[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":854},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-container-that-wasnt-there":3,"blog-all":361},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":343,"date":344,"description":345,"draft":346,"extension":347,"image":348,"meta":349,"navigation":229,"path":350,"project":351,"readingMinutes":261,"seo":352,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353,"stem":354,"tags":355,"__hash__":360},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-container-that-wasnt-there.md","The Container That Wasn't There","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":336},"minimark",[10,14,25,28,31,36,39,42,57,65,72,75,79,89,96,100,103,106,109,112,115,119,122,295,298,302,305,308,311,314,317,320,332],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Our production site died with an error that made no sense.",[15,16,21],"pre",{"className":17,"code":19,"language":20},[18],"language-text","Loading module from \"...\u002F_app\u002Fimmutable\u002Fentry\u002Fapp.Cue0RkPO.js\" was blocked\nbecause of a disallowed MIME type (\"text\u002Fhtml\").\n","text",[22,23,19],"code",{"__ignoreMap":24},"",[11,26,27],{},"The browser asked for JavaScript and was handed HTML. Our single-page app names its chunks by content hash, so the HTML entry point and the assets it names must come from the same build. Somewhere between our deploy and the user's browser, they no longer did. And nothing in our code had changed.",[11,29,30],{},"We host the Dojo on HostStack, a European platform running in eu-central-1. We chose it deliberately, for the same reason we build in the open and teach from our own repositories: we think the European software ecosystem gets better when teams actually build on it, rather than admiring it from a distance while renting from a hyperscaler. This is the story of the week that conviction was tested, and of what came back when we leaned into it instead of away.",[32,33,35],"h2",{"id":34},"debugging-a-machine-you-cannot-see-inside","Debugging a machine you cannot see inside",[11,37,38],{},"A platform outage puts you in an unusual position as an engineer. You have no shell on the box. You cannot list the containers. Everything you know must come through the front door: HTTP responses, deploy logs, and the platform's own API. So we treated the outage the way we teach debugging in the Dojo: stop guessing, start measuring, and write every finding down before moving on.",[11,40,41],{},"The measurements told a strange story.",[11,43,44,45,48,49,52,53,56],{},"Forty fetches of ",[22,46,47],{},"\u002F"," returned two different entry chunks: thirty four naming one build, six naming another. The same asset URL answered 200 to ",[22,50,51],{},"curl"," twenty times in a row, and 404 to a headless Chromium asking moments later. Three consecutive fresh page loads failed on three different sets of assets. And the platform's API reported ",[22,54,55],{},"numInstances: 2"," for a service whose configuration pinned it to exactly one instance.",[11,58,59,60,64],{},"One of those facts alone is a curiosity. Together they are a fingerprint: ",[61,62,63],"strong",{},"two containers, running two different builds, behind one hostname",". A browser was handed the HTML from one container and requested that build's chunks; the request landed on the other container, which had never heard of them, 404ed, and our SPA fallback answered the 404 with HTML. Hence the impossible error.",[11,66,67,68,71],{},"There was a second fingerprint hiding in the deploy logs. Deploys of our main branch were completing in two seconds, every layer cached, including the ",[22,69,70],{},"COPY"," that brings in the source, on commits whose source had demonstrably changed. Branch deploys of the same repository took twenty seconds and built properly. We fingerprinted the served bundle and confirmed the worst version of it: eight merged pull requests had never gone live, days after merging, while every deploy reported success.",[11,73,74],{},"Two bugs, then. An orphan container the platform did not know it was running, and a build cache handing back stale images on precisely the branch that auto-deploys to production.",[32,76,78],{"id":77},"workarounds-first-then-the-report","Workarounds first, then the report",[11,80,81,82,85,86,88],{},"We got ourselves unblocked the unglamorous way. Scaling the service to two instances and back to one forced the orchestrator to reconcile its containers and evicted the orphan. A ",[22,83,84],{},"BUILD_REV"," build argument above the ",[22,87,70],{}," in our Dockerfile broke the poisoned cache chain and forced a genuine build. The site came back. We could have stopped there.",[11,90,91,92,95],{},"But both faults were plainly platform bugs, and both were going to recur, for us and for every other team on the platform. So we wrote the report we would want to receive: service identifiers, deploy ids to look up, the 34-to-6 split of entry hashes, the same-URL 200-versus-404 evidence, the ",[22,93,94],{},"numInstances"," drift against the pinned configuration, the two-second cache-hit builds against