[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":676},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Ffifty-posts-and-an-empty-robots-txt":3,"blog-all":175},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":155,"date":156,"description":157,"draft":158,"extension":159,"image":160,"meta":161,"navigation":162,"path":163,"project":164,"readingMinutes":165,"seo":166,"series":167,"seriesOrder":168,"stem":169,"tags":170,"__hash__":174},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ffifty-posts-and-an-empty-robots-txt.md","Fifty Posts and an Empty robots.txt","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":144},"minimark",[10,14,17,22,33,40,43,46,49,53,56,59,62,65,88,91,95,98,101,104,107,111,114,118,121,125,128,131,134,138,141],[11,12,13],"p",{},"It started with a question in passing. Do we have analytics on the site? We did not know, which is an answer of its own. So we went and looked, and the looking turned into an audit, and the audit turned into this series.",[11,15,16],{},"Here is what a crawler found when it visited ekohacks.com on the twenty first of August, and what Google said the morning after.",[18,19,21],"h2",{"id":20},"one-byte","One byte",[11,23,24,28,29,32],{},[25,26,27],"code",{},"public\u002Frobots.txt"," is one byte long. It contains a newline. Nothing forbids a crawler, nothing invites one, and nothing points at a sitemap, because there is no sitemap. ",[25,30,31],{},"\u002Fsitemap.xml"," returns 404.",[11,34,35,36,39],{},"We asked the site for sixty two routes: the pages, the legal documents, and every post in the Ideas feed. Not one of them carries an ",[25,37,38],{},"og:image",", so a link to any of them shared in a chat or on a social network shows as a bare rectangle of text. Not one carries a canonical URL. Forty seven of the sixty two have a description longer than 160 characters, the median is 213 and the longest is 414, which means a search engine cuts nearly every one of them off mid sentence.",[11,41,42],{},"There is no analytics script. None. Our privacy policy says so, in a sentence we wrote with some pride: we do not use cookies, analytics tools, tracking pixels, or any automated data collection technologies. It is true, and it means we have no idea whether anyone has read any of the fifty posts in the repository.",[11,44,45],{},"The home page loads four font families from a remote provider, 241 kilobytes of type, while two more families sit in the repository as local files that nothing references. The largest element on the home page takes four and a half seconds to appear. On the Dojos page it takes almost nine.",[11,47,48],{},"Bing has been told the site exists, there is a verification file from July. Google had not been, until that evening.",[18,50,52],{"id":51},"what-google-said","What Google said",[11,54,55],{},"This section was added on the twenty second of August, the morning after this post went live. Search Console was verified on the evening of the twenty first, and we pulled the numbers through its API rather than read them off a dashboard, so that the same script can pull them again at the end of the series and nobody has to trust a screenshot.",[11,57,58],{},"In the twenty eight days to the twentieth of August, Google showed the site 174 times and six people clicked. All six landed on the home page. The average position was 21, which is the third page of results. Every query that surfaced us was a misspelling of the name or a near miss for something else: \"eco hacks\", \"enviro hacking\", \"okhack\". Not one query named a thing we write about.",[11,60,61],{},"Over the whole history Google holds, fifteen months, the home page took 91 clicks. The fifty posts in the Ideas feed took none. Not one click from a search engine, ever, on a post.",[11,63,64],{},"Then we asked about coverage, one route at a time. Of the sixty two routes, Google has 26 in its index. The other 36 it has never visited. They carry no crawl date, because nothing ever told Google they exist. Among the unvisited are every landing page except the home page: the story, the dojos, the services, the Ideas listing itself, the contact page, the curriculum, and the privacy policy.",[11,66,67,68,71,72,75,76,79,80,83,84,87],{},"And the routes Google does hold, it mostly holds twice. On the live site every address except the home page answers with a redirect to a twin that ends in a slash: ",[25,69,70],{},"\u002Fstory"," sends you to ",[25,73,74],{},"\u002Fstory\u002F",", and ",[25,77,78],{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fnever-break-the-build"," to ",[25,81,82],{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fnever-break-the-build\u002F",". The build writes each page as an ",[25,85,86],{},"index.html"," inside a folder, and the host prefers the folder's address. Every internal link on the site uses the form without the slash. So every click inside the site is a redirect hop, Google has two addresses for eighteen of the pages it kept, and no page tells it which one is real. We had not noticed, because our own audit ran against the development server, which does not redirect. The live site does.",[11,89,90],{},"That is day zero. Six clicks, twenty six of sixty two pages indexed, and two addresses for most of them.",[18,92,94],{"id":93},"the-score-was-100","The score was 100",[11,96,97],{},"Here is the part that made us want to write this down. We ran Lighthouse on five pages. Its SEO score was 100 on every one of them.",[11,99,100],{},"That is not a contradiction, it is a definition. Lighthouse checks the page it is given: is there a title, a description, is the text readable, are links crawlable, is the viewport set. Every page passes, because every page is well formed. What the score cannot see is everything that makes a page findable: whether a list of pages exists for a crawler to read, whether the page has ever been submitted anywhere, what the link looks like in the place a reader first meets it, and whether anyone has arrived. A perfect score on a page nobody can reach is a perfect score on a locked door. Six clicks and a score of 100 are the same fact seen from two sides.",[11,102,103],{},"This is the reframe the series rests on. Discoverability is not a marketing task that happens after the build. It is an output of the build, in the same way a passing test is. The list of pages that exist, the map that describes them, the image and description that travel with each link, the structured data that says what a page is: all of it can be produced by the same process that produces the HTML, and checked by the same process that checks the code. Where it is hand maintained, it