[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":1081},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Funknown-is-an-answer":3,"blog-all":567},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":551,"date":552,"description":553,"draft":554,"extension":555,"image":556,"meta":557,"navigation":232,"path":558,"project":559,"readingMinutes":285,"seo":560,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556,"stem":561,"tags":562,"__hash__":566},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Funknown-is-an-answer.md","Unknown Is an Answer","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":541},"minimark",[10,14,17,22,30,33,36,39,43,46,52,59,114,125,129,136,145,148,152,155,191,197,326,337,404,408,411,445,448,455,459,472,479,483,486,489,493,496,509,515,537],[11,12,13],"p",{},"A stub is not a small copy of the thing it stands for. It is a statement of what your code is allowed to know. When a stub cannot answer a question, the tempting move is to make it cleverer. The better move is to ask whether the real thing can always answer it either.",[11,15,16],{},"This is the story of one fix in EkoLite, our small real time backend, where a stub's refusal to answer turned out to be the most accurate thing in the room.",[18,19,21],"h2",{"id":20},"the-leak-was-the-easy-part","The leak was the easy part",[11,23,24,25,29],{},"A publication in EkoLite is a name, a collection and a query. A client subscribes to ",[26,27,28],"code",{},"tasks.mine"," for one owner and is sent that owner's tasks. While building an app with rooms on top of it, we found that the query held for the first read and for nothing after. Every later insert and update on the collection went to every subscriber, whatever they had asked for. A tab in one room was being sent the other room's documents as they changed. The page showed only its own room, so nothing looked wrong. The data travelled all the same.",[11,31,32],{},"The fix is easy to say. When a change arrives, test the changed document against each subscription's query, and send it only where it belongs. A document that stops matching leaves. One that starts matching arrives.",[11,34,35],{},"With the real database that is nearly all there is to it. The change stream hands over the whole document as it now stands, so the test has everything it needs.",[11,37,38],{},"Then we wrote the first failing test, and the stub would not play.",[18,40,42],{"id":41},"what-the-stub-could-not-say","What the stub could not say",[11,44,45],{},"Our tests run against a Nulled Mongo, a stand in that answers at the edge of the system while all of our own code runs for real. It holds no documents. That is a rule we wrote down long before this fix:",[47,48,49],"blockquote",{},[11,50,51],{},"Simulate state only when a faithful model needs no reimplementation of the dependency's own logic.",[11,53,54,55,58],{},"Mongo's reads are queries. A stub that kept documents and answered ",[26,56,57],{},"find(query)"," faithfully would have to rebuild how Mongo matches, which is rebuilding the dependency. So ours stays dumb, and when a test updates a document, the change it emits carries only what the update wrote.",[60,61,66],"pre",{"className":62,"code":63,"language":64,"meta":65,"style":65},"language-ts shiki shiki-themes github-dark","await mongo.update('tasks', { _id: 'task-a' }, { $set: { title: 'renamed' } });\n\u002F\u002F the change carries { title: 'renamed' } and nothing else\n","ts","",[26,67,68,107],{"__ignoreMap":65},[69,70,73,77,81,85,88,92,95,98,101,104],"span",{"class":71,"line":72},"line",1,[69,74,76],{"class":75},"snl16","await",[69,78,80],{"class":79},"s95oV"," mongo.",[69,82,84],{"class":83},"svObZ","update",[69,86,87],{"class":79},"(",[69,89,91],{"class":90},"sU2Wk","'tasks'",[69,93,94],{"class":79},", { _id: ",[69,96,97],{"class":90},"'task-a'",[69,99,100],{"class":79}," }, { $set: { title: ",[69,102,103],{"class":90},"'renamed'",[69,105,106],{"class":79}," } });\n",[69,108,110],{"class":71,"line":109},2,[69,111,113],{"class":112},"sAwPA","\u002F\u002F the change carries { title: 'renamed' } and nothing else\n",[11,115,116,117,120,121,124],{},"Now hold that against a subscription to ",[26,118,119],{},"{ owner: 'ada' }",". The change says nothing about ",[26,122,123],{},"owner",". Is the field missing, so the document no longer belongs? Or is it untouched, so the document belongs exactly as it did a moment ago? The change cannot say.",[18,126,128],{"id":127},"two-ways-out-and-both-were-lies","Two ways out, and both were lies",[11,130,131,135],{},[132,133,134],"strong",{},"Give the stub a memory."," Let it keep every document it is handed, so an update can be answered with the whole document. It sounds harmless, and it is the first step of writing a second database. The moment the stub holds documents, a test will ask it to find some, and it has to match queries to answer. We had already refused that once, in writing.",[11,137,138,141,142,144],{},[132,139,140],{},"Read absence as missing."," Treat a field the change does not carry as a field the document does not have. Then every rename of a task would take it off its owner's screen, because the rename says nothing of ",[26,143,123],{},". The tests would fail for a reason that has nothing to do with the code under test, and the next move would be to bend the production code until the stub was satisfied.",[11,146,147],{},"The