Architecture Literacy

Short lessons on the decisions that shape a stack. Not platform training. Architecture literacy.

There are endless resources explaining where to click in Salesforce, Adobe or Braze. Much harder to find is a concise answer to four questions. Every node answers them.

01 Why does this capability exist?
02 Where should it live?
03 What should it own?
04 What consequence does the decision create?

Data & Identity

Data & Identity What is a CDP, really? A Customer Data Platform is a persistence and identity-resolution layer, not a campaign tool. Define it by what it owns, not by what vendors demo, and the placement follows. Read the node

Decisioning & Orchestration

Decisioning & Orchestration What is decisioning? Decisioning is the capability that chooses the next best action, separate from the channel that delivers it. Why it is a layer, not a feature, and where it should live. Read the node
Decisioning & Orchestration Batch vs event-driven: what is the real difference? The difference between batch and event-driven marketing is not speed. It is who initiates the interaction, the schedule or the customer, and that choice cascades through the stack. Read the node

Channels & Activation

Channels & Activation What is a CEP, and why did it name the whole stack? A Customer Engagement Platform owns orchestration and delivery, not identity and truth. Why it named the whole stack, and why expecting it to be the data backbone is the recurring error. Read the node

AI & Agentic

AI & Agentic What is agentic marketing, architecturally? Agentic marketing is a closed loop that decides and acts within set limits, not a label on the same batch stack. What actually changes in the data model and the control loop. Read the node

One visual language

Every diagram in this section is built from the same five shapes and one arrow, so the architecture reads the same way from one node to the next.

The Architecture Literacy diagram vocabulary: data store, decision engine, channel, event stream, and governance boundary.