About the Vault

I’m James Burchill—a Business Systems Architect, CTO, and bestselling author. Over nearly four decades, I have founded companies, led engineering teams, built software, written, taught, and worked with organizations navigating change.

Software engineering, publishing, marketing, teaching, and entrepreneurship all inform how I approach a problem. The Vault is my online content library, bringing those perspectives together in practical knowledge, essays, field notes, and resources.

What You’ll Find Here

I write about building with AI, making architecture decisions, designing useful products, preserving context, and communicating ideas clearly. Some pieces explain a specific engineering choice. Others start with a business problem or a pattern I have noticed over time.

Because Drift Happens™ connects much of this work. Plans, software, processes, and assumptions change. I’m interested in how we notice that movement and keep systems useful, understandable, and accountable.

These are field notes, not a claim that every question is settled. I distinguish proposals from established practice and revisit arguments as the evidence and my understanding develop. Original publication dates remain intact; substantive revisions carry a review note.

The Work Behind the Writing

I currently serve as CTO at Tooljar and pursue independent projects, including Driftinel, a software project I’m developing.

I’ve also written three bestselling books and taught at Sheridan College and McMaster University. Writing, teaching, and building systems continue to inform the ideas I explore here.

You can find more about me at JamesBurchill.com or on LinkedIn.

Finding Your Way Around

Choose a reading path, search for a subject, or browse by publication date. The Governing Intelligent Systems guide introduces the more technical vocabulary behind the systems essays.

A Durable, Inspectable Collection

The site is intentionally simple. Articles have stable addresses, and each offers its Markdown source and a provenance record. Feeds and machine-readable files are available in the footer for readers and tools that need them.

Provenance helps establish a page’s origin and integrity; readers still need to assess its argument and evidence. Publishing details are documented in the repository README.