[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":711},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise":3,"blog-all":208},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":189,"date":190,"description":191,"draft":192,"extension":193,"image":194,"meta":195,"navigation":196,"path":197,"project":198,"readingMinutes":199,"seo":200,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201,"stem":202,"tags":203,"__hash__":207},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise.md","An Off Switch, Not a Disguise","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":178},"minimark",[10,14,17,20,25,28,31,39,42,46,49,63,66,70,73,89,95,98,102,109,112,116,119,125,131,135,161,168,172,175],[11,12,13],"p",{},"A test can pass for the wrong reason. We had taken the WebSocket layer in EkoLite, our small real time backend, folded three almost identical socket classes into one wrapper, and watched the suite stay green. Then one test, the very one written to prove the work, turned out to be watching a copy of the behaviour rather than the behaviour itself. That is the symptom. This post is the part where we go looking for the word.",[11,15,16],{},"Because that is usually the order here. You do not start with the pattern and look for somewhere to apply it. You hit the wall first, then you need a name for the wall, and more often than not the name already exists. The vocabulary we reach for is James Shore's Testing Without Mocks, and not because we adopted it one afternoon. It is because the problems keep handing us the exact shapes he wrote down. The language comes from the need.",[11,18,19],{},"The question that cracked this one open was small and a little rude. What is the embedded stub of this module?",[21,22,24],"h2",{"id":23},"two-fakes-that-look-the-same","Two fakes that look the same",[11,26,27],{},"There are two ways to give your code something fake to run against, and from across the room they are identical. The difference between them is the entire job.",[11,29,30],{},"A Nullable, in Shore's sense, is production code with an off switch. You write one stub of the third party thing that talks to the outside world, the network, the file system, the socket library, and you make that stub behave so faithfully that your own code cannot tell it is there. Your code runs its real logic, start to finish, against something that simply does not reach the world. That stub is the Embedded Stub. It lives in the same file, it impersonates the library, and nothing above it is special cased.",[11,32,33,34,38],{},"A Stub Object is the other thing. It is a separate fake, and your code knows it is a fake. There is an ",[35,36,37],"code",{},"if"," somewhere asking which one it is holding, a branch for the real path and a branch for the test path. It passes its tests. It also quietly testifies that the real path and the test path are two different pieces of code, which is exactly how a test can stay green while the thing it names is broken. We had met that ghost, a green test guarding a behaviour you could delete without waking it.",[11,40,41],{},"So here is the litmus, and it is the most useful question we know to ask of a Nullable. Can your production code tell whether it is holding the real thing or the fake? If it can, you do not have an off switch. You have a disguise, and the code can see straight through it.",[21,43,45],{"id":44},"what-our-code-could-see-through","What our code could see through",[11,47,48],{},"Ours could tell, in three places.",[11,50,51,54,55,58,59,62],{},[35,52,53],{},"send"," and ",[35,56,57],{},"broadcast"," asked ",[35,60,61],{},"if (entry.stub)",", one branch pushing into the fake's array, the other calling the real socket. The connection handler reached into the socket and sniffed for a hidden hook that only the fake carried. And disconnect existed twice over, once in the close handler a real socket fires, once in a separate private method that only the fake ever called.",[11,64,65],{},"Every one of those is the code admitting that it knows. That is the signature of a Stub Object in a Nullable's clothes. Shore's instruction for going Nullable is one sentence and we had broken it without noticing: do not change your code, stub out the third party code instead. We had changed the code, all the way through, to make room for the fake.",[21,67,69],{"id":68},"so-what-is-the-embedded-stub-here","So what is the embedded stub here",[11,71,72],{},"This is the part worth saying plainly, because it is the thing we were missing.",[11,74,75,76,79,80,82,83,85,86,88],{},"The wrapper touches exactly one piece of third party code that reaches the world: the ",[35,77,78],{},"ws"," library. So the embedded stub of this module is the in file stand in for ",[35,81,78],{},", and because ",[35,84,78],{}," shows up at two heights, the stub is a pair. There is the thing that hands you connections, the server, which a null source stands in for. And there is the single socket you get for each connection, which a faithful null socket stands in for. Those two together are the off switch. Everything above them, the map of clients, the ids, send, broadcast, the close handler, the tracking, is your real code, and it should run the same whether the socket beneath it came from ",[35,87,78],{},", from Fastify, or from the stub.",[11,90,91,92,94],{},"Said the other way, and this is the bit that stung: we did not have an embedded stub yet. We had a Stub Object in the costume. You will know it has become a real one the day you can delete every ",[35,93,61],{},", the hidden hook, and the duplicate disconnect, and the wrapper still compiles and still passes. That deletion is the goal. It is not a tidy up you do afterwards. It is the proof.",[11,96,97],{},"One thing to keep straight while we are naming things. The handle the test gets back when it simulates a connection, the object it uses to push a message in or read what was sent out, is not the embedded stub. That is the simulation seam, and it belongs hung off the fake, not bolted onto the boundary that every real socket also uses. The embedded stub is the quiet impostor underneath it. We had let the two jobs bleed together, which is why the boundary had a test only hook welded to its side.",[21,99,101],{"id":100},"what-the-rule-was-telling-us","What the rule was telling us",[11,103,104,105,108],{},"With the word in hand, the rest stopped being about taste and started being about the pattern. Behavior Simulation has a line that reads as if it were written for our bug: share as much code as possible with the code that handles real external events. Our simulated close ran one piece of code and our real close ran another. The fix is not clever. It is to make the fake's ",[35,106,107],{},"close"," fire the same handler the real socket fires, so there is one door in and the simulation walks through it like everyone else.",[11,110,111],{},"That is what we mean when we say our language comes from the pattern language. Nobody had to argue from authority. We had a shared set of words, Embedded Stub, Stub Object, Behavior Simulation, Overlapping Sociable Tests, and the words did the diagnosing. A review held in that vocabulary is a conversation about the code. A review held without it is a conversation about who has been here longest.",[21,113,115],{"id":114},"the-tests-that-only-exist-once-the-fake-is-honest","The tests that only exist once the fake is honest",[11,117,118],{},"Here is the quiet reward. The moment the embedded stub behaves like a real socket, a whole shelf of tests we could not write before becomes ordinary, and not a mock among them.",[11,120,121,122,124],{},"You can finally assert the thing that actually goes on the wire, because the fake captures what ",[35,123,53],{}," really produced rather than pocketing the raw object before it was ever encoded. You can close a connection twice and prove the count drops once. You can send to a client that has already gone and prove it is a quiet no op and not a crash. You can prove the unsubscribe you handed back actually stops the callbacks. You can prove two connections get two different ids, and that a broadcast skips the client that just left. Every one of those is a narrow test against the off switch, fast and honest, with no live server anywhere in sight.",[11,126,127,128,130],{},"And one we keep coming back to, because it is the one people skip. The embedded stub is production code, so it has to earn its place. You write a small integration test that documents what the real ",[35,129,78],{}," socket does when it closes and when it sends, then a null test that fails the instant our stub drifts from that. Keep those two honest and the integration suite has one job left, to prove a real connection arrives and a real close fires. Everything else moves into the fast tests, where it belongs.",[21,132,134],{"id":133},"the-move-you-can-reproduce","The move you can reproduce",[11,136,137,138,141,142,54,144,146,147,150,151,153,154,156,157,160],{},"You do not have to take our word that the disguise is gone. Open ",[35,139,140],{},"server\u002Finfrastructure\u002Fwebsocket.ts"," and go looking for the branch that asks which kind of socket it is holding. There is none. ",[35,143,53],{},[35,145,57],{}," call ",[35,148,149],{},"socket.send"," with no ",[35,152,37],{},". The null socket's ",[35,155,107],{}," fires the same ",[35,158,159],{},"onClose"," every real socket fires. The code cannot tell the switch is flipped, which is the definition we were after.",[11,162,163,164,167],{},"Then feel the reward it bought. Run ",[35,165,166],{},"npm run test"," and watch the socket wrapper's own tests pass with no server anywhere in sight: two connections get two ids, a broadcast skips the client that just left, a double close drops the count once, a send to a departed client is a quiet no op. Every one of those runs against the off switch, in milliseconds, because there is nothing left in the code that needs a real socket to be honest.",[21,169,171],{"id":170},"where-the-words-come-from","Where the words come from",[11,173,174],{},"We did not learn these names in a classroom and then go hunting for somewhere to use them. We built something, it went subtly wrong, we needed a word for the wrong, and the word was already in the pattern language waiting for us. That is the order we trust. The need first, the name second, the fix last.",[11,176,177],{},"A Nullable is production code with an off switch. The day your code can tell the switch is flipped, it was never a switch. It was a costume, and the test was only ever talking to the mask.",{"title":179,"searchDepth":180,"depth":180,"links":181},"",2,[182,183,184,185,186,187,188],{"id":23,"depth":180,"text":24},{"id":44,"depth":180,"text":45},{"id":68,"depth":180,"text":69},{"id":100,"depth":180,"text":101},{"id":114,"depth":180,"text":115},{"id":133,"depth":180,"text":134},{"id":170,"depth":180,"text":171},"Testing and TDD","2026-07-20T09:05:00.000Z","A Nullable differs from a stub in whether production code can tell the fake is there. Finding the word fixed a socket wrapper that had been lying to its tests.",false,"md","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise-hero.jpg",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise","EkoLite",7,{"title":5,"description":191},null,"blog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise",[204,205,206],"nullables","testing","websocket","n8YU_kVo64WN9d8eu_o15oBcM40P2kvcGNmgMC6fbO4",[209,222,235,243,245,252,261,268,275,284,292,301,308,315,328,337,344,351,360,368,376,386,393,401,409,415,421,430,438,448,456,463,474,482,488,498,507,515,523,531,539,546,554,562,569,575,582,591,599,606,613,622,628,636,642,650,656,665,672,679,687,693,699,705],{"path":210,"title":211,"description":212,"date":213,"author":6,"image":214,"readingMinutes":215,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":218,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-branch-is-inventory","A Branch Is Inventory","Unintegrated code is stock in a warehouse, and it depreciates. Our branch was one merge behind the trunk and that was enough for a conflict. What waiting costs.","2026-07-09T09:38:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-branch-is-inventory-hero.jpg",6,"Craft and Practice","The Dojo",[219,220,221],"git","continuous-integration","craft",{"path":223,"title":224,"description":225,"date":226,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":229,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":234},"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-map-drawn-by-the-build","A Map Drawn by the Build","Thirty six of our pages had never been visited by Google because nothing said they existed. The sitemap is drawn from the build, and it found a draft.","2026-08-22T20:30:00.000Z","Shipping and Operations","ekohacks.com",[230,231,232],"seo","operations","nuxt","From Invisible to Findable",3,{"path":236,"title":237,"description":238,"date":239,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":240,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":242},"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-privacy-policy-you-can-diff","A Privacy Policy You Can Diff","Our legal pages are files in the same repository as the site. Each now lists every change to its text, with the date and the diff, drawn from git at build time.","2026-08-23T16:00:00.000Z",[241,231,232],"privacy",9,{"path":197,"title":5,"description":191,"date":190,"author":6,"image":194,"readingMinutes":199,"category":189,"project":198,"tags":244,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},[204,205,206],{"path":246,"title":247,"description":248,"date":249,"author":6,"image":250,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":201,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fbuilding-engineering-teams-that-learn-together","Building Engineering Teams That Learn Together","The strongest engineering teams are not the ones with the most talented individuals. They are the ones that have learned how to learn together.","2026-02-05T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fteams-that-learn-together-hero.jpg",4,{"path":253,"title":254,"description":255,"date":256,"author":6,"image":257,"readingMinutes":251,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":258,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fderived-state-recompute","The Fix Was Merged, but the Numbers Were Still Wrong","We fixed a scoring bug, reviewed it, merged it, and production still showed the old numbers. Derived data is a cache that goes stale, and it must be recomputed.","2026-07-08T21:43:55.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fderived-state-recompute-hero.jpg",[231,259,260],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":262,"title":263,"description":264,"date":265,"author":266,"image":267,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":201,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fdockerising-nestjs-nuxt-monorepo-with-pnpm","Dockerising a NestJS and Nuxt Monorepo with pnpm","Dockerising a NestJS and Nuxt monorepo with pnpm: separate multi stage Dockerfiles for development and production, one Compose file, reproducible environments.","2026-02-09T09:00:00.000Z","Ogochukwu Okpala","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fdocker-monorepo-hero.png",{"path":269,"title":270,"description":271,"date":272,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":273,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":274},"\u002Fblog\u002Ffifty-posts-and-an-empty-robots-txt","Fifty Posts and an Empty robots.txt","Our site scored 100 for SEO and nobody could find it. The audit that started a series on making a site findable, and on what measuring visitors costs them.","2026-08-21T14:30:00.000Z",[230,231,221],0,{"path":276,"title":277,"description":278,"date":279,"author":6,"image":280,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":281,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ffrom-convention-to-plugin","From Convention to Plugin","A five step procedure for webhook signature checks, easy to forget and silent when you did, became one Fastify plugin. The safe path is now impossible to skip.","2026-04-17T08:26:12.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffrom-convention-to-plugin-hero.jpg",[221,282,283],"fastify","security",{"path":285,"title":286,"description":287,"date":288,"author":6,"image":289,"readingMinutes":290,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":291,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fintegrate-against-the-trunk","Integrate Against the Trunk, Not Your Copy of It","A rebase onto a stale local main succeeds, looks resolved, and leaves the pull request conflicting. Everything on your machine is a photograph of the trunk.","2026-07-09T09:22:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fintegrate-against-the-trunk-hero.jpg",5,[219,220,231],{"path":293,"title":294,"description":295,"date":296,"author":6,"image":297,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":298,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Flandmines","Landmines","Most CLAUDE.md files grow because documenting a convention feels like progress. Ours holds landmines only: facts the code cannot tell you, costly to step on.","2026-04-17T10:15:06.