[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":694},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-is-the-wrong-argument":3,"blog-all":192},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":173,"date":174,"description":175,"draft":176,"extension":177,"image":178,"meta":179,"navigation":180,"path":181,"project":182,"readingMinutes":183,"seo":184,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185,"stem":186,"tags":187,"__hash__":191},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-is-the-wrong-argument.md","Rebase or Merge Is the Wrong Argument","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":164},"minimark",[10,14,17,22,30,33,36,40,46,52,60,66,69,75,79,82,93,100,103,107,110,113,122,125,128,132,135,138,141,144,151,154],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Ask a room of engineers whether to rebase a branch or merge the trunk into it and you will get a debate with the emotional register of a religious schism. Ask the same room how old their branches are and the room goes quiet.",[11,15,16],{},"The two questions are related, and only one of them is worth the argument.",[18,19,21],"h2",{"id":20},"they-do-the-same-arithmetic","They do the same arithmetic",[11,23,24,25,29],{},"Both commands perform a three way merge. Git finds the most recent commit the two lines of work have in common, the ",[26,27,28],"strong",{},"merge base",", and then compares each side against it. A line changed on one side and untouched on the other is taken. A line changed identically on both is taken once. A line changed differently on both is a conflict, and git stops and asks.",[11,31,32],{},"That procedure is the same whether you rebase or merge. Neither command is cleverer than the other about text. Neither will spare you a conflict the other would have raised, given the same base and the same tips. Anyone who tells you that rebasing \"avoids conflicts\" has been getting away with short branches.",[11,34,35],{},"What the two commands differ on is the shape of the result, and that turns out to be three separate trade offs wearing one name.",[18,37,39],{"id":38},"what-actually-differs","What actually differs",[11,41,42,45],{},[26,43,44],{},"Where the work ends up."," A rebase takes your commits, sets them aside, moves your branch to the trunk's tip, and replays them one at a time. The commits that come out are not the commits that went in. They have the same changes and different identities. A merge leaves your commits exactly where they were and adds one new commit whose job is to record that two lines of history came together.",[11,47,48,51],{},[26,49,50],{},"When you resolve."," Because a rebase replays commit by commit, a conflict is raised once for every one of your commits that touches the contested file. Because a merge reconciles two tips, it is raised once, full stop.",[11,53,54,55,59],{},"Our own quota branch had three commits: a failing test, the implementation that made it pass, and a regeneration of the behaviour document. Only the third touched the document that conflicted, so the rebase asked once and it happened to cost nothing extra. Had we been less lucky, and the file been touched in all three, we would have resolved the same conflict three times, watching our own edits arrive back in front of us like a bad dream. Git has a facility for exactly this, ",[56,57,58],"code",{},"git rerere",", which records how you resolved a conflict and replays your resolution when it recognises the same one again. That it exists at all is a confession about how often people hit this.",[11,61,62,65],{},[26,63,64],{},"What you can do afterwards."," New commit identities mean the branch cannot be pushed normally, only force pushed, because the remote branch and your local one no longer share a tip. That is fine on a branch nobody else has. It is destructive on a branch somebody else has pulled, because their next pull will produce a snarl of duplicated commits.",[11,67,68],{},"That gives us the one rule in this whole area that admits no exceptions and needs no judgement.",[11,70,71,74],{},[26,72,73],{},"Never rewrite history that other people have."," Everything else is preference. This is not.",[18,76,78],{"id":77},"what-history-is-for","What history is for",[11,80,81],{},"Underneath the tooling sits a question people rarely ask out loud: what do you want your history to be able to answer later?",[11,83,84,85,88,89,92],{},"A rebased history is a story about ",[26,86,87],{},"what the code became",". It is linear. Every commit sits on top of a trunk that once existed, ",[56,90,91],{},"git bisect"," walks it without ambiguity, and reading it feels like reading a narrative someone edited for clarity, because it is.",[11,94,95,96,99],{},"A merged history is a record of ",[26,97,98],{},"what actually happened",". It preserves the fact that this work was developed alongside that work, and that on Thursday they were reconciled. It is truer and it is harder to read, and on a busy repository the graph turns into cable spaghetti.",[11,101,102],{},"Neither is dishonest. They answer different questions. Choose by which question your team asks more often, and notice that the answer usually correlates with how many people touch the repository at once.",[18,104,106],{"id":105},"the-option-that-quietly-destroys-evidence","The option that quietly destroys evidence",[11,108,109],{},"There is a third button on the forge, and it deserves naming because it is the default in many teams and it is not neutral.",[11,111,112],{},"A squash merge takes every commit on your branch, flattens them into one, and puts that on the trunk. The branch's internal history is gone.",[11,114,115,116,121],{},"For a branch of six commits named \"wip\", \"fix\", \"fix again\", that is a mercy. But we work in a way where the history of a branch carries information we deliberately put there. A fix arrives as a pair of commits: first the failing test, committed red, then the code that turns it green. That pairing is the evidence that the test was written before the code and that it genuinely failed without it, which is the only thing separating ",[117,118,120],"a",{"href":119},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftest-driven-development-is-not-about-tests","test driven development"," from writing tests afterwards