Key ideas from the canonical theory of quantum error correction via coding and syndrome measurement can be "pushed down" to the level of physical models with stationary Hamiltonian couplings in various ways; in this talk I will review our group's work on an approach inspired by emerging ideas in coherent-feedback quantum control, which seem well-suited to the implementation settings of nanophotonic cavity-QED and superconducting circuit-QED. I will introduce some basic ideas of continuous syndrome measurement and embedded control dynamics, and discuss a class of intuitive master equations for autonomous quantum memories that can be derived via a modeling approximation that we call the small-volume limit. I will discuss some computational challenges involved in constructing and integrating such master equations for memories based on complex codes, and close with some general remarks on coherent feedback as a tool for interaction synthesis and disturbance attenuation in quantum engineering.