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flandmines-hero.jpg",[221,299,300],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":302,"title":303,"description":304,"date":305,"author":6,"image":306,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":307,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fnever-break-the-build","Never Break the Build","If the software worked five minutes ago, only five minutes of change can be to blame. What a green trunk buys, who pays for it, and a check that could not fail.","2026-07-09T09:54:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fnever-break-the-build-hero.jpg",[220,231,205],{"path":309,"title":310,"description":311,"date":312,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":313,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":180},"\u002Fblog\u002Fone-address-per-page","One Address per Page","Every page on our site answered with a redirect before it answered with a page. How we made the build emit one address, declare it, and check it live.","2026-08-22T18:30:00.000Z",[230,231,232,314],"netlify",{"path":316,"title":317,"description":318,"date":319,"author":6,"image":320,"readingMinutes":251,"category":321,"project":322,"tags":323,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fone-command-three-policies","One Command, Three Policies, Zero Duplication","Preflight, cut and ship each worked alone before one command composed them. Why the composition layer is forty lines, and how the scrollback became the record.","2026-07-21T17:20:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-command-three-policies-hero.jpg","Design and Architecture","The EkoHacks CLI",[324,325,326,327],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":329,"title":330,"description":331,"date":332,"author":6,"image":333,"readingMinutes":199,"category":321,"project":198,"tags":334,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fone-way-to-fail","One Way to Fail","Closing the convergence so an upload fails in the same error shape as every other call, mostly by deleting the code that made the two shapes differ.","2026-07-20T10:05:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-way-to-fail-hero.jpg",[335,204,336],"design","error handling",{"path":338,"title":339,"description":340,"date":341,"author":6,"image":342,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":343,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fready-to-ship-not-ready-to-release","Ready to Ship, Not Ready to Release","Most teams hide a delay between saying done and being able to ship. Being ready to release at any moment, and why our deploy ships the commit that was tested.","2026-07-09T10:02:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fready-to-ship-hero.jpg",[220,259,231],{"path":345,"title":346,"description":347,"date":348,"author":6,"image":349,"readingMinutes":215,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":350,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-is-the-wrong-argument","Rebase or Merge Is the Wrong Argument","Both commands reconcile the same commits and hit the same conflicts. What differs is when you resolve them. The loud argument hides a quiet one: long branches.","2026-07-09T09:30:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-hero.jpg",[219,220,221],{"path":352,"title":353,"description":354,"date":355,"author":6,"image":356,"readingMinutes":234,"category":321,"project":217,"tags":357,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Freconstructing-the-past","Reconstructing the Past","Connect a repository with a year of history and a trend curve reaches back months. How a system shows a past it never saw, recomputed from one source of truth.","2026-07-07T21:26:35.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Freconstructing-the-past-hero.jpg",[335,358,359],"data","onboarding",{"path":361,"title":362,"description":363,"date":364,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":189,"project":322,"tags":365,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fretiring-a-board","Retiring a Board: User Testing a CLI Before You Ship It","An afternoon of user testing against a real Linear board, and the four findings a green test suite could never have written.","2026-08-01T10:20:00.000Z",[366,204,325,367],"user-testing","linear",{"path":369,"title":370,"description":371,"date":372,"author":6,"image":373,"readingMinutes":290,"category":189,"project":217,"tags":374,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fretrofitting-testing-without-mocks","Retrofitting Testing Without Mocks","The server had 37 vi.mock calls and no test that touched the database. Five steps to remove every mock with Nullables: real logic, real data, sociable tests.","2026-04-17T12:30:37.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fretrofitting-without-mocks-hero.jpg",[205,204,375],"mocks",{"path":377,"title":378,"description":379,"date":380,"author":6,"image":381,"readingMinutes":251,"category":227,"project":322,"tags":382,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Frun-it-by-hand-until-it-is-boring","Run It by Hand Until It Is Boring","Releasing EkoLite was a document before it was a command, and stayed one until running it by hand had nothing left to teach us. Why we automate operations last.","2026-07-21T17:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Frun-it-by-hand-hero.jpg",[383,384,385,327],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":387,"title":388,"description":389,"date":355,"author":6,"image":390,"readingMinutes":234,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":391,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsafe-to-run-twice","Safe to Run Twice","Connect the same repository twice, or let a webhook redeliver an event. Idempotency in two halves: writes through a natural key, side effects behind a ledger.