drifts. Where it is absent, a good score hides the absence.",[11,105,106],{},"We know this because we have already met it once. Our blog and legal pages come from a content database that does not exist in production at request time, so any page the build did not prerender simply was not there. We fixed it by enumerating the content files at build time. That story is the next post. The post after it is about the twin addresses, which, it turns out, the same fix created. Only then does the enumeration go on to feed the sitemap, because a map has to list one address per page, and today we have two.",[18,108,110],{"id":109},"what-we-will-not-claim","What we will not claim",[11,112,113],{},"We are not going to tell you this site became the best at anything. We cannot measure that and you could not check it. What we can do is write down the numbers on day zero, which this post has just done, make one change at a time, and write down the numbers again at the end. What moved is what we will report, and what did not move will be in the same paragraph.",[18,115,117],{"id":116},"the-rules","The rules",[11,119,120],{},"Each post in the series covers one action that has shipped. The change is the evidence, and we will show the diff or the configuration rather than describe it. Every post ends with something we measured. Nothing is written before it ships, and the date on each post is the date the change went live. If you read our commit history on the working branch, it reads like this series: the change, then the post about the change.",[18,122,124],{"id":123},"what-follows","What follows",[11,126,127],{},"The first half is about being findable. A page that only existed when someone linked to it, and the twin address that fix gave every page but one. One address per page, declared as canonical, before anything else is built on top. A sitemap and robots file drawn by the build from the same list that drives prerendering. The image and title that travel with a link. Structured data, and a test that fails the build when a page is missing any of it. Then the smaller things a crawler notices: fonts, the 404 page, old addresses that still need to land somewhere.",[11,129,130],{},"The second half is about seeing who comes, and what that costs the reader. We made a promise in our privacy policy and we meant it. We are going to reopen it, in public, and explain what we chose, what we refused to collect, and why the analytics script and the policy change land in the same commit. Then we will publish an inventory of every system that holds anything about a visitor, from the contact form to the newsletter to the payment provider, with what each one holds and for how long. And because our legal pages are markdown in the same repository as the site, we will make them show their own history, so that a policy change is something you can diff.",[11,132,133],{},"The last post is the measurement.",[18,135,137],{"id":136},"what-we-hold-about-you-today","What we hold about you today",[11,139,140],{},"For the record, as of this post. If you fill in the contact form or sign up for the newsletter, we hold what you typed. If you book a seat at a dojo, our payment provider holds what a payment requires. Nothing else. No script on this site reports your visit to anyone, including us.",[11,142,143],{},"That will change at post seven. When it does, you will be able to read exactly how, in the commit and in the policy, on the same day.",{"title":145,"searchDepth":146,"depth":146,"links":147},"",2,[148,149,150,151,152,153,154],{"id":20,"depth":146,"text":21},{"id":51,"depth":146,"text":52},{"id":93,"depth":146,"text":94},{"id":109,"depth":146,"text":110},{"id":116,"depth":146,"text":117},{"id":123,"depth":146,"text":124},{"id":136,"depth":146,"text":137},"Shipping and Operations","2026-08-21T14:30:00.000Z","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.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Ffifty-posts-and-an-empty-robots-txt","ekohacks.com",7,{"title":5,"description":157},"From Invisible to Findable",0,"blog\u002Ffifty-posts-and-an-empty-robots-txt",[171,172,173],"seo","operations","craft","SaI6ms13sl66EAB5N4WV6z2YCGNuFWJlVCwhLflHyck",[176,188,196,204,216,223,232,239,241,250,258,267,273,280,293,302,309,316,325,333,341,351,358,366,374,380,386,395,403,413,421,428,439,447,453,463,472,480,488,496,504,511,519,527,534,540,547,556,564,571,578,587,593,601,607,615,621,630,637,644,652,658,664,670],{"path":177,"title":178,"description":179,"date":180,"author":6,"image":181,"readingMinutes":182,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":185,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[186,187,173],"git","continuous-integration",{"path":189,"title":190,"description":191,"date":192,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":193,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":195},"\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",[171,172,194],"nuxt",3,{"path":197,"title":198,"description":199,"date":200,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":201,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":203},"\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",[202,172,194],"privacy",9,{"path":205,"title":206,"description":207,"date":208,"author":6,"image":209,"readingMinutes":165,"category":210,"project":211,"tags":212,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise","An Off Switch, Not a Disguise","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.","2026-07-20T09:05:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-off-switch-not-a-disguise-hero.jpg","Testing and TDD","EkoLite",[213,214,215],"nullables","testing","websocket",{"path":217,"title":218,"description":219,"date":220,"author":6,"image":221,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":160,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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":224,"title":225,"description":226,"date":227,"author":6,"image":228,"readingMinutes":222,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":229,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[172,230,231],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":233,"title":234,"description":235,"date":236,"author":237,"image":238,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":160,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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":163,"title":5,"description":157,"date":156,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":240,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":168},[171,172,173],{"path":242,"title":243,"description":244,"date