[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":774},["ShallowReactive",2],{"post-\u002Fblog\u002Fwe-promised-not-to-watch-then-we-needed-to-see":3,"blog-all":278},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"category":261,"date":262,"description":263,"draft":264,"extension":265,"image":266,"meta":267,"navigation":268,"path":269,"project":58,"readingMinutes":200,"seo":270,"series":271,"seriesOrder":200,"stem":272,"tags":273,"__hash__":277},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fwe-promised-not-to-watch-then-we-needed-to-see.md","We Promised Not to Watch. Then We Needed to See.","EkoHacks Team",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":255},"minimark",[10,14,19,22,25,29,32,35,39,42,53,60,229,232,235,239,242,245,248,251],[11,12,13],"p",{},"The first post of this series ended with a promise about the second half. We had written in our privacy policy that we used no cookies, no analytics, no tracking pixels, and it was true. It was also why we had no idea whether anyone read the fifty posts in the repository. This post is where that changes, and the change is made in the open, in one commit, so that the code and the promise cannot drift apart.",[15,16,18],"h2",{"id":17},"the-reframe","The reframe",[11,20,21],{},"Measuring is not surveillance. The line between them is not whether you count, it is what you refuse to know. A counter that records that a page was read, from which country, on what kind of device, and knows nothing else, tells a writer what a writer needs and a stranger nothing. A tracker that assigns you an identity, follows you across sites and days, and sells the trail is a different thing that happens to use the same word. We wanted the first and we wrote down why the second is out.",[11,23,24],{},"So before choosing a tool we wrote the refusals. No cookies, because a cookie is an identifier and we do not want one. No fingerprinting, for the same reason by another route. No personal data: no IP address kept, no user identity, no cross site anything. Hosted in the European Union, by a company subject to the same law as us. Aggregated figures only. And no consent banner, not as a convenience but as a consequence: if nothing identifies you, there is nothing to consent to, and a banner would be theatre.",[15,26,28],{"id":27},"what-we-chose","What we chose",[11,30,31],{},"Plausible, a small Estonian company's service, met every refusal as written. Its script is under a kilobyte, sets no cookies, stores nothing on the device, and derives a country from the IP address and then drops the address. Within one day it counts visits using a hash of a daily salt, the site, the address and the browser; the salt changes every twenty four hours and the old one is destroyed, so yesterday's hash cannot be recomputed and we cannot recognise a reader from one day to the next. The figures it keeps are totals.",[11,33,34],{},"We are naming the tool because we name the tools we use. We are not comparing it with anything, because we did not evaluate anything else against the refusals; it met them, and meeting them was the whole requirement.",[15,36,38],{"id":37},"one-commit","One commit",[11,40,41],{},"The policy said we did not do this. Adding the script and then, at some later point, remembering to update the policy would have left a window in which the site did one thing and the document said another. The series rule for this post was that the two land together, and they did:",[43,44,49],"pre",{"className":45,"code":47,"language":48},[46],"language-text","4c248b1 We promised not to watch, then we needed to see\n  web\u002Fapp\u002Fplugins\u002Fplausible.client.ts | 14 ++++++++++++++\n  web\u002Fcontent\u002Flegal\u002Fprivacy-policy.md | 14 ++++++++++++--\n","text",[50,51,47],"code",{"__ignoreMap":52},"",[11,54,55,56,59],{},"Fourteen lines each. 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The sentence in section 2 that said we used no analytics now says we count page views with one service that sets no cookies and cannot identify you, and points at section 3. Section 3 gained a part that says what is recorded, in plain words: the page address, the referring site, the browser and operating system family, the device type, the country, and that the IP address is discarded. It names the legal basis, legitimate interest, and says what that interest is. Section 6 lists the company as a processor, and section 8 says what is kept and for how long: the daily hash for a day, the totals indefinitely, because totals are not about anyone.",[11,233,234],{},"The date at the top of the policy moved from June to August. Because our legal pages are files in the same repository as the site, the sitemap picked the new date up on its own, and the full history of the change, every word that moved, is in the commit. A later post makes that history visible on the page itself.",[15,236,238],{"id":237},"what-we-will-see-and-what-we-will-not","What we will see, and what we will not",[11,240,241],{},"From the dashboard we will be able to say how many people read a post, which country they were in, whether they came from a search engine or a link, and which pages they arrived on and left from. We will not be able to say who any of them were, whether