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fsafe-to-run-twice-hero.jpg",[231,260,392],"webhooks",{"path":394,"title":395,"description":396,"date":397,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":398,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsource-or-execute","Source or Execute","Our dojo laptops are provisioned by one bash script of nearly twelve hundred lines. Splitting it into modules is two decisions, not one, and we chose a hybrid.","2026-08-01T09:00:00.000Z",[399,400,324,231],"shell","provisioning",{"path":402,"title":403,"description":404,"date":201,"author":405,"image":406,"readingMinutes":407,"category":321,"project":408,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fstage-then-transform-why-your-crawler-should-never-touch-production-tables","Stage, Then Transform: Crawlers Stay Out of Production","Where data from an external source lands first decides whether the pipeline still works in six months. The staging pattern, shown with a crawler we build now.","EkoHacks","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fstage-then-transform-hero.jpg",1,"Propi",{"path":410,"title":411,"description":412,"date":413,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":189,"project":228,"tags":414,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":290},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftelling-the-machine-what-the-page-is","Telling the Machine What the Page Is","Structured data on every post, and a test that runs after each build and fails it when a page lacks what a crawler needs. First run: forty nine problems.","2026-08-22T23:30:00.000Z",[230,205,232],{"path":416,"title":417,"description":418,"date":419,"author":6,"image":420,"readingMinutes":180,"category":189,"project":201,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftest-driven-development-is-not-about-tests","Test Driven Development Is Not About Tests","TDD is widely misunderstood. It is not a testing strategy. It is a design tool that produces simpler, more focused code by making you think before you type.","2026-02-01T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftdd-not-about-tests-hero.jpg",{"path":422,"title":423,"description":424,"date":425,"author":6,"image":426,"readingMinutes":290,"category":189,"project":322,"tags":427,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftesting-a-release-without-releasing","Testing a Release Without Releasing","How to test watch CI until green, then merge, hundreds of times a day with no CI in sight. Nullables, output trackers, and a fake that copies GitHub shapes.","2026-07-21T17:10:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftesting-a-release-without-releasing-hero.jpg",[204,428,429,327],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":431,"title":432,"description":433,"date":434,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":189,"project":217,"tags":435,"draft":192,"series":437,"seriesOrder":407},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-best-coverage-number-in-the-room","The Best Coverage Number in the Room","Same commit, same spec, same test count. The mocked suite ran 5.6 times faster, covered 3.5 fewer points of real code, and posted the best branch coverage.","2026-08-27T12:00:00.000Z",[205,204,375,436],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":439,"title":440,"description":441,"date":442,"author":6,"image":443,"readingMinutes":290,"category":321,"project":198,"tags":444,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-bug-that-resolved-successfully","The Bug That Resolved Successfully","A bug that threw no error and dropped every document because the client guessed a collection from a name. The fix was one honest field on the ready message.","2026-07-05T10:16:16.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fbug-resolved-successfully-hero.jpg",[445,446,205,447],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":449,"title":450,"description":451,"date":452,"author":6,"image":453,"readingMinutes":215,"category":189,"project":198,"tags":454,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-clock-that-learned-to-walk","The Clock That Learned to Walk","A stub clock that teleported to the end of the window instead of passing through time, so a timer set inside another never fired. A real clock model fixed it.","2026-07-07T22:44:42.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-clock-that-learned-to-walk-hero.jpg",[204,205,455],"refactoring",{"path":457,"title":458,"description":459,"date":460,"author":6,"image":461,"readingMinutes":290,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":462,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-conflict-nobody-wrote","The Conflict Nobody Wrote","A pull request conflicted in a file neither author had typed into. A generated document recorded test line numbers, both branches shifted them, git merges text.","2026-07-09T09:14:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-conflict-nobody-wrote-hero.jpg",[219,220,221],{"path":464,"title":465,"description":466,"date":467,"author":6,"image":468,"readingMinutes":469,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":470,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-container-that-wasnt-there","The Container That Wasn't There","Production served HTML where the browser asked for JavaScript, and nothing in our code had changed. A week debugging a platform we cannot see