and hoping.",[11,123,124],{},"Squash that branch and the pair becomes one commit containing a test and its implementation, indistinguishable from the work of someone who wrote the code first and reverse engineered a test to cover it. The claim survives. The proof does not.",[11,126,127],{},"So the squash question is not about tidiness either. It is: does the sequence of your commits mean something? If it does, do not flatten it. If it does not, ask why you are producing commits that mean nothing.",[18,129,131],{"id":130},"why-the-argument-is-loud","Why the argument is loud",[11,133,134],{},"Here is the thing worth taking away. Every cost above scales with divergence.",[11,136,137],{},"The number of times a rebase asks about the same conflict scales with how many of your commits touched the file. Whether a force push endangers anyone scales with how long the branch has been public. Whether the merge graph becomes unreadable scales with how many branches were open at once. Whether the conflict is hard scales with how far the trunk moved while you were away.",[11,139,140],{},"Shrink the divergence and every one of these shrinks with it. On a branch that is four hours old and three commits long, rebase and merge produce the same practical outcome in the same amount of time, and the choice really is a matter of taste. On a branch that is three weeks old, the choice is a decision about how much pain to take and in what shape, and the team argues about it fiercely because it hurts, and because arguing about the tool is more comfortable than admitting that the branch should never have been allowed to get that old.",[11,142,143],{},"The practice that dissolves the argument is the one this series is about: bring the trunk into your work every few hours, so that there is never much to reconcile, and so the reconciliation is boring however you spell it.",[11,145,146,147,150],{},"Our recommendation for the Dojo, where a slice of work lives for a day at most and belongs to one person, is to rebase onto ",[56,148,149],{},"origin\u002Fmain"," and force push the branch, keeping the trunk linear and the red and green pair intact. That recommendation is worth exactly as much as the premise underneath it. On the day a branch of ours lives for three weeks, the right answer will change, and the right response will not be to change the answer.",[152,153],"hr",{},[11,155,156,160,161],{},[157,158,159],"em",{},"The practice of continuous integration described in this series is set out in the continuous integration chapter of"," The Art of Agile Development ",[157,162,163],{},"by James Shore and Shane Warden.",{"title":165,"searchDepth":166,"depth":166,"links":167},"",2,[168,169,170,171,172],{"id":20,"depth":166,"text":21},{"id":38,"depth":166,"text":39},{"id":77,"depth":166,"text":78},{"id":105,"depth":166,"text":106},{"id":130,"depth":166,"text":131},"Craft and Practice","2026-07-09T09:30:00.000Z","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.",false,"md","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-hero.jpg",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Frebase-or-merge-is-the-wrong-argument","The Dojo",6,{"title":5,"description":175},null,"blog\u002Frebase-or-merge-is-the-wrong-argument",[188,189,190],"git","continuous-integration","craft","JsU87vwLyGJgEw26w-V0V5tSJNpWyMUyO2EvFdTbYqQ",[193,200,214,222,234,241,250,257,264,273,281,290,297,304,317,326,333,335,344,352,360,370,377,385,393,399,404,413,421,431,439,446,457,465,471,481,490,498,506,514,522,529,537,545,552,558,565,574,582,589,596,605,611,619,625,633,639,648,655,662,670,676,682,688],{"path":194,"title":195,"description":196,"date":197,"author":6,"image":198,"readingMinutes":183,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":199,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[188,189,190],{"path":201,"title":202,"description":203,"date":204,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":208,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":213},"\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",7,"Shipping and Operations","ekohacks.com",[209,210,211],"seo","operations","nuxt","From Invisible to Findable",3,{"path":215,"title":216,"description":217,"date":218,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":219,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":221},"\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",[220,210,211],"privacy",9,{"path":223,"title":224,"description":225,"date":226,"author":6,"image":227,"readingMinutes":205,"category":228,"project":229,"tags":230,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[231,232,233],"nullables","testing","websocket",{"path":235,"title":236,"description":237,"date":238,"author":6,"image":239,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":185,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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":242,"title":243,"description":244,"date":245,"author":6,"image":246,"readingMinutes":240,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":247,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[210,248,249],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":251,"title":252,"description":253,"date":254,"author":255,"image":256,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":185,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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":258,"title":259,"description":260,"date":261,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":262,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":263},"\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",[209,210,190],0,{"path":265,"title":266,"description":267,"date":268,"author":6,"image":269,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":270,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[190,271,272],"fastify","security",{"path":274,"title":275,"description":276,"date":277,"author":6,"image":278,"readingMinutes":279,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":280,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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,[188,189,210],{"path":282,"title":283,"description":284,"date":285,"author":6,"image":286,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":287,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