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Notes on payments, backend work, and running production systems. The home server gets its own page: Homelab.
How we made Slack the operating surface of a fintech startup: build and deploy notices, secret change alerts, test verdicts, release steps, and business events, with the rules that keep them useful.
Engineering, 4 min read
A createIndex call in server startup looks harmless and idempotent. Why I moved index creation out of application code into a per-environment ops step, with a MongoDB collation example.
Engineering, 3 min read
How I built a receive-only test inbox on Amazon SES, S3, SNS, and Lambda, so end-to-end tests can prove who got an email, including Bcc.
Engineering, 3 min read
An end-to-end test that writes its own setup to the database can stay green while the product is broken. How I found about 150 such writes and sorted them.
Engineering, 3 min read
node-postgres emits 'error' when the database drops an idle socket. With no listener, Node.js exits. How I found it and made the pool survive.
Engineering, 4 min read
An AI reviewer on every pull request needs more than a prompt: a quota gate, incremental reviews, resume after a dropped connection, and a check that blocks false claims.
Engineering, 10 min read
CloudTrail records that a Lambda environment changed but redacts the values. Hashed snapshots, post-then-save ordering, and a heartbeat turn it into an alert.
Engineering, 10 min read
A retry is the normal case in payments, not the edge case. Idempotency keys at the edge and versioned ledger writes inside make a retry move money once.
Engineering, 9 min read
Learn tricks to manage AI, guard against manipulation, and build reliable tools. Enhance your AI integrations and strengthen human decision-making.
Artificial Intelligence, 3 min read