Defense matched the repository on every probe. Candidate explained the streaming token queue and the rationale for batching at the embedding layer — both present and non-trivial in the code. Asked about a failure mode they hadn't hit; reasoned through it correctly on the spot.

Strong systems reasoning. Walked through the idempotency-key design for the webhook consumer and why the dedupe window is sized the way it is — Redis TTL and consumer offsets matched the explanation.

Solid full-stack defense. Explained the server-state boundary and tRPC procedure layout convincingly. Slight hesitation on cache invalidation — described the intent but not the exact trigger; the code does it via a revalidate tag.

Defense was correct but shallow relative to the repo. Described what the feature pipeline does but was vague on why specific transforms were chosen. No integrity flag — likely under-explained rather than not-authored.