[190,288,289],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":291,"title":292,"description":293,"date":294,"author":6,"image":295,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":296,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[189,210,232],{"path":298,"title":299,"description":300,"date":301,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":302,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":166},"\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",[209,210,211,303],"netlify",{"path":305,"title":306,"description":307,"date":308,"author":6,"image":309,"readingMinutes":240,"category":310,"project":311,"tags":312,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[313,314,315,316],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":318,"title":319,"description":320,"date":321,"author":6,"image":322,"readingMinutes":205,"category":310,"project":229,"tags":323,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[324,231,325],"design","error handling",{"path":327,"title":328,"description":329,"date":330,"author":6,"image":331,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":332,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[189,248,210],{"path":181,"title":5,"description":175,"date":174,"author":6,"image":178,"readingMinutes":183,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":334,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},[188,189,190],{"path":336,"title":337,"description":338,"date":339,"author":6,"image":340,"readingMinutes":213,"category":310,"project":182,"tags":341,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[324,342,343],"data","onboarding",{"path":345,"title":346,"description":347,"date":348,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":228,"project":311,"tags":349,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[350,231,314,351],"user-testing","linear",{"path":353,"title":354,"description":355,"date":356,"author":6,"image":357,"readingMinutes":279,"category":228,"project":182,"tags":358,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[232,231,359],"mocks",{"path":361,"title":362,"description":363,"date":364,"author":6,"image":365,"readingMinutes":240,"category":206,"project":311,"tags":366,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[367,368,369,316],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":371,"title":372,"description":373,"date":339,"author":6,"image":374,"readingMinutes":213,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":375,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[210,249,376],"webhooks",{"path":378,"title":379,"description":380,"date":381,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":382,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[383,384,313,210],"shell","provisioning",{"path":386,"title":387,"description":388,"date":185,"author":389,"image":390,"readingMinutes":391,"category":310,"project":392,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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":394,"title":395,"description":396,"date":397,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":228,"project":207,"tags":398,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":279},"\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",[209,232,211],{"path":119,"title":400,"description":401,"date":402,"author":6,"image":403,"readingMinutes":166,"category":228,"project":185,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"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":405,"title":406,"description":407,"date":408,"author":6,"image":409,"readingMinutes":279,"category":228,"project":311,"tags":410,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[231,411,412,316],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":414,"title":415,"description":416,"date":417,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":228,"project":182,"tags":418,"draft":176,"series":420,"seriesOrder":391},"\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",[232,231,359,419],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":422,"title":423,"description":424,"date":425,"author":6,"image":426,"readingMinutes":279,"category":310,"project":229,"tags":427,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[428,429,232,430],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":432,"title":433,"description":434,"date":435,"author":6,"image":436,"readingMinutes":183,"category":228,"project":229,"tags":437,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[231,232,438],"refactoring",{"path":440,"title":441,"description":442,"date":443,"author":6,"image":444,"readingMinutes":279,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":445,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[188,189,190],{"path":447,"title":448,"description":449,"date":450,"author":6,"image":451,"readingMinutes":452,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":453,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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,[210,454,455,456],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":458,"title":459,"description":460,"date":461,"author":6,"image":462,"readingMinutes":183,"category":310,"project":229,"tags":463,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[324,430,464],"continuous integration",{"path":466,"title":467,"description":468,"date":469,"author":6,"image":470,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":185,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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":472,"title":473,"description":474,"date":475,"author":6,"image":476,"readingMinutes":205,"category":173,"project":182,"tags":477,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[478,479,480,351],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":482,"title":483,"description":484,"date":485,"author":6,"image":486,"readingMinutes":279,"category":228,"project":311,"tags":487,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[430,488,489,316],"red-first","code-review",{"path":491,"title":492,"description":493,"date":494,"author":6,"image":495,"readingMinutes":279,"category":206,"project":311,"tags":496,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[368,497,188,316],"preflight",{"path":499,"title":500,"