twenty-second real ones, and the exact workarounds with our reasoning for why each one worked. Not a complaint. Evidence.",[32,97,99],{"id":98},"what-came-back","What came back",[11,101,102],{},"The reply from HostStack's engineering team opened by calling it one of the most useful bug reports they had received, and then did something better than flattery: it explained both root causes precisely and shipped fixes for both.",[11,104,105],{},"The orphan turned out to be a routing subtlety. For a single-instance service, their proxy routed to a shared internal DNS name that every container of the service registers, and Docker's DNS round-robins across every container holding that name. A leftover container from an old build silently rejoined the rotation. That explained everything we had observed from outside: redeploys replaced only the container the platform tracked, suspend removed the route but not the stray, and scaling to two rewrote the route to an explicit list that happened to exclude the orphan, which is why our workaround worked while the count stayed wrong.",[11,107,108],{},"The stale builds were a race. Their builder cloned the branch by name rather than pinning the commit being deployed, and a merge to an auto-deploying branch could resolve a slightly stale branch tip. Stale source matched a cached layer, and the previous image shipped again under a green tick. Feature branches deploy later, after the ref settles, which is why they always built correctly.",[11,110,111],{},"Five fixes went out on their side: scale-downs now genuinely drain surplus containers, every deploy reaps stray containers carrying the service's identity, the live replica count stops drifting, every build is pinned to the exact commit it deploys and fails loudly on a mismatch, and their generated Dockerfiles gained the same cache-busting move we had reached for by hand. Our specific stale container was removed by name. Every question we asked got a direct answer, and the one feature we wished for, a way to see and evict the containers behind a service, went onto their list.",[11,113,114],{},"Both bugs are the kind that is near impossible to see from inside the platform and merely very difficult to see from outside it. They got fixed because someone outside did the seeing, and someone inside took it seriously.",[32,116,118],{"id":117},"the-reproducible-move","The reproducible move",[11,120,121],{},"You can fingerprint a platform from the outside with nothing but a shell. When a deploy misbehaves, measure before you theorise:",[15,123,127],{"className":124,"code":125,"language":126,"meta":24,"style":24},"language-bash shiki shiki-themes github-dark","# Are two builds serving under one name? Sample the entry chunk.\nfor i in $(seq 1 40); do\n  curl -s https:\u002F\u002Fyour-app.example\u002F | grep -o 'entry\u002F[a-z]*\\.[^\"]*\\.js' | head -1\ndone | sort | uniq -c\n\n# Does the same URL answer differently by container? Count statuses.\nfor i in $(seq 1 20); do\n  curl -s -o \u002Fdev\u002Fnull -w \"%{http_code} %{content_type}\\n\" https:\u002F\u002Fyour-app.example\u002Fknown-asset.js\ndone | sort | uniq -c\n","bash",[22,128,129,138,172,205,224,231,237,259,280],{"__ignoreMap":24},[130,131,134],"span",{"class":132,"line":133},"line",1,[130,135,137],{"class":136},"sAwPA","# Are two builds serving under one name? Sample the entry chunk.\n",[130,139,141,145,149,152,155,159,163,166,169],{"class":132,"line":140},2,[130,142,144],{"class":143},"snl16","for",[130,146,148],{"class":147},"s95oV"," i ",[130,150,151],{"class":143},"in",[130,153,154],{"class":147}," $(",[130,156,158],{"class":157},"svObZ","seq",[130,160,162],{"class":161},"sDLfK"," 1",[130,164,165],{"class":161}," 40",[130,167,168],{"class":147},"); ",[130,170,171],{"class":143},"do\n",[130,173,175,178,181,185,188,191,194,197,199,202],{"class":132,"line":174},3,[130,176,177],{"class":157},"  curl",[130,179,180],{"class":161}," -s",[130,182,184],{"class":183},"sU2Wk"," https:\u002F\u002Fyour-app.example\u002F",[130,186,187],{"class":143}," |",[130,189,190],{"class":157}," grep",[130,192,193],{"class":161}," -o",[130,195,196],{"class":183}," 'entry\u002F[a-z]*\\.[^\"]*\\.js'",[130,198,187],{"class":143},[130,200,201],{"class":157}," head",[130,203,204],{"class":161}," -1\n",[130,206,208,211,213,216,218,221],{"class":132,"line":207},4,[130,209,210],{"class":143},"done",[130,212,187],{"class":143},[130,214,215],{"class":157}," sort",[130,217,187],{"class":143},[130,219,220],{"class":157}," uniq",[130,222,223],{"class":161}," -c\n",[130,225,227],{"class":132,"line":226},5,[130,228,230],{"emptyLinePlaceholder":229},true,"\n",[130,232,234],{"class":132,"line":233},6,[130,235,236],{"class":136},"# Does the same URL answer differently by container? Count statuses.