a reader today is the one from yesterday, or anything about what they do anywhere else. When the measurement post at the end of the series reports numbers, those are the numbers it will have.",[11,243,244],{},"The script went live on the evening of the twenty second of August. Within the hour the dashboard showed its first reader: one visitor, the home page, from Greece, direct. The next day, the counter's first full day, a Sunday, it showed nobody at all. Zero visitors, zero page views. We pulled that zero through the API with the same script that will pull the ninety day numbers, and committed it to the evidence folder like any other measurement, because a counter that shows zero and a counter that is broken look identical unless you write the zero down.",[11,246,247],{},"That is the truthful starting line for the second half of this series. A site that search showed 174 times last month, with six clicks, does not have readers to count yet. The counter is not here to flatter us; it is here so that when the findability work of the first seven posts reaches the index, the change is measured against an honest floor, and the floor is zero.",[11,249,250],{},"The number for today: one reader on the first evening, zero on the first full day, and a privacy policy that says exactly how we know.",[252,253,254],"style",{},"html pre.shiki code .snl16, html code.shiki .snl16{--shiki-default:#F97583}html pre.shiki code .svObZ, html code.shiki .svObZ{--shiki-default:#B392F0}html pre.shiki code .s95oV, html code.shiki .s95oV{--shiki-default:#E1E4E8}html pre.shiki code .sU2Wk, html code.shiki .sU2Wk{--shiki-default:#9ECBFF}html pre.shiki code .sDLfK, html code.shiki .sDLfK{--shiki-default:#79B8FF}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":52,"searchDepth":95,"depth":95,"links":256},[257,258,259,260],{"id":17,"depth":95,"text":18},{"id":27,"depth":95,"text":28},{"id":37,"depth":95,"text":38},{"id":237,"depth":95,"text":238},"Shipping and Operations","2026-08-24T10:00:00.000Z","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.",false,"md",null,{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fwe-promised-not-to-watch-then-we-needed-to-see",{"title":5,"description":263},"From Invisible to Findable","blog\u002Fwe-promised-not-to-watch-then-we-needed-to-see",[274,275,276],"privacy","operations","analytics","Nachd3vP5qYK1jMWEY_OQGRVwZNPRQBhWq0kUd8q4VA",[279,291,299,305,317,323,332,339,346,355,362,371,378,385,398,407,414,421,430,438,446,456,463,471,478,484,490,499,507,517,525,532,542,550,556,566,575,583,591,599,607,614,622,630,637,643,650,659,667,674,681,690,696,704,710,718,724,733,740,742,750,756,762,768],{"path":280,"title":281,"description":282,"date":283,"author":6,"image":284,"readingMinutes":188,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":287,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[288,289,290],"git","continuous-integration","craft",{"path":292,"title":293,"description":294,"date":295,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":296,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":126},"\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",[297,275,298],"seo","nuxt",{"path":300,"title":301,"description":302,"date":303,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":304,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":225},"\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",[274,275,298],{"path":306,"title":307,"description":308,"date":309,"author":6,"image":310,"readingMinutes":200,"category":311,"project":312,"tags":313,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[314,315,316],"nullables","testing","websocket",{"path":318,"title":319,"description":320,"date":321,"author":6,"image":322,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":266,"tags":266,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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":324,"title":325,"description":326,"date":327,"author":6,"image":328,"readingMinutes":146,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":329,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[275,330,331],"deployment","idempotency",{"path":333,"title":334,"description":335,"date":336,"author":337,"image":338,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":266,"tags":266,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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":340,"title":341,"description":342,"date":343,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":344,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":345},"\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",[297,275,290],0,{"path":347,"title":348,"description":349,"date":350,"author":6,"image":351,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":352,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[290,353,354],"fastify","security",{"path":356,"title":357,"description":358,"date":359,"author":6,"image":360,"readingMinutes":174,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":361,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[288,289,275],{"path":363,"title":364,"description":365,"date":366,"author":6,"image":367,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":368,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[290,369,370],"documentation","ai-agents",{"path":372,"title":373,"description":374,"date":375,"author":6,"image":376,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":377,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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. 