":245,"author":6,"image":246,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":247,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[173,248,249],"fastify","security",{"path":251,"title":252,"description":253,"date":254,"author":6,"image":255,"readingMinutes":256,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":257,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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,[186,187,172],{"path":259,"title":260,"description":261,"date":262,"author":6,"image":263,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":264,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[173,265,266],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":78,"title":268,"description":269,"date":270,"author":6,"image":271,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":272,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"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",[187,172,214],{"path":274,"title":275,"description":276,"date":277,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":278,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":146},"\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",[171,172,194,279],"netlify",{"path":281,"title":282,"description":283,"date":284,"author":6,"image":285,"readingMinutes":222,"category":286,"project":287,"tags":288,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[289,290,291,292],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":294,"title":295,"description":296,"date":297,"author":6,"image":298,"readingMinutes":165,"category":286,"project":211,"tags":299,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[300,213,301],"design","error handling",{"path":303,"title":304,"description":305,"date":306,"author":6,"image":307,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":308,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[187,230,172],{"path":310,"title":311,"description":312,"date":313,"author":6,"image":314,"readingMinutes":182,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":315,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[186,187,173],{"path":317,"title":318,"description":319,"date":320,"author":6,"image":321,"readingMinutes":195,"category":286,"project":184,"tags":322,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[300,323,324],"data","onboarding",{"path":326,"title":327,"description":328,"date":329,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":210,"project":287,"tags":330,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[331,213,290,332],"user-testing","linear",{"path":334,"title":335,"description":336,"date":337,"author":6,"image":338,"readingMinutes":256,"category":210,"project":184,"tags":339,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[214,213,340],"mocks",{"path":342,"title":343,"description":344,"date":345,"author":6,"image":346,"readingMinutes":222,"category":155,"project":287,"tags":347,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[348,349,350,292],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":352,"title":353,"description":354,"date":320,"author":6,"image":355,"readingMinutes":195,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":356,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[172,231,357],"webhooks",{"path":359,"title":360,"description":361,"date":362,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":363,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[364,365,289,172],"shell","provisioning",{"path":367,"title":368,"description":369,"date":160,"author":370,"image":371,"readingMinutes":372,"category":286,"project":373,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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":375,"title":376,"description":377,"date":378,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":210,"project":164,"tags":379,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":256},"\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",[171,214,194],{"path":381,"title":382,"description":383,"date":384,"author":6,"image":385,"readingMinutes":146,"category":210,"project":160,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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":387,"title":388,"description":389,"date":390,"author":6,"image":391,"readingMinutes":256,"category":210,"project":287,"tags":392,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[213,393,394,292],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":396,"title":397,"description":398,"date":399,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":210,"project":184,"tags":400,"draft":158,"series":402,"seriesOrder":372},"\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",[214,213,340,401],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":404,"title":405,"description":406,"date":407,"author":6,"image":408,"readingMinutes":256,"category":286,"project":211,"tags":409,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[410,411,214,412],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":414,"title":415,"description":416,"date":417,"author":6,"image":418,"readingMinutes":182,"category":210,"project":211,"tags":419,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[213,214,420],"refactoring",{"path":422,"title":423,"description":424,"date":425,"author":6,"image":426,"readingMinutes":256,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":427,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[186,187,173],{"path":429,"title":430,"description":431,"date":432,"author":6,"image":433,"readingMinutes":434,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":435,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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,[172,436,437,438],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":440,"title":441,"description":442,"date":443,"author":6,"image":444,"readingMinutes":182,"category":286,"project":211,"tags":445,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[300,412,446],"continuous