\n",[130,238,240,242,244,246,248,250,252,255,257],{"class":132,"line":239},7,[130,241,144],{"class":143},[130,243,148],{"class":147},[130,245,151],{"class":143},[130,247,154],{"class":147},[130,249,158],{"class":157},[130,251,162],{"class":161},[130,253,254],{"class":161}," 20",[130,256,168],{"class":147},[130,258,171],{"class":143},[130,260,262,264,266,268,271,274,277],{"class":132,"line":261},8,[130,263,177],{"class":157},[130,265,180],{"class":161},[130,267,193],{"class":161},[130,269,270],{"class":183}," \u002Fdev\u002Fnull",[130,272,273],{"class":161}," -w",[130,275,276],{"class":183}," \"%{http_code} %{content_type}\\n\"",[130,278,279],{"class":183}," https:\u002F\u002Fyour-app.example\u002Fknown-asset.js\n",[130,281,283,285,287,289,291,293],{"class":132,"line":282},9,[130,284,210],{"class":143},[130,286,187],{"class":143},[130,288,215],{"class":157},[130,290,187],{"class":143},[130,292,220],{"class":157},[130,294,223],{"class":161},[11,296,297],{},"Then put the platform's own numbers beside your own: the configured instance count against the reported one, the build duration of this deploy against the last known genuine build, the timestamp your bundle reports against the commit the deploy claims. A healthy platform produces boring, consistent answers. Any split is a fingerprint, and a fingerprint is what turns \"your platform is broken\" into a report an engineer can act on in an afternoon.",[32,299,301],{"id":300},"why-we-bother","Why we bother",[11,303,304],{},"Here is the part we most want to say to other European teams.",[11,306,307],{},"When the outage hit, the easy conversation was available to us: shrug, mutter about platform maturity, and migrate to one of the three usual hyperscalers. Everyone has heard that conversation. It is how ecosystems stay small.",[11,309,310],{},"We had the other conversation instead. We stayed, measured, wrote it up, and sent it in. Within days, a platform used by many teams besides us had five real fixes shipped, our workarounds became unnecessary, and the engineers on the other side knew their proxy layer better than they had the week before. The Dojo got a more reliable home. HostStack got a better product. The report cost us an afternoon.",[11,312,313],{},"Infrastructure sovereignty is discussed in Europe as if it were a procurement question. It is not. It is a practice. European platforms become dependable the same way any software becomes dependable: by being used in anger, broken honestly, reported rigorously, and fixed quickly. Small teams like ours are not merely customers of that process. We are half of it.",[11,315,316],{},"So pick the European tool where it plausibly fits. Run real workloads on it. And when it breaks, do the vendor the courtesy of a report written like evidence rather than a complaint written like a review. The kind of reply we got this week is what that courtesy buys, and it compounds for everyone who builds on the same ground after us.",[11,318,319],{},"The container that wasn't there is gone now. What remains is better: two products improved, one working relationship, and a debugging story our learners will hear in the Dojo for years.",[11,321,322],{},[323,324,325,326,331],"em",{},"This story has a follow-up. Two weeks after we published this post, the same error came back, the orphans turned out to be our own pull request previews, and one of our two diagnoses turned out to be wrong. Read ",[327,328,330],"a",{"href":329},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-previews-that-served-production","The Previews That Served Production",".",[333,334,335],"style",{},"html pre.shiki code .sAwPA, html code.shiki .sAwPA{--shiki-default:#6A737D}html pre.shiki code .snl16, html code.shiki .snl16{--shiki-default:#F97583}html pre.shiki code .s95oV, html code.shiki .s95oV{--shiki-default:#E1E4E8}html pre.shiki code .svObZ, html code.shiki .svObZ{--shiki-default:#B392F0}html pre.shiki code .sDLfK, html code.shiki .sDLfK{--shiki-default:#79B8FF}html pre.shiki code .sU2Wk, html code.shiki .sU2Wk{--shiki-default:#9ECBFF}html .default .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-default);background: var(--shiki-default-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-default-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-default-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-default-text-decoration);}html .shiki span {color: var(--shiki-default);background: var(--shiki-default-bg);font-style: var(--shiki-default-font-style);font-weight: var(--shiki-default-font-weight);text-decoration: var(--shiki-default-text-decoration);}",{"title":24,"searchDepth":140,"depth":140,"links":337},[338,339,340,341,342],{"id":34,"depth":140,"text":35},{"id":77,"depth":140,"text":78},{"id":98,"depth":140,"text":99},{"id":117,"depth":140,"text":118},{"id":300,"depth":140,"text":301},"Shipping and Operations","2026-07-17T14:30:00.000Z","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.",false,"md","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcontainer-that-wasnt-there-hero.jpg",{},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-container-that-wasnt-there","The