two share a fault. Each makes the stub claim to know something it does not.",[18,149,151],{"id":150},"unknown-is-an-answer","Unknown is an answer",[11,153,154],{},"The third way was to let the change say what it is. An update that carries only what was written is marked as such, and the matcher answers in three values where it used to answer in two.",[60,156,158],{"className":62,"code":157,"language":64,"meta":65,"style":65},"export type Verdict = 'match' | 'no-match' | 'unknown';\n",[26,159,160],{"__ignoreMap":65},[69,161,162,165,168,171,174,177,180,183,185,188],{"class":71,"line":72},[69,163,164],{"class":75},"export",[69,166,167],{"class":75}," type",[69,169,170],{"class":83}," Verdict",[69,172,173],{"class":75}," =",[69,175,176],{"class":90}," 'match'",[69,178,179],{"class":75}," |",[69,181,182],{"class":90}," 'no-match'",[69,184,179],{"class":75},[69,186,187],{"class":90}," 'unknown'",[69,189,190],{"class":79},";\n",[11,192,193,196],{},[26,194,195],{},"unknown"," means the change says nothing about a field the query reads. The engine reads it with care, and its rule fits in two sentences. A document the client holds stays until a change says it has left. A document the client lacks comes in only when a change says it belongs.",[60,198,200],{"className":62,"code":199,"language":64,"meta":65,"style":65},"const verdict = verdictFor(doc, query, { partial: change.partial === true });\n\nif (documentIds.has(change.id)) {\n  if (verdict === 'no-match') {\n    \u002F\u002F it has left: tell the client, and forget it\n  } else {\n    \u002F\u002F it belongs, or nothing says otherwise: send the change\n  }\n} else if (verdict === 'match') {\n  \u002F\u002F it belongs now: send it whole\n}\n",[26,201,202,228,234,249,265,271,283,289,295,314,320],{"__ignoreMap":65},[69,203,204,207,211,213,216,219,222,225],{"class":71,"line":72},[69,205,206],{"class":75},"const",[69,208,210],{"class":209},"sDLfK"," verdict",[69,212,173],{"class":75},[69,214,215],{"class":83}," verdictFor",[69,217,218],{"class":79},"(doc, query, { partial: change.partial ",[69,220,221],{"class":75},"===",[69,223,224],{"class":209}," true",[69,226,227],{"class":79}," });\n",[69,229,230],{"class":71,"line":109},[69,231,233],{"emptyLinePlaceholder":232},true,"\n",[69,235,237,240,243,246],{"class":71,"line":236},3,[69,238,239],{"class":75},"if",[69,241,242],{"class":79}," (documentIds.",[69,244,245],{"class":83},"has",[69,247,248],{"class":79},"(change.id)) {\n",[69,250,252,255,258,260,262],{"class":71,"line":251},4,[69,253,254],{"class":75},"  if",[69,256,257],{"class":79}," (verdict ",[69,259,221],{"class":75},[69,261,182],{"class":90},[69,263,264],{"class":79},") {\n",[69,266,268],{"class":71,"line":267},5,[69,269,270],{"class":112},"    \u002F\u002F it has left: tell the client, and forget it\n",[69,272,274,277,280],{"class":71,"line":273},6,[69,275,276],{"class":79},"  } ",[69,278,279],{"class":75},"else",[69,281,282],{"class":79}," {\n",[69,284,286],{"class":71,"line":285},7,[69,287,288],{"class":112},"    \u002F\u002F it belongs, or nothing says otherwise: send the change\n",[69,290,292],{"class":71,"line":291},8,[69,293,294],{"class":79},"  }\n",[69,296,298,301,303,306,308,310,312],{"class":71,"line":297},9,[69,299,300],{"class":79},"} ",[69,302,279],{"class":75},[69,304,305],{"class":75}," if",[69,307,257],{"class":79},[69,309,221],{"class":75},[69,311,176],{"class":90},[69,313,264],{"class":79},[69,315,317],{"class":71,"line":316},10,[69,318,319],{"class":112},"  \u002F\u002F it belongs now: send it whole\n",[69,321,323],{"class":71,"line":322},11,[69,324,325],{"class":79},"}\n",[11,327,328,329,332,333,336],{},"The three values carry through the logical operators the way you would hope. One failed condition sinks an ",[26,330,331],{},"$and",", whatever else is unknown. One met condition carries an ",[26,334,335],{},"$or",". Anything less stays unknown.",[338,339,340,359],"table",{},[341,342,343],"thead",{},[344,345,346,351,355],"tr",{},[347,348,350],"th",{"align":349},"left","What the conditions say",[347,352,353],{"align":349},[26,354,331],{},[347,356,357],{"align":349},[26,358,335],{},[360,361,362,377,391],"tbody",{},[344,363,364,368,373],{},[365,366,367],"td",{"align":349},"one fails, the rest are unknown",[365,369,370],{"align":349},[26,371,372],{},"no-match",[365,374,375],{"align":349},[26,376,195],{},[344,378,379,382,386],{},[365,380,381],{"align":349},"one holds, the rest are unknown",[365,383,384],{"align":349},[26,385,195],{},[365,387,388],{"align":349},[26,389,390],{},"match",[344,392,393,396,400],{},[365,394,395],{"align":349},"all of them hold",[365,397,398],{"align":349},[26,399,390],{},[365,401,402],{"align":349},[26,403,390],{},[18,405,407],{"id":406},"the-stub-was-describing-production","The stub was describing production",[11,409,410],{},"Here is the part that changed how we saw the whole fix. We went to mark the real database's changes as whole, and found this line, which had been there all along:",[60,412,414],{"className":62,"code":413,"language":64,"meta":65,"style":65},"fields: fullDocument ? extractFields(fullDocument) : (updateDescription?.updatedFields ?? {}),\n",[26,415,416],{"__ignoreMap":65},[69,417,418,421,424,427,430,433,436,439,442],{"class":71,"line":72},[69,419,420],{"class":83},"fields",[69,422,423],{"class":79},": fullDocument ",[69,425,426],{"class":75},"?",[69,428,429],{"class":83}," extractFields",[69,431,432],{"class":79},"(fullDocument) ",[69,434,435],{"class":75},":",[69,437,438],{"class":79}," (updateDescription?.updatedFields ",[69,440,441],{"class":75},"??",[69,443,444],{"class":79}," {}),\n",[11,446,447],{},"The real change stream looks the document up after the update. If the document is gone by then, deleted in the moment between, there is no whole document to hand over, and the code fell back to the fields the update wrote. It had always been able to hand us part of a document. It had never said so.",[11,449,450,451,454],{},"So the stub had not been failing to imitate production. It had been describing a state production could already be in, one we had never named. The mark we added for the sake of the tests, ",[26,452,453],{},"partial",", is set by the real database in exactly that case. The test double and the real thing now tell the same truth in the same words.",[18,456,458],{"id":457},"what-we-refused","What we refused",[11,460,461,462,464,465,467,468,471],{},"The matcher follows the part of Mongo's query language that publications are written in: equality, paths into embedded documents, values held in arrays, the comparisons, and ",[26,463,331],{},", ",[26,466,335],{}," and ",[26,469,470],{},"$nor",". It is not Mongo, and it does not pretend to be.",[11,473,474,475,478],{},"A publication whose query uses anything else, ",[26,476,477],{},"$regex"," for instance, is refused when a client subscribes, with an error that names the operator. We weighed the other two choices. Forward every change and the leak is back. Forward none and the client goes quietly out of date. A refusal at subscribe is the only one of the three that a developer sees on the first run.",[18,480,482],{"id":481},"checked-from-both-sides","Checked from both sides",[11,484,485],{},"The unit tests drive the engine with the Nulled Mongo, so they walk the partial path. An integration test drives it with a real replica set, so it walks the other, where a change carries the whole document and a missing field is missing. There, unsetting the field a query reads takes the document away from the client, as it should.",[11,487,488],{},"Each failing test was run against the code as it stood before the fix: 42 failed for the matcher, 2 for the mark and 6 for the engine. Then we opened two rooms of the app in a browser and read what each tab had been sent. Before, a tab held the other room's session and its people. After, each held its own room and nothing else.",[18,490,492],{"id":491},"the-move-to-take-home","The move to take home",[11,494,495],{},"When a stub cannot answer, stop before you teach it to. Ask three questions.",[497,498,499,503,506],"ul",{},[500,501,502],"li",{},"What would the stub have to know to answer, and would knowing it mean rebuilding the thing it stands for?",[500,504,505],{},"Can the real thing always answer, or is there a moment, a race or a failure where it cannot either?",[500,507,508],{},"If there is such a moment, does your code have a name for it?",[11,510,511,512,514],{},"Ours did not. The honest answer was ",[26,513,195],{},", and once it had a name, the code that reads it could be written in two sentences.",[11,516,517,518,525,526,530,531,536],{},"The fix is ",[519,520,524],"a",{"href":521,"rel":522},"https:\u002F\u002Fgithub.com\u002Fekohacks\u002Fekolite\u002Fpull\u002F205",[523],"nofollow","in the open",", beside the rest of ",[519,527,529],{"href":528},"\u002Fwork","what we have built",". This way of working is how we teach everything, and the nearest course in this stack is ",[519,532,535],{"href":533,"rel":534},"https:\u002F\u002Fdojo.ekohacks.com\u002Fseats\u002Fapi-design-node",[523],"API Design in Node.js with TypeScript",": four weeks, one real API built test first, with no mock anywhere.",[538,539,540],"style",{},"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 .sU2Wk, html code.shiki .sU2Wk{--shiki-default:#9ECBFF}html pre.shiki code .sAwPA, html code.shiki .sAwPA{--shiki-default:#6A737D}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);}html pre.shiki code .sDLfK, html code.shiki .sDLfK{--shiki-default:#79B8FF}",{"title":65,"searchDepth":109,"depth":109,"links":542},[543,544,545,546,547,548,549,550],{"id":20,"depth":109,"text":21},{"id":41,"depth":109,"text":42},{"id":127,"depth":109,"text":128},{"id":150,"depth":109,"text":151},{"id":406,"depth":109,"text":407},{"id":457,"depth":109,"text":458},{"id":481,"depth":109,"text":482},{"id":491,"depth":109,"text":492},"Testing and TDD","2026-09-29T09:00:00.000Z","A stub that holds no documents could not say whether a change still matched a query. Letting it answer unknown named a case the real database has too.",false,"md",null,{},"\u002Fblog\u002Funknown-is-an-answer","EkoLite",{"title":5,"description":553},"blog\u002Funknown-is-an-answer",[563,564,565],"nullables","testing","design","nDmbeH_xyVTYhrmYablRPj10s7mZRx7aTG3QetxUiZE",[568,580,592,599,607,613,622,629,636,645,652,661,668,675,688,696,703,710,719,727,735,745,752,760,767,773,779,788,796,806,814,821,831,839,845,855,864,872,880,888,896,903,914,922,930,937,943,950,959,967,974,981,990,996,1004,1010,1018,1024,1033,1035,1042,1049,1057,1063,1069,1075],{"path":569,"title":570,"description":571,"date":572,"author":6,"image":573,"readingMinutes":273,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":576,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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","The