Elijah Mathai — Engineering Notes Practical notes on AI systems, full-stack architecture, performance, accessibility, and design engineering. https://elijahmathai.com/articles/ 2026-07-22T00:00:00Z Elijah Mathai https://elijahmathai.com/ Building accessible headless UI primitives from first principles https://elijahmathai.com/articles/accessible-headless-ui-primitives/ 2026-07-22T00:00:00Z 2026-07-22T00:00:00Z Lessons from building modal, accordion, and tooltip primitives where focus management, keyboard behavior, and ARIA are part of the API. The architecture of retrieval: when RAG needs more than vectors https://elijahmathai.com/articles/the-architecture-of-retrieval/ 2026-07-21T00:00:00Z 2026-07-21T00:00:00Z A practical architecture for combining vector search, graph relationships, permissions, ranking, and observable context assembly in RAG systems. Synchronizing external data with user-owned state https://elijahmathai.com/articles/external-data-user-owned-state/ 2026-07-20T00:00:00Z 2026-07-20T00:00:00Z How Anime Tracker separates AniList metadata, personal progress, optimistic updates, imports, and failure states across a full-stack architecture. A bento grid is a responsive information system https://elijahmathai.com/articles/bento-grid-responsive-system/ 2026-07-18T00:00:00Z 2026-07-18T00:00:00Z What a bento-style portfolio reveals about CSS Grid, content priority, responsive spans, theme tokens, and preserving hierarchy across breakpoints. From design system to full-stack system https://elijahmathai.com/articles/design-systems-to-full-stack/ 2026-07-14T00:00:00Z 2026-07-14T00:00:00Z How interface states reveal API contracts, persistence rules, validation needs, and architectural boundaries before implementation begins. Latency is a UX problem https://elijahmathai.com/articles/latency-is-a-ux-problem/ 2026-07-07T00:00:00Z 2026-07-07T00:00:00Z A practical method for connecting backend profiling, API design, perceived performance, and interface feedback into one optimization strategy.