inside.","2026-07-17T14:30:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcontainer-that-wasnt-there-hero.jpg",8,[231,471,472,473],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":475,"title":476,"description":477,"date":478,"author":6,"image":479,"readingMinutes":215,"category":321,"project":198,"tags":480,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-design-we-never-drew","The Design We Never Drew","How the upload path in EkoLite arrived rather than being drawn, and the two habits, test first and integrate always, that turn an emerging shape into a design.","2026-07-20T10:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-design-we-never-drew-hero.jpg",[335,447,481],"continuous integration",{"path":483,"title":484,"description":485,"date":486,"author":6,"image":487,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":201,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-dojo-way-deliberate-practice-for-software-developers","The Dojo Way: Deliberate Practice for Software Developers","Most developers learn on the job, and the job rarely teaches the fundamentals. The Dojo borrows from martial arts to make a space for deliberate practice.","2026-01-22T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-dojo-way-hero.jpg",{"path":489,"title":490,"description":491,"date":492,"author":6,"image":493,"readingMinutes":199,"category":216,"project":217,"tags":494,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-done-column-is-a-syllabus","The Done Column Is a Syllabus","We asked Linear for every story our team has ever finished, all 187 of them, and read the column end to end. It turned out to be the course we teach.","2026-07-31T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fdone-column-syllabus-hero.jpg",[495,496,497,367],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":499,"title":500,"description":501,"date":502,"author":6,"image":503,"readingMinutes":290,"category":189,"project":322,"tags":504,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-failing-test-is-the-review","The Failing Test Is the Review","Every behaviour in the CLI landed as two commits: a red test, then the code that makes it green. Reviewing intent before implementation, and why red never bent.","2026-07-21T17:05:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-failing-test-is-the-review-hero.jpg",[447,505,506,327],"red-first","code-review",{"path":508,"title":509,"description":510,"date":511,"author":6,"image":512,"readingMinutes":290,"category":227,"project":322,"tags":513,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-first-real-run-said-no","The First Real Run Said No","The tool's first real outing ended with FAIL and a stopped rail, and we count it as a success. A naive sounding question then uncovered a quiet failure mode.","2026-07-21T17:25:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-first-real-run-said-no-hero.jpg",[384,514,219,327],"preflight",{"path":516,"title":517,"description":518,"date":519,"author":6,"image":520,"readingMinutes":290,"category":227,"project":198,"tags":521,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-five-second-goodbye","The Five Second Goodbye","A shutdown that arms its own deadline so a hung close cannot strand the process, with the policy lifted out of the boot shell so every decision can be tested.","2026-07-05T12:03:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-five-second-goodbye-hero.jpg",[522,204,205],"shutdown",{"path":524,"title":525,"description":526,"date":527,"author":6,"image":528,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":198,"tags":529,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-framework-in-the-description-field","The Framework in the Description Field","Our package called itself a framework, but it could not be installed. The fix was to stop trusting the build and become the stranger who installs the tarball.","2026-07-08T17:28:39.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fframework-description-field-hero.jpg",[530,205,221],"packaging",{"path":532,"title":533,"description":534,"date":535,"author":6,"image":536,"readingMinutes":251,"category":321,"project":322,"tags":537,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-gate-always-asks","The Gate Always Asks","A release automates things you cannot take back, so which of them may a machine do without asking a human? Pauses, and a yes flag that opens no door.","2026-07-21T17:15:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-gate-always-asks-hero.jpg",[383,538,335,327],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":540,"title":541,"description":542,"date":543,"author":6,"image":544,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":545,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-gate-went-red-and-it-was-right","The Gate Went Red, and It Was Right","We added the missing check on our API specification and it failed on its first run, because the file was never a function of the source. A clean machine saw it.","2026-07-09T10:10:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgate-went-red-hero.jpg",[220,231,221],{"path":547,"title":548,"description":549,"date":550,"author":6,"image":551,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":198,"tags":552,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-knock-and-the-axe","The Knock and the Axe","SIGTERM is a request your process can hear and SIGKILL is removal it never sees, and the fixed window between them is exactly where graceful shutdown lives.","2026-07-20T12:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-knock-and-the-axe-hero.jpg",[522,231,553],"signals",{"path":555,"title":556,"description":557,"date":558,"author":6,"image":559,"readingMinutes":469,"category":216,"project":198,"tags":560,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-line-nothing-could-see","The Line Nothing Could See","Reviewing the reasoning under a refactor, not only the