Dojo",[577,578,579],"git","continuous-integration","craft",{"path":581,"title":582,"description":583,"date":584,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":587,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":236},"\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",[588,589,590],"seo","operations","nuxt","From Invisible to Findable",{"path":593,"title":594,"description":595,"date":596,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":597,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":297},"\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",[598,589,590],"privacy",{"path":600,"title":601,"description":602,"date":603,"author":6,"image":604,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":605,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[563,564,606],"websocket",{"path":608,"title":609,"description":610,"date":611,"author":6,"image":612,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":556,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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":614,"title":615,"description":616,"date":617,"author":6,"image":618,"readingMinutes":251,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":619,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[589,620,621],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":623,"title":624,"description":625,"date":626,"author":627,"image":628,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":556,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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":630,"title":631,"description":632,"date":633,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":634,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":635},"\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",[588,589,579],0,{"path":637,"title":638,"description":639,"date":640,"author":6,"image":641,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":642,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[579,643,644],"fastify","security",{"path":646,"title":647,"description":648,"date":649,"author":6,"image":650,"readingMinutes":267,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":651,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[577,578,589],{"path":653,"title":654,"description":655,"date":656,"author":6,"image":657,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":658,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[579,659,660],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":662,"title":663,"description":664,"date":665,"author":6,"image":666,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":667,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[578,589,564],{"path":669,"title":670,"description":671,"date":672,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":673,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":109},"\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",[588,589,590,674],"netlify",{"path":676,"title":677,"description":678,"date":679,"author":6,"image":680,"readingMinutes":251,"category":681,"project":682,"tags":683,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[684,685,686,687],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":689,"title":690,"description":691,"date":692,"author":6,"image":693,"readingMinutes":285,"category":681,"project":559,"tags":694,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[565,563,695],"error handling",{"path":697,"title":698,"description":699,"date":700,"author":6,"image":701,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":702,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[578,620,589],{"path":704,"title":705,"description":706,"date":707,"author":6,"image":708,"readingMinutes":273,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":709,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[577,578,579],{"path":711,"title":712,"description":713,"date":714,"author":6,"image":715,"readingMinutes":236,"category":681,"project":575,"tags":716,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[565,717,718],"data","onboarding",{"path":720,"title":721,"description":722,"date":723,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":551,"project":682,"tags":724,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[725,563,685,726],"user-testing","linear",{"path":728,"title":729,"description":730,"date":731,"author":6,"image":732,"readingMinutes":267,"category":551,"project":575,"tags":733,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[564,563,734],"mocks",{"path":736,"title":737,"description":738,"date":739,"author":6,"image":740,"readingMinutes":251,"category":585,"project":682,"tags":741,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[742,743,744,687],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":746,"title":747,"description":748,"date":714,"author":6,"image":749,"readingMinutes":236,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":750,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[589,621,751],"webhooks",{"path":753,"title":754,"description":755,"date":756,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":757,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[758,759,684,589],"shell","provisioning",{"path":761,"title":762,"description":763,"date":556,"author":764,"image":765,"readingMinutes":72,"category