Dojo",{"title":5,"description":345},null,"blog\u002Fthe-container-that-wasnt-there",[356,357,358,359],"operations","debugging","european-tech","community","-joKXFm0wZJ4HwgMDUtjzkOZT9frBpumo2DNpRdxouQ",[362,373,383,390,402,408,417,424,431,440,447,456,463,470,483,492,499,506,515,523,531,541,548,556,563,569,575,584,592,602,610,617,619,627,633,643,652,660,668,676,684,691,699,707,714,720,725,734,742,749,756,765,771,779,785,793,799,808,815,822,830,836,842,848],{"path":363,"title":364,"description":365,"date":366,"author":6,"image":367,"readingMinutes":233,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":369,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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","Craft and Practice",[370,371,372],"git","continuous-integration","craft",{"path":374,"title":375,"description":376,"date":377,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":379,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":174},"\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","ekohacks.com",[380,356,381],"seo","nuxt","From Invisible to Findable",{"path":384,"title":385,"description":386,"date":387,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":388,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":282},"\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",[389,356,381],"privacy",{"path":391,"title":392,"description":393,"date":394,"author":6,"image":395,"readingMinutes":239,"category":396,"project":397,"tags":398,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[399,400,401],"nullables","testing","websocket",{"path":403,"title":404,"description":405,"date":406,"author":6,"image":407,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":353,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",{"path":409,"title":410,"description":411,"date":412,"author":6,"image":413,"readingMinutes":207,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":414,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[356,415,416],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":418,"title":419,"description":420,"date":421,"author":422,"image":423,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":353,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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":425,"title":426,"description":427,"date":428,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":429,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":430},"\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",[380,356,372],0,{"path":432,"title":433,"description":434,"date":435,"author":6,"image":436,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":437,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[372,438,439],"fastify","security",{"path":441,"title":442,"description":443,"date":444,"author":6,"image":445,"readingMinutes":226,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":446,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[370,371,356],{"path":448,"title":449,"description":450,"date":451,"author":6,"image":452,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":453,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[372,454,455],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":457,"title":458,"description":459,"date":460,"author":6,"image":461,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":462,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[371,356,400],{"path":464,"title":465,"description":466,"date":467,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":468,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":140},"\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",[380,356,381,469],"netlify",{"path":471,"title":472,"description":473,"date":474,"author":6,"image":475,"readingMinutes":207,"category":476,"project":477,"tags":478,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[479,480,481,482],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":484,"title":485,"description":486,"date":487,"author":6,"image":488,"readingMinutes":239,"category":476,"project":397,"tags":489,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[490,399,491],"design","error handling",{"path":493,"title":494,"description":495,"date":496,"author":6,"image":497,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":498,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[371,415,356],{"path":500,"title":501,"description":502,"date":503,"author":6,"image":504,"readingMinutes":233,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":505,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[370,371,372],{"path":507,"title":508,"description":509,"date":510,"author":6,"image":511,"readingMinutes":174,"category":476,"project":351,"tags":512,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[490,513,514],"data","onboarding",{"path":516,"title":517,"description":518,"date":519,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":396,"project":477,"tags":520,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[521,399,480,522],"user-testing","linear",{"path":524,"title":525,"description":526,"date":527,"author":6,"image":528,"readingMinutes":226,"category":396,"project":351,"tags":529,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[400,399,530],"mocks",{"path":532,"title":533,"description":534,"date":535,"author":6,"image":536,"readingMinutes":207,"category":343,"project":477,"tags":537,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[538,539,540,482],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":542,"title":543,"description":544,"date":510,"author":6,"image":545,"readingMinutes":174,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":546,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[356,416,547],"webhooks",{"path":549,"title":550,"description":551,"date":552,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":553,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[554,555,479,356],"shell","provisioning",{"path":557,"title":558,"description":559,"date":353,"author":560,"image":561,"readingMinutes":133,"category":476,"project":562,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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","Propi",{"path":564,"title":565,"description":566,"date":567,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":396,"project":378,"tags":568,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":226},"\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",[380,400,381],{"path":570,"title":571,"description":572,"date":573,"author":6,"image":574,"readingMinutes":140,"category":396,"project":353,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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":576,"title":577,"description":578,"date":579,"author":6,"image":580,"readingMinutes":226,"category":396,"project":477,"tags":581,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[399,582,583,482],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":585,"title":586,"description":587,"date":588,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":396,"project":351,"tags":589,"draft":346,"series":591,"seriesOrder":133},"\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",[400,399,530,590],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":593,"title":594,"description":595,"date":596,"author":6,"image":597,"readingMinutes":226,"category":476,"project":397,"tags":598,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[599,600,400,601],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":603,"title":604,"description":605,"date":606,"author":6,"image":607,"readingMinutes":233,"category":396,"project":397,"tags":608,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[399,400,609],"refactoring",{"path":611,"title":612,"description":613,"date":614,"author":6,"image":615,"readingMinutes":226,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":616,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[370,371,372],{"path":350,"title":5,"description":345,"date":344,"author":6,"image":348,"readingMinutes":261,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":618,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},[356,357,358,359],{"path":620,"title":621,"description":622,"date":623,"author":6,"image":624,"readingMinutes":233,"category":476,"project":397,"tags":625,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[490,601,626],"continuous integration",{"path":628,"title":629,"description":630,"date":631,"author":6,"image":632,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":353,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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":634,"title":635,"description":636,"date":637,"author":6,"image":638,"readingMinutes":239,"category":368,"project":351,"tags":639,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[640,641,642,522],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":644,"title":645,"description":646,"date":647,"author":6,"image":648,"readingMinutes":226,"category":396,"project":477,"tags":649,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[601,650,651,482],"red-first","code-review",{"path":653,"title":654,"description":655,"date":656,"author":6,"image":657,"readingMinutes":226,"category":343,"project":477,"tags":658,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[539,659,370,482],"preflight",{"path":661,"title":662,"description":663,"date":664,"author":6,"image":665,"readingMinutes":226,"category":343,"project":397,"tags":666,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[667,399,400],"shutdown",{"path":669,"title":670,"description":671,"date":672,"author":6,"image":673,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":397,"tags":674,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[675,400,372],"packaging",{"path":677,"title":678,"description":679,"date":680,"author":6,"image":681,"readingMinutes":207,"category":476,"project":477,"tags":682,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[538,683,490,482],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":685,"title":686,"description":687,"date":688,"author":6,"image":689,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":690,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[371,356,372],{"path":692,"title":693,"description":694,"date":695,"author":6,"image":696,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":397,"tags":697,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[667,356,698],"signals",{"path":700,"title":701,"description":702,"date":703,"author":6,"image":704,"readingMinutes":261,"category":368,"project":397,"tags":705,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[651,609,706,400],"teaching",{"path":708,"title":709,"description":710,"date":711,"author":6,"image":712,"readingMinutes":233,"category":476,"project":397,"tags":713,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[490,600,399],{"path":715,"title":716,"description":717,"date":718,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":719,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":133},"\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",[380,356,381],{"path":329,"title":330,"description":721,"date":722,"author":6,"image":723,"readingMinutes":261,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":724,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"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",[356,357,358,359],{"path":726,"title":727,"description":728,"date":729,"author":6,"image":730,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":477,"tags":731,"draft":229,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[539,732,733,482],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":735,"title":736,"description":737,"date":738,"author":6,"image":739,"readingMinutes":239,"category":396,"project":397,"tags":740,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[400,399,741],"scriptrunner",{"path":743,"title":744,"description":745,"date":746,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":261,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":747,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":233},"\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",[380,356,748],"performance",{"path":750,"title":751,"description":752,"date":753,"author":6,"image":754,"readingMinutes":239,"category":396,"project":397,"tags":755,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[400,399,401],{"path":757,"title":758,"description":759,"date":760,"author":560,"image":761,"readingMinutes":233,"category":368,"project":762,"tags":763,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[372,764,513,706],"content",{"path":766,"title":767,"description":768,"date":596,"author":6,"image":769,"readingMinutes":226,"category":396,"project":397,"tags":770,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[399,400,372,706],{"path":772,"title":773,"description":774,"date":760,"author":560,"image":775,"readingMinutes":207,"category":368,"project":762,"tags":776,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[777,370,706,778],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":780,"title":781,"description":782,"date":783,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":396,"project":351,"tags":784,"draft":346,"series":591,"seriesOrder":140},"\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",[400,399,530,590],{"path":786,"title":787,"description":788,"date":789,"author":6,"image":790,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":791,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[356,416,792],"observability",{"path":794,"title":795,"description":796,"date":797,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":396,"project":351,"tags":798,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[778,400,490,372],{"path":800,"title":801,"description":802,"date":803,"author":6,"image":804,"readingMinutes":174,"category":476,"project":351,"tags":805,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[490,806,807],"validation","typescript",{"path":809,"title":810,"description":811,"date":812,"author":6,"image":813,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":351,"tags":814,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[371,356,415],{"path":816,"title":817,"description":818,"date":819,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":820,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":239},"\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",[389,356,821],"analytics",{"path":823,"title":824,"description":825,"date":826,"author":6,"image":827,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":477,"tags":828,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",[539,829,399,482],"failure-modes",{"path":831,"title":832,"description":833,"date":834,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":835,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":207},"\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",[380,356,381],{"path":837,"title":838,"description":839,"date":840,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":233,"category":396,"project":351,"tags":841,"draft":346,"series":591,"seriesOrder":174},"\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",[400,399,530,590],{"path":843,"title":844,"description":845,"date":846,"author":6,"image":353,"readingMinutes":239,"category":343,"project":378,"tags":847,"draft":346,"series":382,"seriesOrder":261},"\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",[389,356,821],{"path":849,"title":850,"description":851,"date":852,"author":6,"image":853,"readingMinutes":207,"category":476,"project":353,"tags":353,"draft":346,"series":353,"seriesOrder":353},"\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",1787861096812]