diff. Ask of every line what can observe it, and back each review claim with a test the author can run.","2026-07-07T22:43:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-line-nothing-could-see-hero.jpg",[506,455,561,205],"teaching",{"path":563,"title":564,"description":565,"date":566,"author":6,"image":567,"readingMinutes":215,"category":321,"project":198,"tags":568,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-long-way-round","The Long Way Round","The count a method computes reaches the screen not through its return value but by being written into a collection a client subscribes to, EkoLite's channel.","2026-07-20T11:05:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-long-way-round-hero.jpg",[335,446,204],{"path":570,"title":571,"description":572,"date":573,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":574,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":407},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-page-that-existed-only-when-someone-linked-to-it","The Page That Existed Only When Someone Linked to It","Our blog vanished in production while passing every local check. How we found the cause, fixed it twice, and how the fix gave every page a twin.","2026-08-22T16:00:00.000Z",[230,231,232],{"path":576,"title":577,"description":578,"date":579,"author":6,"image":580,"readingMinutes":469,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":581,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-previews-that-served-production","The Previews That Served Production","Two weeks after the container that was not there, the same impossible error came back. The orphans were our own pull request previews. One diagnosis was wrong.","2026-07-31T17:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpreviews-served-production-hero.jpg",[231,471,472,473],{"path":583,"title":584,"description":585,"date":586,"author":6,"image":587,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":322,"tags":588,"draft":196,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-release-is-the-acceptance-test","The Release Is the Acceptance Test","Not a green suite, not a good demo: a real version of a real package, live on npm, shipped by the tool. What red first tests proved, and what only reality did.","2026-07-21T17:35:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Frelease-acceptance-test-hero.jpg",[384,589,590,327],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":592,"title":593,"description":594,"date":595,"author":6,"image":596,"readingMinutes":199,"category":189,"project":198,"tags":597,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-script-that-never-ran","The Script That Never Ran","Joining two abilities EkoLite already had, a method that runs and a runner that shells out, and proving the join with a nulled runner before any script exists.","2026-07-20T11:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-script-that-never-ran-hero.jpg",[205,204,598],"scriptrunner",{"path":600,"title":601,"description":602,"date":603,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":469,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":604,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":215},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-small-things-the-crawler-notices","The Small Things the Crawler Notices","Speed is the part of findability you can measure on a laptop. Fonts and images we shipped without looking, an error page we did not have, and the numbers after.","2026-08-23T10:00:00.000Z",[230,231,605],"performance",{"path":607,"title":608,"description":609,"date":610,"author":6,"image":611,"readingMinutes":199,"category":189,"project":198,"tags":612,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-test-that-could-not-fail","The Test That Could Not Fail","A green test that stayed green when we deleted the behaviour it was named after, and the single blunt question that exposed it.","2026-07-20T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftest-that-could-not-fail-hero.jpg",[205,204,206],{"path":614,"title":615,"description":616,"date":617,"author":405,"image":618,"readingMinutes":215,"category":216,"project":619,"tags":620,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-website-that-told-the-same-story-twice","The Website That Told the Same Story Twice","Our home and story pages felt like one story across two screens. Rather than argue by taste, we modelled our words as data and asked a database one question.","2026-06-06","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fwebsite-same-story-twice-hero.jpg","The Website",[221,621,358,561],"content",{"path":623,"title":624,"description":625,"date":442,"author":6,"image":626,"readingMinutes":290,"category":189,"project":198,"tags":627,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-words-we-work-in","The Words We Work In","The vocabulary we test with, Nullable, embedded stub, stub object, output tracking, each grounded in real code so a review points at a line, never at taste.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-words-we-work-in-hero.jpg",[204,205,221,561],{"path":629,"title":630,"description":631,"date":617,"author":405,"image":632,"readingMinutes":251,"category":216,"project":619,"tags":633,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-workflow-is-the-lesson","The Workflow Is the Lesson","We are moving our content out of a cloud CMS and into git. Why a school that teaches a keyboard first way of working should practise it in the open, and how.