Design Beaver BlogNotes on AWS architecture, diagramming, and building Design Beaver.https://designbeaver.app/Design Beaver vs. Cloudcraft: correctness vs. cost-focused diagramminghttps://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-cloudcraft/https://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-cloudcraft/Cloudcraft knows AWS and even prices your architecture. It'll also happily price one that doesn't work. Here's the honest correctness-vs-cost comparison.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTDesign Beaver vs. draw.io: when generic diagramming isn't enoughhttps://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-drawio/https://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-drawio/draw.io is the best free general-purpose diagramming tool there is. For AWS specifically, that generality is the ceiling. An honest comparison.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe security group mistake almost every AWS diagram gets wronghttps://designbeaver.app/blog/aws-security-group-mistake/https://designbeaver.app/blog/aws-security-group-mistake/Your diagram draws one clean arrow from the app to the database. The security group behind it usually allows the entire VPC. Here's the gap, and how to close it.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTCommon AWS security anti-patterns we validate forhttps://designbeaver.app/blog/common-aws-security-anti-patterns/https://designbeaver.app/blog/common-aws-security-anti-patterns/Four AWS security anti-patterns that show up constantly in architecture diagrams — a database in a public subnet, keys instead of roles, plaintext load balancers, and open endpoints — and how to catch each one.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhy your VPC peering connection fails silently (and how to catch it before deploy)https://designbeaver.app/blog/vpc-peering-fails-silently/https://designbeaver.app/blog/vpc-peering-fails-silently/Your VPC peering connection says Active, but traffic times out with no error anywhere. Here are the four ways peering fails silently — and the one way it fails loudly.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTDesign Beaver vs. Lucidchart for AWS architecture diagramshttps://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-lucidchart/https://designbeaver.app/blog/design-beaver-vs-lucidchart/Lucidchart draws any AWS diagram you want. It won't tell you the diagram is wrong. Here's an honest comparison for anyone diagramming AWS specifically.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTWe built an AWS tool with AI agents — that's exactly why we could be strict about correctnesshttps://designbeaver.app/blog/how-we-built-design-beaver-spec-driven-with-claude/https://designbeaver.app/blog/how-we-built-design-beaver-spec-driven-with-claude/Design Beaver is in soft launch. It was built by a tiny team leaning hard on Claude agents — and that's the reason we could be more rigorous about AWS correctness, not less. Here's the spec-driven system underneath it.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTSQS vs. direct Lambda-to-Lambda invocation: why the queue mattershttps://designbeaver.app/blog/sqs-vs-direct-lambda-invocation/https://designbeaver.app/blog/sqs-vs-direct-lambda-invocation/Chaining Lambdas with a direct call looks simpler than adding a queue. Here's why an SQS queue between them is the right default for async work — and exactly what the direct call drops under load.Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTYou can vibe-code a canvas. You can't vibe-code correctness.https://designbeaver.app/blog/from-vibe-coding-to-spec-driven-development/https://designbeaver.app/blog/from-vibe-coding-to-spec-driven-development/Design Beaver started as a vibe-coded AWS diagramming canvas. Here's the moment that approach broke, and why the correctness rules forced a shift to spec-driven, agentic development.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhy we built a validation engine instead of another drag-and-drop canvashttps://designbeaver.app/blog/why-we-built-a-validation-engine/https://designbeaver.app/blog/why-we-built-a-validation-engine/Generic diagramming tools let you draw any connection, valid or not. Here's why Design Beaver checks your architecture as you draw it instead.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT