[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":832},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-done-column-is-a-syllabus":3,"blog-all":337},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":319,"date":320,"description":321,"draft":322,"extension":323,"image":324,"meta":325,"navigation":326,"path":327,"project":328,"readingMinutes":93,"seo":329,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330,"stem":331,"tags":332,"__hash__":336},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-done-column-is-a-syllabus.md","The Done Column Is a Syllabus","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":313},"minimark",[10,14,17,22,34,44,151,178,193,208,212,215,218,227,230,233,244,247,250,253,257,260,263,266,269,273,276,306,309],[11,12,13],"p",{},"A board is built for the present tense. Open ours on any given morning and it shows you the handful of cards in flight this week, which is exactly what a board is for. But by late July the Done column on the Dojo board held 187 cards, and one afternoon we wanted to read them the way you read a book: end to end, in one sitting, looking for the plot.",[11,15,16],{},"You cannot do that by scrolling. You can do it with two tools whose names do a lot of work in this story, so let us define both properly.",[18,19,21],"h2",{"id":20},"the-tracker-and-the-query-language","The tracker and the query language",[11,23,24,28,29,33],{},[25,26,27],"strong",{},"Linear"," is the issue tracker where our work lives. Every piece of work is a card: an identifier such as ",[30,31,32],"code",{},"DOJ-77",", a title, a description, a column that says where it stands. When a pair finishes a story, the card moves to Done and the board forgets about it. The card is still there, though, and so is everything written on it. The board is the present; the columns are the archive.",[11,35,36,39,40,43],{},[25,37,38],{},"GraphQL"," is a query language for APIs. The idea fits in one sentence: you write down the shape of the answer you want, and the server returns exactly that shape. Linear exposes its whole archive through one endpoint, ",[30,41,42],{},"https:\u002F\u002Fapi.linear.app\u002Fgraphql",", and you talk to it by posting a query like this:",[45,46,51],"pre",{"className":47,"code":48,"language":49,"meta":50,"style":50},"language-graphql shiki shiki-themes github-dark","query DoneStories($teamKey: String!, $state: String!, $after: String) {\n  issues(\n    filter: { team: { key: { eq: $teamKey } }, state: { name: { eq: $state } } }\n    first: 100\n    after: $after\n  ) {\n    pageInfo { hasNextPage endCursor }\n    nodes {\n      identifier\n      title\n      description\n      completedAt\n      labels { nodes { name } }\n    }\n  }\n}\n","graphql","",[30,52,53,61,67,73,79,85,91,97,103,109,115,121,127,133,139,145],{"__ignoreMap":50},[54,55,58],"span",{"class":56,"line":57},"line",1,[54,59,60],{},"query DoneStories($teamKey: String!, $state: String!, $after: String) {\n",[54,62,64],{"class":56,"line":63},2,[54,65,66],{},"  issues(\n",[54,68,70],{"class":56,"line":69},3,[54,71,72],{},"    filter: { team: { key: { eq: $teamKey } }, state: { name: { eq: $state } } }\n",[54,74,76],{"class":56,"line":75},4,[54,77,78],{},"    first: 100\n",[54,80,82],{"class":56,"line":81},5,[54,83,84],{},"    after: $after\n",[54,86,88],{"class":56,"line":87},6,[54,89,90],{},"  ) {\n",[54,92,94],{"class":56,"line":93},7,[54,95,96],{},"    pageInfo { hasNextPage endCursor }\n",[54,98,100],{"class":56,"line":99},8,[54,101,102],{},"    nodes {\n",[54,104,106],{"class":56,"line":105},9,[54,107,108],{},"      identifier\n",[54,110,112],{"class":56,"line":111},10,[54,113,114],{},"      title\n",[54,116,118],{"class":56,"line":117},11,[54,119,120],{},"      description\n",[54,122,124],{"class":56,"line":123},12,[54,125,126],{},"      completedAt\n",[54,128,130],{"class":56,"line":129},13,[54,131,132],{},"      labels { nodes { name } }\n",[54,134,136],{"class":56,"line":135},14,[54,137,138],{},"    }\n",[54,140,142],{"class":56,"line":141},15,[54,143,144],{},"  }\n",[54,146,148],{"class":56,"line":147},16,[54,149,150],{},"}\n",[11,152,153,154,157,158,161,162,165,166,169,170,173,174,177],{},"Read it as a form you are handing to the server. The ",[30,155,156],{},"filter"," block says which cards: team ",[30,159,160],{},"DOJ",", column ",[30,163,164],{},"Done",". The ",[30,167,168],{},"nodes"," block says which fields you want back for each card, and the answer contains those fields and nothing else. Add ",[30,171,172],{},"createdAt"," to the query and it appears in the response; delete ",[30,175,176],{},"description"," and it vanishes. That round trip, shape in and shape out, is the entire idea of GraphQL, and it is why the response lands ready to use instead of arriving as a haystack you filter afterwards.",[11,179,180,181,184,185,188,189,192],{},"The ",[30,182,183],{},"pageInfo"," block is the other lesson. Linear hands over at most 100 cards per request, along with a cursor marking where the page ended. You feed that cursor back as ",[30,186,187],{},"after"," and ask again, until ",[30,190,191],{},"hasNextPage"," says false. Our column came back as 100 cards, then 87. Pagination is the first thing every real API makes you learn, and the first thing every beginner script gets wrong by reading page one and declaring victory.",[11,194,195,196,199,200,203,204,207],{},"The whole thing is a short shell script: ",[30,197,198],{},"curl"," to post the query, ",[30,201,202],{},"jq"," to merge the pages and print one line per card. We have kept the scripts as teaching materials in the Dojo repo under ",[30,205,206],{},"docs\u002Fworkshop\u002Flinear-graphql\u002F",", ready to point at any team and any column.",[18,209,211],{"id":210},"what-187-cards-read-like","What 187 cards read like",[11,213,214],{},"Then we read the column. One line per card, in order, out loud. It takes about fifteen minutes per hundred stories, and it is the best fifteen minutes of tooling this team has spent, because the column has a plot.",[11,216,217],{},"The early cards are labelled like parts in a warehouse:",[219,220,221,224],"blockquote",{},[11,222,223],{},"XP: extract a shared XP ledger store (foundation)",[11,225,226],{},"Server side authorisation for dashboard and admin endpoints",[11,228,229],{},"Accurate, tidy, and rankable by exactly the people who wrote them. A customer reading that first title learns that some machinery exists and that the developers are fond of it.",[11,231,232],{},"Somewhere around card 74, the voice changes:",[219,234,235,238,241],{},[11,236,237],{},"A quiet week blanks a developer's whole profile, and their trend reads as a collapse",[11,239,240],{},"The XP economy is invisible until after it pays",[11,242,243],{},"A participant cannot find their own metrics drill-down",[11,245,246],{},"Each of these is a one-sentence failure told in the world of the person who suffers it. You can rank these knowing nothing about our codebase. A learner whose profile reads as a collapse is losing heart today; the invisible economy can wait a week. That ranking conversation is open to everyone in the room, which is the point of writing stories this way.",[11,248,249],{},"The Art of Agile Development teaches that a story is a reminder to have a conversation: a few words on a card that stand in for a decision the team talked through together. Read end to end, our column shows a team slowly learning that lesson in public. The cards start recording the conversations themselves. One description opens with \"Agreed design (with Anastasis, 2026-07-23)\". Another cites \"per the DOJ-185 decision\". Three cards begin with the word \"Decide\", because the work they represented was a conversation, so the card said so.",[11,251,252],{},"Nobody planned that arc. It only becomes visible when you read the column as one document, and the API is what makes the column readable.",[18,254,256],{"id":255},"xp-twice-over","XP, twice over",[11,258,259],{},"At EkoHacks, XP means two things, and the pun is deliberate.",[11,261,262],{},"XP is Extreme Programming, the discipline the dojo teaches: work planned as stories, test-driven development, a failing test committed before the code that passes it, small releases landing on the trunk several times a week.",[11,264,265],{},"XP is also experience points, the number the Dojo product pays when real engineering happens: a merged pull request, a green build, a streak of both. Practising the first XP is how you earn the second. That is the whole design of the platform.",[11,267,268],{},"The Done column is where the two meet, which is why we now use this reading as a workshop session. Every card in that column is a story that was written, talked through, sized, split, built red-then-green, and finished. The column is a syllabus assembled by accident: it contains worked examples of bug stories, security stories told as risk, clean-up stories, and decision cards, together with a visible record of the team getting better at writing them. Handing a learner 187 finished stories in chronological order teaches more about planning in small customer-valued pieces than any slide we could make, because the drift from warehouse labels to human sentences happened to us, on the record, with dates.",[18,270,272],{"id":271},"run-it-on-your-own-board","Run it on your own board",[11,274,275],{},"This transfers directly, and the exercise is short enough for one session of your own XP project.",[277,278,279,287,297,300,303],"ol",{},[280,281,282,283,286],"li",{},"Create a personal API key in Linear under Settings, then Security & access, then Personal API keys. Prove it works with the smallest query there is: ",[30,284,285],{},"{ viewer { name } }",". If the API answers with your name, you are in.",[280,288,289,290,292,293,296],{},"Pull your Done column with the paginated query above, or take our scripts from ",[30,291,206],{}," and run ",[30,294,295],{},".\u002Ffetch-done-stories.sh YOURTEAM Done",".",[280,298,299],{},"Read every title aloud, in order. For each one, ask two questions. Could the person who pays for this work rank it against the others? Does it say what someone would notice when it is done?",[280,301,302],{},"Sort the titles into two piles: written for the customer, written for the compiler. Date the boundary between them if you can find one.",[280,304,305],{},"Rewrite five titles from the compiler pile in the customer's words, and notice how often the rewrite teaches you what the story was actually for.",[11,307,308],{},"This is how we do things at EkoHacks: the tools we build with become the tools we teach with. The board keeps the receipts, the API reads them back, and the Done column, it turns out, is the course.",[310,311,312],"style",{},"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":50,"searchDepth":63,"depth":63,"links":314},[315,316,317,318],{"id":20,"depth":63,"text":21},{"id":210,"depth":63,"text":211},{"id":255,"depth":63,"text":256},{"id":271,"depth":63,"text":272},"Craft and Practice","2026-07-31T09:00:00.000Z","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.",false,"md","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fdone-column-syllabus-hero.jpg",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-done-column-is-a-syllabus","The Dojo",{"title":5,"description":321},null,"blog\u002Fthe-done-column-is-a-syllabus",[49,333,334,335],"stories","xp","linear","z0MF2P1RTR8B85WoODdXf5WDZwL92DQCcQ0KpmWmrHQ",[338,348,360,367,379,385,394,401,408,417,424,433,440,447,460,469,476,483,492,499,507,517,524,532,539,545,551,560,568,578,586,593,603,611,617,619,628,636,644,652,660,667,675,683,690,696,703,712,720,727,734,743,749,757,763,771,777,786,793,800,808,814,820,826],{"path":339,"title":340,"description":341,"date":342,"author":6,"image":343,"readingMinutes":87,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":344,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[345,346,347],"git","continuous-integration","craft",{"path":349,"title":350,"description":351,"date":352,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":355,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":69},"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-map-drawn-by-the-build","A Map Drawn by the Build","Thirty six of our pages had never been visited by Google because nothing said they existed. The sitemap is drawn from the build, and it found a draft.","2026-08-22T20:30:00.000Z","Shipping and Operations","ekohacks.com",[356,357,358],"seo","operations","nuxt","From Invisible to Findable",{"path":361,"title":362,"description":363,"date":364,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":365,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":105},"\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",[366,357,358],"privacy",{"path":368,"title":369,"description":370,"date":371,"author":6,"image":372,"readingMinutes":93,"category":373,"project":374,"tags":375,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[376,377,378],"nullables","testing","websocket",{"path":380,"title":381,"description":382,"date":383,"author":6,"image":384,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":330,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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":386,"title":387,"description":388,"date":389,"author":6,"image":390,"readingMinutes":75,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":391,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[357,392,393],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":395,"title":396,"description":397,"date":398,"author":399,"image":400,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":330,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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":402,"title":403,"description":404,"date":405,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":406,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":407},"\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",[356,357,347],0,{"path":409,"title":410,"description":411,"date":412,"author":6,"image":413,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":414,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[347,415,416],"fastify","security",{"path":418,"title":419,"description":420,"date":421,"author":6,"image":422,"readingMinutes":81,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":423,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[345,346,357],{"path":425,"title":426,"description":427,"date":428,"author":6,"image":429,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":430,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[347,431,432],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":434,"title":435,"description":436,"date":437,"author":6,"image":438,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":439,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[346,357,377],{"path":441,"title":442,"description":443,"date":444,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":445,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":63},"\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",[356,357,358,446],"netlify",{"path":448,"title":449,"description":450,"date":451,"author":6,"image":452,"readingMinutes":75,"category":453,"project":454,"tags":455,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[456,457,458,459],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":461,"title":462,"description":463,"date":464,"author":6,"image":465,"readingMinutes":93,"category":453,"project":374,"tags":466,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[467,376,468],"design","error