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Architecture Decision Records
Architecture Decision Records documenting the key technical choices made when building this portfolio — a production Next.js 16 app on Azure. Each ADR captures the context, options evaluated, the decision made, and the real-world outcome.
Click any card to see the full context, options I considered, the decision, rationale, trade-offs, and real-world outcome.
Monitoring was needed for the portfolio — page views, performance metrics, and exceptions. Azure Application Insights supports both a browser JavaScript SDK and a Node.js server SDK. The choice was which to instrument.
The portfolio calls Azure AI Foundry from the App Service backend for chatbot responses and AI Writer generation. Azure services support two authentication patterns: API keys (static secrets stored in environment variables) or Managed Identity (token-based, no secrets).
The portfolio needed an automated build and deploy pipeline. As a Microsoft employee, Azure DevOps was the obvious enterprise choice. However, the portfolio is on a personal GitHub repository, not an Azure DevOps organization.
The admin panel allows uploading cover images for blog posts, case studies, events, and certifications. These images need to be stored somewhere accessible to both the Next.js app and public visitors. Options were to store them in the git repo, or an external blob store.
The chatbot needs to answer questions about Saurav's portfolio content (projects, case studies, blog posts, events, talks). A RAG pipeline was needed to ground the model on real content rather than hallucinating. Options ranged from building a custom embedding + vector database pipeline to using managed services.
The portfolio needed an AI chatbot grounded on portfolio content, and an AI Writer that can draft blog posts, case studies, and other content types. The choice was between calling the Azure OpenAI chat completions API directly, or using the Azure AI Foundry Agent API which wraps a model with persistent tools.
Needed a hosting target for a Next.js 16 standalone Node.js app that integrates with Azure AI Foundry via Managed Identity. The app requires server-side rendering, API routes, and a persistent process (not serverless cold-starts per-request). As a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, choosing Azure was a given — but which Azure service?