":681,"project":766,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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":768,"title":769,"description":770,"date":771,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":586,"tags":772,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":267},"\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",[588,564,590],{"path":774,"title":775,"description":776,"date":777,"author":6,"image":778,"readingMinutes":109,"category":551,"project":556,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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":780,"title":781,"description":782,"date":783,"author":6,"image":784,"readingMinutes":267,"category":551,"project":682,"tags":785,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[563,786,787,687],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":789,"title":790,"description":791,"date":792,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":551,"project":575,"tags":793,"draft":554,"series":795,"seriesOrder":72},"\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",[564,563,734,794],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":797,"title":798,"description":799,"date":800,"author":6,"image":801,"readingMinutes":267,"category":681,"project":559,"tags":802,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[803,804,564,805],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":807,"title":808,"description":809,"date":810,"author":6,"image":811,"readingMinutes":273,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":812,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[563,564,813],"refactoring",{"path":815,"title":816,"description":817,"date":818,"author":6,"image":819,"readingMinutes":267,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":820,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[577,578,579],{"path":822,"title":823,"description":824,"date":825,"author":6,"image":826,"readingMinutes":291,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":827,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[589,828,829,830],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":832,"title":833,"description":834,"date":835,"author":6,"image":836,"readingMinutes":273,"category":681,"project":559,"tags":837,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[565,805,838],"continuous integration",{"path":840,"title":841,"description":842,"date":843,"author":6,"image":844,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":556,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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":846,"title":847,"description":848,"date":849,"author":6,"image":850,"readingMinutes":285,"category":574,"project":575,"tags":851,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[852,853,854,726],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":856,"title":857,"description":858,"date":859,"author":6,"image":860,"readingMinutes":267,"category":551,"project":682,"tags":861,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[805,862,863,687],"red-first","code-review",{"path":865,"title":866,"description":867,"date":868,"author":6,"image":869,"readingMinutes":267,"category":585,"project":682,"tags":870,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[743,871,577,687],"preflight",{"path":873,"title":874,"description":875,"date":876,"author":6,"image":877,"readingMinutes":267,"category":585,"project":559,"tags":878,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[879,563,564],"shutdown",{"path":881,"title":882,"description":883,"date":884,"author":6,"image":885,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":559,"tags":886,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[887,564,579],"packaging",{"path":889,"title":890,"description":891,"date":892,"author":6,"image":893,"readingMinutes":251,"category":681,"project":682,"tags":894,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[742,895,565,687],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":897,"title":898,"description":899,"date":900,"author":6,"image":901,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":902,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[578,589,579],{"path":904,"title":905,"description":906,"date":907,"author":6,"image":908,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":909,"tags":910,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-inbox-that-delivers-nowhere","The Inbox That Delivers Nowhere","Signing in by emailed code puts a mailbox on the critical path. How we use Mailpit on Studomia, how our tests read the code, and what one question taught