handling",{"path":470,"title":471,"description":472,"date":473,"author":6,"image":474,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":475,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[346,392,357],{"path":477,"title":478,"description":479,"date":480,"author":6,"image":481,"readingMinutes":87,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":482,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[345,346,347],{"path":484,"title":485,"description":486,"date":487,"author":6,"image":488,"readingMinutes":69,"category":453,"project":328,"tags":489,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[467,490,491],"data","onboarding",{"path":493,"title":494,"description":495,"date":496,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":373,"project":454,"tags":497,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[498,376,457,335],"user-testing",{"path":500,"title":501,"description":502,"date":503,"author":6,"image":504,"readingMinutes":81,"category":373,"project":328,"tags":505,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[377,376,506],"mocks",{"path":508,"title":509,"description":510,"date":511,"author":6,"image":512,"readingMinutes":75,"category":353,"project":454,"tags":513,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[514,515,516,459],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":518,"title":519,"description":520,"date":487,"author":6,"image":521,"readingMinutes":69,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":522,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[357,393,523],"webhooks",{"path":525,"title":526,"description":527,"date":528,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":529,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[530,531,456,357],"shell","provisioning",{"path":533,"title":534,"description":535,"date":330,"author":536,"image":537,"readingMinutes":57,"category":453,"project":538,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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":540,"title":541,"description":542,"date":543,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":373,"project":354,"tags":544,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":81},"\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",[356,377,358],{"path":546,"title":547,"description":548,"date":549,"author":6,"image":550,"readingMinutes":63,"category":373,"project":330,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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":552,"title":553,"description":554,"date":555,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":81,"category":373,"project":454,"tags":557,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[376,558,559,459],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":561,"title":562,"description":563,"date":564,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":373,"project":328,"tags":565,"draft":322,"series":567,"seriesOrder":57},"\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",[377,376,506,566],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":569,"title":570,"description":571,"date":572,"author":6,"image":573,"readingMinutes":81,"category":453,"project":374,"tags":574,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[575,576,377,577],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":579,"title":580,"description":581,"date":582,"author":6,"image":583,"readingMinutes":87,"category":373,"project":374,"tags":584,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[376,377,585],"refactoring",{"path":587,"title":588,"description":589,"date":590,"author":6,"image":591,"readingMinutes":81,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":592,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[345,346,347],{"path":594,"title":595,"description":596,"date":597,"author":6,"image":598,"readingMinutes":99,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":599,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[357,600,601,602],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":604,"title":605,"description":606,"date":607,"author":6,"image":608,"readingMinutes":87,"category":453,"project":374,"tags":609,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[467,577,610],"continuous integration",{"path":612,"title":613,"description":614,"date":615,"author":6,"image":616,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":330,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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":327,"title":5,"description":321,"date":320,"author":6,"image":324,"readingMinutes":93,"category":319,"project":328,"tags":618,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},[49,333,334,335],{"path":620,"title":621,"description":622,"date":623,"author":6,"image":624,"readingMinutes":81,"category":373,"project":454,"tags":625,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[577,626,627,459],"red-first","code-review",{"path":629,"title":630,"description":631,"date":632,"author":6,"image":633,"readingMinutes":81,"category":353,"project":454,"tags":634,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[515,635,345,459],"preflight",{"path":637,"title":638,"description":639,"date":640,"author":6,"image":641,"readingMinutes":81,"category":353,"project":374,"tags":642,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[643,376,377],"shutdown",{"path":645,"title":646,"description":647,"date":648,"author":6,"image":649,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":374,"tags":650,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[651,377,347],"packaging",{"path":653,"title":654,"description":655,"date":656,"author":6,"image":657,"readingMinutes":75,"category":453,"project":454,"tags":658,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[514,659,467,459],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":661,"title":662,"description":663,"date":664,"author":6,"image":665,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":666,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[346,357,347],{"