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fworkflow-lesson-hero.png",[634,219,561,635],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":637,"title":638,"description":639,"date":640,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":189,"project":217,"tags":641,"draft":192,"series":437,"seriesOrder":180},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftwenty-six-more-tests-four-fewer-behaviours","Twenty Six More Tests, Four Fewer Behaviours","Removing the mocks grew the suite from 44 tests to 70 and quietly deleted four behaviours, every one of them a failure path. Test count is not coverage.","2026-08-28T09:00:00.000Z",[205,204,375,436],{"path":643,"title":644,"description":645,"date":646,"author":6,"image":647,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":648,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftwo-hands-on-one-lever","Two Hands on One Lever","Our deploy failed with a deploy already in progress while the commit it wanted to ship was going live. Anatomy of a benign collision and a trigger safe to lose.","2026-07-23T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftwo-hands-on-one-lever-hero.jpg",[231,260,649],"observability",{"path":651,"title":652,"description":653,"date":654,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":189,"project":217,"tags":655,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftwo-hundred-and-fourteen-undecided","Two Hundred and Fourteen Undecided","An accessibility scanner found three faults on the dojo, we fixed them, and the next run came back clean. The clean run was the dangerous one.","2026-08-22T12:00:00.000Z",[635,205,335,221],{"path":657,"title":658,"description":659,"date":660,"author":6,"image":661,"readingMinutes":234,"category":321,"project":217,"tags":662,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftwo-validators-one-gate","Two Validators, One Gate","Validating one request body twice, with a Fastify schema and again with Zod, is not double safety. The second gate is unreachable. One validator; Zod for types.","2026-07-07T22:06:46.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftwo-validators-one-gate-hero.jpg",[335,663,664],"validation","typescript",{"path":666,"title":667,"description":668,"date":669,"author":6,"image":670,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":217,"tags":671,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwe-are-all-doing-asynchronous-integration","We Are All Doing Asynchronous Integration","A continuous integration server is not continuous integration. The forge tests your work after you have moved on. Our build takes three minutes; no excuse.","2026-07-09T09:46:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fasynchronous-integration-hero.jpg",[220,231,259],{"path":673,"title":674,"description":675,"date":676,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":677,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":199},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwe-promised-not-to-watch-then-we-needed-to-see","We Promised Not to Watch. Then We Needed to See.","Our privacy policy said no analytics, and it was true. Adding a page counter meant reopening that promise in public: what we chose, what we refused, one commit.","2026-08-24T10:00:00.000Z",[241,231,678],"analytics",{"path":680,"title":681,"description":682,"date":683,"author":6,"image":684,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":322,"tags":685,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhat-one-real-release-taught-us","What One Real Release Taught Us in an Afternoon","Two crashes and one near miss within minutes of touching the real GitHub, because we had refused to fake it. The race we never met, the merge that never came.","2026-07-21T17:30:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-real-release-hero.jpg",[384,686,204,327],"failure-modes",{"path":688,"title":689,"description":690,"date":691,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":692,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":251},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhat-the-link-looks-like-before-anyone-clicks","What the Link Looks Like Before Anyone Clicks","A link to any page on our site showed up as a bare rectangle of text. The share image is part of the page, and the build now puts one on every route.","2026-08-22T22:00:00.000Z",[230,231,232],{"path":694,"title":695,"description":696,"date":697,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":215,"category":189,"project":217,"tags":698,"draft":192,"series":437,"seriesOrder":234},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhat-the-nullable-gave-back","What the Nullable Gave Back","One file, seven behaviours held fixed, the database swapped for a Nullable: about 180 times less time inside the tests, and coverage flat to two decimals.","2026-08-29T09:00:00.000Z",[205,204,375,436],{"path":700,"title":701,"description":702,"date":703,"author":6,"image":201,"readingMinutes":199,"category":227,"project":228,"tags":704,"draft":192,"series":233,"seriesOrder":469},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhat-we-count-and-what-we-refuse-to-know","What We Count, and What We Refuse to Know","Every system that holds anything about a visitor, in one table in the privacy policy. Writing it found a form that no longer existed and one that wrote twice.","2026-08-23T14:00:00.000Z",[241,231,678],{"path":706,"title":707,"description":708,"date":709,"author":6,"image":710,"readingMinutes":251,"category":321,"project":201,"tags":201,"draft":192,"series":201,"seriesOrder":201},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhy-good-software-starts-with-the-right-questions","Why Good Software Starts with the Right Questions","Before writing a line of code, the most impactful thing a team can do is ask better questions. Discovery is not a phase to rush. It is the foundation.","2026-01-15T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fright-questions-hero.jpg",1787861096087]