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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",[394,395,396,397],"composition","cli-design","narration","encoding-the-release",{"path":399,"title":400,"description":401,"date":402,"author":6,"image":403,"readingMinutes":200,"category":391,"project":312,"tags":404,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[405,314,406],"design","error handling",{"path":408,"title":409,"description":410,"date":411,"author":6,"image":412,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":413,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[289,330,275],{"path":415,"title":416,"description":417,"date":418,"author":6,"image":419,"readingMinutes":188,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":420,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[288,289,290],{"path":422,"title":423,"description":424,"date":425,"author":6,"image":426,"readingMinutes":126,"category":391,"project":286,"tags":427,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[405,428,429],"data","onboarding",{"path":431,"title":432,"description":433,"date":434,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":311,"project":392,"tags":435,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[436,314,395,437],"user-testing","linear",{"path":439,"title":440,"description":441,"date":442,"author":6,"image":443,"readingMinutes":174,"category":311,"project":286,"tags":444,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\u002Fblog\u002Fretrofitting-testing-without-mocks","Retrofitting Testing Without Mocks","The server had 37 vi.mock calls and no test that touched the database. 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Why we automate operations last.","2026-07-21T17:00:00.000Z","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Frun-it-by-hand-hero.jpg",[453,454,455,397],"automation","releasing","process",{"path":457,"title":458,"description":459,"date":425,"author":6,"image":460,"readingMinutes":126,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":461,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[275,331,462],"webhooks",{"path":464,"title":465,"description":466,"date":467,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":468,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsource-or-execute","Source or Execute","Our dojo laptops are provisioned by one bash script of nearly twelve hundred lines. 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The staging pattern, shown with a crawler we build now.","EkoHacks","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fstage-then-transform-hero.jpg","Propi",{"path":479,"title":480,"description":481,"date":482,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":311,"project":58,"tags":483,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":174},"\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",[297,315,298],{"path":485,"title":486,"description":487,"date":488,"author":6,"image":489,"readingMinutes":95,"category":311,"project":266,"tags":266,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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":491,"title":492,"description":493,"date":494,"author":6,"image":495,"readingMinutes":174,"category":311,"project":392,"tags":496,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[314,497,498,397],"testing-without-mocks","james-shore",{"path":500,"title":501,"description":502,"date":503,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":311,"project":286,"tags":504,"draft":264,"series":506,"seriesOrder":71},"\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",[315,314,445,505],"coverage","What Mocks Cost",{"path":508,"title":509,"description":510,"date":511,"author":6,"image":512,"readingMinutes":174,"category":391,"project":312,"tags":513,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[514,515,315,516],"protocol","pubsub","tdd",{"path":518,"title":519,"description":520,"date":521,"author":6,"image":522,"readingMinutes":188,"category":311,"project":312,"tags":523,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[314,315,524],"refactoring",{"path":526,"title":527,"description":528,"date":529,"author":6,"image":530,"readingMinutes":174,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":531,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[288,289,290],{"path":533,"title":534,"description":535,"date":536,"author":6,"image":537,"readingMinutes":213,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":538,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[275,539,540,541],"debugging","european-tech","community",{"path":543,"title":544,"description":545,"date":546,"author":6,"image":547,"readingMinutes":188,"category":391,"project":312,"tags":548,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[405,516,549],"continuous