path":668,"title":669,"description":670,"date":671,"author":6,"image":672,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":374,"tags":673,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[643,357,674],"signals",{"path":676,"title":677,"description":678,"date":679,"author":6,"image":680,"readingMinutes":99,"category":319,"project":374,"tags":681,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[627,585,682,377],"teaching",{"path":684,"title":685,"description":686,"date":687,"author":6,"image":688,"readingMinutes":87,"category":453,"project":374,"tags":689,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[467,576,376],{"path":691,"title":692,"description":693,"date":694,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":695,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":57},"\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",[356,357,358],{"path":697,"title":698,"description":699,"date":700,"author":6,"image":701,"readingMinutes":99,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":702,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[357,600,601,602],{"path":704,"title":705,"description":706,"date":707,"author":6,"image":708,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":454,"tags":709,"draft":326,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[515,710,711,459],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":713,"title":714,"description":715,"date":716,"author":6,"image":717,"readingMinutes":93,"category":373,"project":374,"tags":718,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[377,376,719],"scriptrunner",{"path":721,"title":722,"description":723,"date":724,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":99,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":725,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":87},"\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",[356,357,726],"performance",{"path":728,"title":729,"description":730,"date":731,"author":6,"image":732,"readingMinutes":93,"category":373,"project":374,"tags":733,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[377,376,378],{"path":735,"title":736,"description":737,"date":738,"author":536,"image":739,"readingMinutes":87,"category":319,"project":740,"tags":741,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[347,742,490,682],"content",{"path":744,"title":745,"description":746,"date":572,"author":6,"image":747,"readingMinutes":81,"category":373,"project":374,"tags":748,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[376,377,347,682],{"path":750,"title":751,"description":752,"date":738,"author":536,"image":753,"readingMinutes":75,"category":319,"project":740,"tags":754,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[755,345,682,756],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":758,"title":759,"description":760,"date":761,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":373,"project":328,"tags":762,"draft":322,"series":567,"seriesOrder":63},"\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",[377,376,506,566],{"path":764,"title":765,"description":766,"date":767,"author":6,"image":768,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":769,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[357,393,770],"observability",{"path":772,"title":773,"description":774,"date":775,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":373,"project":328,"tags":776,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[756,377,467,347],{"path":778,"title":779,"description":780,"date":781,"author":6,"image":782,"readingMinutes":69,"category":453,"project":328,"tags":783,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[467,784,785],"validation","typescript",{"path":787,"title":788,"description":789,"date":790,"author":6,"image":791,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":328,"tags":792,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[346,357,392],{"path":794,"title":795,"description":796,"date":797,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":798,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":93},"\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",[366,357,799],"analytics",{"path":801,"title":802,"description":803,"date":804,"author":6,"image":805,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":454,"tags":806,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",[515,807,376,459],"failure-modes",{"path":809,"title":810,"description":811,"date":812,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":813,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":75},"\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",[356,357,358],{"path":815,"title":816,"description":817,"date":818,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":87,"category":373,"project":328,"tags":819,"draft":322,"series":567,"seriesOrder":69},"\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",[377,376,506,566],{"path":821,"title":822,"description":823,"date":824,"author":6,"image":330,"readingMinutes":93,"category":353,"project":354,"tags":825,"draft":322,"series":359,"seriesOrder":99},"\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",[366,357,799],{"path":827,"title":828,"description":829,"date":830,"author":6,"image":831,"readingMinutes":75,"category":453,"project":330,"tags":330,"draft":322,"series":330,"seriesOrder":330},"\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",1787861096823]