integration",{"path":448,"title":449,"description":450,"date":451,"author":6,"image":452,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":160,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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":454,"title":455,"description":456,"date":457,"author":6,"image":458,"readingMinutes":165,"category":183,"project":184,"tags":459,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[460,461,462,332],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":464,"title":465,"description":466,"date":467,"author":6,"image":468,"readingMinutes":256,"category":210,"project":287,"tags":469,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[412,470,471,292],"red-first","code-review",{"path":473,"title":474,"description":475,"date":476,"author":6,"image":477,"readingMinutes":256,"category":155,"project":287,"tags":478,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[349,479,186,292],"preflight",{"path":481,"title":482,"description":483,"date":484,"author":6,"image":485,"readingMinutes":256,"category":155,"project":211,"tags":486,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[487,213,214],"shutdown",{"path":489,"title":490,"description":491,"date":492,"author":6,"image":493,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":211,"tags":494,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[495,214,173],"packaging",{"path":497,"title":498,"description":499,"date":500,"author":6,"image":501,"readingMinutes":222,"category":286,"project":287,"tags":502,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[348,503,300,292],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":505,"title":506,"description":507,"date":508,"author":6,"image":509,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":510,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[187,172,173],{"path":512,"title":513,"description":514,"date":515,"author":6,"image":516,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":211,"tags":517,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[487,172,518],"signals",{"path":520,"title":521,"description":522,"date":523,"author":6,"image":524,"readingMinutes":434,"category":183,"project":211,"tags":525,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[471,420,526,214],"teaching",{"path":528,"title":529,"description":530,"date":531,"author":6,"image":532,"readingMinutes":182,"category":286,"project":211,"tags":533,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[300,411,213],{"path":535,"title":536,"description":537,"date":538,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":539,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":372},"\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",[171,172,194],{"path":541,"title":542,"description":543,"date":544,"author":6,"image":545,"readingMinutes":434,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":546,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[172,436,437,438],{"path":548,"title":549,"description":550,"date":551,"author":6,"image":552,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":287,"tags":553,"draft":162,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[349,554,555,292],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":557,"title":558,"description":559,"date":560,"author":6,"image":561,"readingMinutes":165,"category":210,"project":211,"tags":562,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[214,213,563],"scriptrunner",{"path":565,"title":566,"description":567,"date":568,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":434,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":569,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":182},"\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",[171,172,570],"performance",{"path":572,"title":573,"description":574,"date":575,"author":6,"image":576,"readingMinutes":165,"category":210,"project":211,"tags":577,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[214,213,215],{"path":579,"title":580,"description":581,"date":582,"author":370,"image":583,"readingMinutes":182,"category":183,"project":584,"tags":585,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[173,586,323,526],"content",{"path":588,"title":589,"description":590,"date":407,"author":6,"image":591,"readingMinutes":256,"category":210,"project":211,"tags":592,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[213,214,173,526],{"path":594,"title":595,"description":596,"date":582,"author":370,"image":597,"readingMinutes":222,"category":183,"project":584,"tags":598,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[599,186,526,600],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":602,"title":603,"description":604,"date":605,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":210,"project":184,"tags":606,"draft":158,"series":402,"seriesOrder":146},"\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",[214,213,340,401],{"path":608,"title":609,"description":610,"date":611,"author":6,"image":612,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":613,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[172,231,614],"observability",{"path":616,"title":617,"description":618,"date":619,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":210,"project":184,"tags":620,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[600,214,300,173],{"path":622,"title":623,"description":624,"date":625,"author":6,"image":626,"readingMinutes":195,"category":286,"project":184,"tags":627,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[300,628,629],"validation","typescript",{"path":631,"title":632,"description":633,"date":634,"author":6,"image":635,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":184,"tags":636,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[187,172,230],{"path":638,"title":639,"description":640,"date":641,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":642,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":165},"\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",[202,172,643],"analytics",{"path":645,"title":646,"description":647,"date":648,"author":6,"image":649,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":287,"tags":650,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",[349,651,213,292],"failure-modes",{"path":653,"title":654,"description":655,"date":656,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":657,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":222},"\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",[171,172,194],{"path":659,"title":660,"description":661,"date":662,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":182,"category":210,"project":184,"tags":663,"draft":158,"series":402,"seriesOrder":195},"\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",[214,213,340,401],{"path":665,"title":666,"description":667,"date":668,"author":6,"image":160,"readingMinutes":165,"category":155,"project":164,"tags":669,"draft":158,"series":167,"seriesOrder":434},"\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",[202,172,643],{"path":671,"title":672,"description":673,"date":674,"author":6,"image":675,"readingMinutes":222,"category":286,"project":160,"tags":160,"draft":158,"series":160,"seriesOrder":160},"\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",1787861096089]