Allan Bian - Build a Kinder Tech World

Hello!

Allan Bian

Lead Software Engineer, Backend @ Carousell

Projects

Things I’ve been building and experimenting with around AI agents and software engineering.

Track 01 · Software Delivery

Autonomous Engineering Pipeline

A 4-phase AI agent pipeline that goes from feature planning and architecture review to implementation, code review, and keeping documentation up to date as the system evolves.

Phase 01 · Planning allanbian1017/skills
Architecture Review PRD to RFC Pre-Mortem Analysis Vertical Slicing

Feature Planning Pipeline

A multi-agent workflow for reviewing a feature before implementation starts. It brings together PM, Architect, Architecture Reviewer, and Engineer perspectives to clarify requirements, challenge architectural decisions, compare simpler alternatives, identify potential failure modes, and break the feature into implementable tasks.

Review Stage Output
📋 Requirements & PRD
docs/prds/prd_feature.md [PASSED]
📐 Architecture Review
Simpler alternatives and trade-offs evaluated [VERIFIED]
🛡️ Pre-Mortem
Potential failure modes identified and mitigated [APPROVED]
⚡ Work Breakdown
Vertical slices with dependencies and acceptance criteria [READY]
Phase 02 · Implementation allanbian1017/skills
Worktree Isolation RED / GREEN TDD Scope Guardrail CI & Merge

Autonomous Developer Pipeline

An autonomous implementation workflow that takes an approved task through development and delivery in an isolated Git worktree. It keeps each agent within the approved scope, follows RED / GREEN TDD, runs the full test suite, and completes the workflow through CI and merge.

Execution Step Output
🌿 Worktree Isolation
git worktree add .worktrees/task-1 [ISOLATED]
🔴 🟢 RED / GREEN TDD
Failing test → Minimal implementation → Tests pass [VERIFIED]
🔒 Scope Guardrail
Implementation stays within the approved task [ENFORCED]
🚀 CI & Merge
gh pr merge --squash --delete-branch [AUTOMATED]
Phase 03 · Quality & Review allanbian1017/skills
Agent Skill Language-Aware Review Learns from Feedback GitHub Native

Code Review Skill

An AI code review workflow that checks both code quality and whether the implementation matches the original RFC and plan. It uses language-specific review rubrics and learns team conventions from GitHub PR feedback so future reviews can apply what the team has learned over time.

Review Dimension Output
📋 Spec Compliance
RFC-084 Idempotency [VERIFIED]
📐 Style Rubric
Uber Go Guidelines [96 / 100]
🧠 Team Conventions
2 learned conventions applied from preferences.md
⚡ GitHub Integration
gh pr review with comments and inline findings
Phase 04 · Living Documentation allanbian1017/skills
Development Narrative Incremental Updates Git-Verified History Propose Before Writing

Evolution Log Skill

An AI workflow for maintaining an EvolutionLog.md that explains how a system changes over time and why. It builds the narrative from Git history, PRDs, RFCs, and post-mortems, organizing each change around the problem, options considered, decision, result, and what came next.

Because the narrative is generated from multiple sources, the workflow also verifies commits and file references against the repository before updating the log.

Lifecycle Step Output
🔍 Source Discovery
Git history, PRDs, RFCs, ADRs, and post-mortems [INDEXED]
🔁 Narrative Cycle
Problem → Options → Decision → Result → New Problem
🛡️ History Verification
Commits and referenced paths verified against Git [VERIFIED]
⚖️ Update Safety
Proposed changes reviewed before EvolutionLog.md is updated [ENFORCED]
Track 02 · Knowledge Systems

Autonomous Content Intelligence

A personal system I’ve been building to help me keep up with the things I care about without having to process everything myself. It uses multiple agents to collect and analyze content from newsletters, technical talks, discussions, and engineering articles, then filters them through a quality rubric and learns from what I find useful over time.

6 Agent Roles Parallel Content Processing Quality Rubric Learns from Feedback

Knowledge Loop

The system runs across the AI tools I use and processes different content sources in parallel. Each piece of content goes through a rubric before being included, and the results are combined to identify recurring ideas and broader trends. My feedback is then used to refine what the system considers useful in future runs.

Pipeline Stage Output
🔍 Content Discovery
Newsletters, technical talks, discussions, and engineering articles
⚡ Parallel Processing
Content analyzed concurrently across specialized agent roles
🛡️ Quality Filter
Content evaluated against a three-dimension rubric
🧠 Learning Loop
Recurring themes identified and preferences refined over time

Why I’m building this

Some thoughts behind what I’ve been building and what I’ve learned along the way.

What changes when AI becomes an engineering collaborator rather than just a coding tool?

Most AI coding tools focus on helping us write code faster. I’m interested in exploring a broader question: can agents participate across the software development lifecycle — understanding requirements, reviewing architecture, implementing changes, maintaining quality, and preserving knowledge as the system evolves?

The projects above are experiments around this question. While building them, a few ideas have become increasingly important to me.

Planning matters more than code generation

Many important engineering decisions happen before implementation starts. Requirements need to be clarified, assumptions challenged, architecture reviewed, and trade-offs understood.

That’s why I started by building agents around feature planning and architecture review rather than focusing only on code generation. If an agent can implement quickly but starts from the wrong assumptions or design, writing code faster doesn’t help much.

Documentation should evolve with the codebase

Documentation becomes outdated easily when maintaining it is separate from the development workflow.

I’m exploring whether agents can help maintain living documentation that evolves alongside the codebase — capturing not only what the system looks like today, but also why decisions were made, how the architecture changed, and what we learned along the way.

Evaluation is an engineering problem

As I gave agents more responsibility, I found that generating an output was only part of the problem. I also needed a reliable way to determine whether that output was actually correct and stayed within the intended scope.

That’s why the skills I build include verification mechanisms such as rubric-based evaluation, scope enforcement, and phantom commit audits. I see evaluation and guardrails as part of the system design itself: if an agent is going to participate meaningfully in engineering work, its output needs to be verifiable.

Beyond the code

A little more about what I enjoy outside of software.

I like understanding how things work — systems, people, and increasingly, AI.

Outside of software, I enjoy freediving, camping, and spending time outdoors. Freediving in particular has influenced how I think about engineering. Underwater, staying calm matters. You need to understand the environment, use your energy carefully, and avoid unnecessary movement.

I find myself applying a similar mindset to engineering: understand the problem first, keep things as simple as possible, and focus your effort where it actually matters.

Professional experience

More about my work experience, past projects, and how to reach me.

Professional experience

You can find more about my work experience and the projects I’ve worked on through LinkedIn or my resume.