worm-defense.md): Published 2026-10-05. 6 min read. Shai-Hulud showed the pattern. Here's the concrete playbook for keeping a self-replicating worm out of your dependency tree. - [Your MCP Servers Are Burning Your Agent's Context Window](https://www.dainemawer.com/mcp-context-window-bloat.md): Published 2026-09-28. 5 min read. Tool definitions load into context before an agent does anything. Code execution and progressive disclosure are how teams are getting that budget back. - [AI Is Forking the Engineering Manager Role Into Two Jobs](https://www.dainemawer.com/ai-forking-engineering-manager-role.md): Published 2026-09-23. 7 min read. Middle management is flattening industry-wide. What survives of engineering management is splitting into two tracks that need almost opposite skills. - [Spec-Driven Development: Why the Spec Is Becoming the New Code Review](https://www.dainemawer.com/spec-driven-development.md): Published 2026-09-21. 7 min read. Prompts drift. A versioned spec is how teams are catching it before it ships. - [Why AI Coding Agents Need WIP Limits Too](https://www.dainemawer.com/wip-limits-for-ai-agents.md): Published 2026-09-14. 6 min read. A framework for deciding how many agents one engineer can actually run at once. - [Migrating to TypeScript 7 Without Breaking Your Toolchain](https://www.dainemawer.com/typescript-7-native-compiler-migration.md): Published 2026-09-11. 5 min read. The native compiler is 8-12x faster. The programmatic API isn't ready yet, and that's where teams get burned. - [How to Orchestrate Multiple AI Coding Agents Without Losing Architectural Control](https://www.dainemawer.com/orchestrating-multiple-ai-agents.md): Published 2026-09-11. 5 min read. A framework for staff engineers directing several agents at once, not just reviewing what one of them wrote. - [Keeping the Junior Engineering Pipeline Alive in the AI Era](https://www.dainemawer.com/keeping-the-junior-pipeline-alive.md): Published 2026-09-09. 7 min read. A framework for growing junior engineers now that AI has automated most of the entry-level workload. - [How to Review AI-Generated Code Without Becoming a Bottleneck](https://www.dainemawer.com/reviewing-ai-generated-code.md): Published 2026-09-07. 5 min read. A framework for staff engineers reviewing pull requests an agent wrote. --- Canonical HTML: https://www.dainemawer.com/topics/staff-engineering Markdown index: https://www.dainemawer.com/index.md · Agent guide: https://www.dainemawer.com/agents.md · [llms.txt](https://www.dainemawer.com/llms.txt) Attribution: Daine Mawer — https://www.dainemawer.com/about