description":501,"date":502,"author":6,"image":503,"readingMinutes":279,"category":206,"project":229,"tags":504,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[505,231,232],"shutdown",{"path":507,"title":508,"description":509,"date":510,"author":6,"image":511,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":229,"tags":512,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[513,232,190],"packaging",{"path":515,"title":516,"description":517,"date":518,"author":6,"image":519,"readingMinutes":240,"category":310,"project":311,"tags":520,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[367,521,324,316],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":523,"title":524,"description":525,"date":526,"author":6,"image":527,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":528,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[189,210,190],{"path":530,"title":531,"description":532,"date":533,"author":6,"image":534,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":229,"tags":535,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[505,210,536],"signals",{"path":538,"title":539,"description":540,"date":541,"author":6,"image":542,"readingMinutes":452,"category":173,"project":229,"tags":543,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[489,438,544,232],"teaching",{"path":546,"title":547,"description":548,"date":549,"author":6,"image":550,"readingMinutes":183,"category":310,"project":229,"tags":551,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[324,429,231],{"path":553,"title":554,"description":555,"date":556,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":557,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":391},"\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",[209,210,211],{"path":559,"title":560,"description":561,"date":562,"author":6,"image":563,"readingMinutes":452,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":564,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[210,454,455,456],{"path":566,"title":567,"description":568,"date":569,"author":6,"image":570,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":311,"tags":571,"draft":180,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[368,572,573,316],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":575,"title":576,"description":577,"date":578,"author":6,"image":579,"readingMinutes":205,"category":228,"project":229,"tags":580,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[232,231,581],"scriptrunner",{"path":583,"title":584,"description":585,"date":586,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":452,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":587,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":183},"\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",[209,210,588],"performance",{"path":590,"title":591,"description":592,"date":593,"author":6,"image":594,"readingMinutes":205,"category":228,"project":229,"tags":595,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[232,231,233],{"path":597,"title":598,"description":599,"date":600,"author":389,"image":601,"readingMinutes":183,"category":173,"project":602,"tags":603,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[190,604,342,544],"content",{"path":606,"title":607,"description":608,"date":425,"author":6,"image":609,"readingMinutes":279,"category":228,"project":229,"tags":610,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[231,232,190,544],{"path":612,"title":613,"description":614,"date":600,"author":389,"image":615,"readingMinutes":240,"category":173,"project":602,"tags":616,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[617,188,544,618],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":620,"title":621,"description":622,"date":623,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":228,"project":182,"tags":624,"draft":176,"series":420,"seriesOrder":166},"\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",[232,231,359,419],{"path":626,"title":627,"description":628,"date":629,"author":6,"image":630,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":631,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[210,249,632],"observability",{"path":634,"title":635,"description":636,"date":637,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":228,"project":182,"tags":638,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[618,232,324,190],{"path":640,"title":641,"description":642,"date":643,"author":6,"image":644,"readingMinutes":213,"category":310,"project":182,"tags":645,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[324,646,647],"validation","typescript",{"path":649,"title":650,"description":651,"date":652,"author":6,"image":653,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":182,"tags":654,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[189,210,248],{"path":656,"title":657,"description":658,"date":659,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":660,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":205},"\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",[220,210,661],"analytics",{"path":663,"title":664,"description":665,"date":666,"author":6,"image":667,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":311,"tags":668,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",[368,669,231,316],"failure-modes",{"path":671,"title":672,"description":673,"date":674,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":675,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":240},"\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",[209,210,211],{"path":677,"title":678,"description":679,"date":680,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":183,"category":228,"project":182,"tags":681,"draft":176,"series":420,"seriesOrder":213},"\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",[232,231,359,419],{"path":683,"title":684,"description":685,"date":686,"author":6,"image":185,"readingMinutes":205,"category":206,"project":207,"tags":687,"draft":176,"series":212,"seriesOrder":452},"\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",[220,210,661],{"path":689,"title":690,"description":691,"date":692,"author":6,"image":693,"readingMinutes":240,"category":310,"project":185,"tags":185,"draft":176,"series":185,"seriesOrder":185},"\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",1787861096091]