us.","2026-09-28T09:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Finbox-that-delivers-nowhere-hero.jpg","Studomia",[911,912,913,564],"mailpit","local-development","passwordless",{"path":915,"title":916,"description":917,"date":918,"author":6,"image":919,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":559,"tags":920,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[879,589,921],"signals",{"path":923,"title":924,"description":925,"date":926,"author":6,"image":927,"readingMinutes":291,"category":574,"project":559,"tags":928,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[863,813,929,564],"teaching",{"path":931,"title":932,"description":933,"date":934,"author":6,"image":935,"readingMinutes":273,"category":681,"project":559,"tags":936,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[565,804,563],{"path":938,"title":939,"description":940,"date":941,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":942,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":72},"\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",[588,589,590],{"path":944,"title":945,"description":946,"date":947,"author":6,"image":948,"readingMinutes":291,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":949,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[589,828,829,830],{"path":951,"title":952,"description":953,"date":954,"author":6,"image":955,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":682,"tags":956,"draft":232,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[743,957,958,687],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":960,"title":961,"description":962,"date":963,"author":6,"image":964,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":965,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[564,563,966],"scriptrunner",{"path":968,"title":969,"description":970,"date":971,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":291,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":972,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":273},"\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",[588,589,973],"performance",{"path":975,"title":976,"description":977,"date":978,"author":6,"image":979,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":980,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[564,563,606],{"path":982,"title":983,"description":984,"date":985,"author":764,"image":986,"readingMinutes":273,"category":574,"project":987,"tags":988,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[579,989,717,929],"content",{"path":991,"title":992,"description":993,"date":800,"author":6,"image":994,"readingMinutes":267,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":995,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[563,564,579,929],{"path":997,"title":998,"description":999,"date":985,"author":764,"image":1000,"readingMinutes":251,"category":574,"project":987,"tags":1001,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[1002,577,929,1003],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":1005,"title":1006,"description":1007,"date":1008,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":551,"project":575,"tags":1009,"draft":554,"series":795,"seriesOrder":109},"\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",[564,563,734,794],{"path":1011,"title":1012,"description":1013,"date":1014,"author":6,"image":1015,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":1016,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[589,621,1017],"observability",{"path":1019,"title":1020,"description":1021,"date":1022,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":575,"tags":1023,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[1003,564,565,579],{"path":1025,"title":1026,"description":1027,"date":1028,"author":6,"image":1029,"readingMinutes":236,"category":681,"project":575,"tags":1030,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[565,1031,1032],"validation","typescript",{"path":558,"title":5,"description":553,"date":552,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":551,"project":559,"tags":1034,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},[563,564,565],{"path":1036,"title":1037,"description":1038,"date":1039,"author":6,"image":1040,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":575,"tags":1041,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[578,589,620],{"path":1043,"title":1044,"description":1045,"date":1046,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":1047,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":285},"\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",[598,589,1048],"analytics",{"path":1050,"title":1051,"description":1052,"date":1053,"author":6,"image":1054,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":682,"tags":1055,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",[743,1056,563,687],"failure-modes",{"path":1058,"title":1059,"description":1060,"date":1061,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":1062,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":251},"\u002Fblog\u002Fwhat-the-link-looks-like-before-anyone-clicks","What the Link Looks Like Before Anyone Clicks","A link to any page on our site showed up as a bare rectangle of text. The share image is part of the page, and the build now puts one on every route.","2026-08-22T22:00:00.000Z",[588,589,590],{"path":1064,"title":1065,"description":1066,"date":1067,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":273,"category":551,"project":575,"tags":1068,"draft":554,"series":795,"seriesOrder":236},"\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",[564,563,734,794],{"path":1070,"title":1071,"description":1072,"date":1073,"author":6,"image":556,"readingMinutes":285,"category":585,"project":586,"tags":1074,"draft":554,"series":591,"seriesOrder":291},"\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",[598,589,1048],{"path":1076,"title":1077,"description":1078,"date":1079,"author":6,"image":1080,"readingMinutes":251,"category":681,"project":556,"tags":556,"draft":554,"series":556,"seriesOrder":556},"\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",1790694843780]