integration",{"path":551,"title":552,"description":553,"date":554,"author":6,"image":555,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":266,"tags":266,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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":557,"title":558,"description":559,"date":560,"author":6,"image":561,"readingMinutes":200,"category":285,"project":286,"tags":562,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[563,564,565,437],"graphql","stories","xp",{"path":567,"title":568,"description":569,"date":570,"author":6,"image":571,"readingMinutes":174,"category":311,"project":392,"tags":572,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[516,573,574,397],"red-first","code-review",{"path":576,"title":577,"description":578,"date":579,"author":6,"image":580,"readingMinutes":174,"category":261,"project":392,"tags":581,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[454,582,288,397],"preflight",{"path":584,"title":585,"description":586,"date":587,"author":6,"image":588,"readingMinutes":174,"category":261,"project":312,"tags":589,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[590,314,315],"shutdown",{"path":592,"title":593,"description":594,"date":595,"author":6,"image":596,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":312,"tags":597,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[598,315,290],"packaging",{"path":600,"title":601,"description":602,"date":603,"author":6,"image":604,"readingMinutes":146,"category":391,"project":392,"tags":605,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[453,606,405,397],"human-in-the-loop",{"path":608,"title":609,"description":610,"date":611,"author":6,"image":612,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":613,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[289,275,290],{"path":615,"title":616,"description":617,"date":618,"author":6,"image":619,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":312,"tags":620,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[590,275,621],"signals",{"path":623,"title":624,"description":625,"date":626,"author":6,"image":627,"readingMinutes":213,"category":285,"project":312,"tags":628,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[574,524,629,315],"teaching",{"path":631,"title":632,"description":633,"date":634,"author":6,"image":635,"readingMinutes":188,"category":391,"project":312,"tags":636,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[405,515,314],{"path":638,"title":639,"description":640,"date":641,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":642,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":71},"\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",[297,275,298],{"path":644,"title":645,"description":646,"date":647,"author":6,"image":648,"readingMinutes":213,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":649,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[275,539,540,541],{"path":651,"title":652,"description":653,"date":654,"author":6,"image":655,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":392,"tags":656,"draft":268,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[454,657,658,397],"dogfooding","acceptance-testing",{"path":660,"title":661,"description":662,"date":663,"author":6,"image":664,"readingMinutes":200,"category":311,"project":312,"tags":665,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[315,314,666],"scriptrunner",{"path":668,"title":669,"description":670,"date":671,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":213,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":672,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":188},"\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",[297,275,673],"performance",{"path":675,"title":676,"description":677,"date":678,"author":6,"image":679,"readingMinutes":200,"category":311,"project":312,"tags":680,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[315,314,316],{"path":682,"title":683,"description":684,"date":685,"author":475,"image":686,"readingMinutes":188,"category":285,"project":687,"tags":688,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[290,689,428,629],"content",{"path":691,"title":692,"description":693,"date":511,"author":6,"image":694,"readingMinutes":174,"category":311,"project":312,"tags":695,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[314,315,290,629],{"path":697,"title":698,"description":699,"date":685,"author":475,"image":700,"readingMinutes":146,"category":285,"project":687,"tags":701,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[702,288,629,703],"workflow","accessibility",{"path":705,"title":706,"description":707,"date":708,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":311,"project":286,"tags":709,"draft":264,"series":506,"seriesOrder":95},"\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",[315,314,445,505],{"path":711,"title":712,"description":713,"date":714,"author":6,"image":715,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":716,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[275,331,717],"observability",{"path":719,"title":720,"description":721,"date":722,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":311,"project":286,"tags":723,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[703,315,405,290],{"path":725,"title":726,"description":727,"date":728,"author":6,"image":729,"readingMinutes":126,"category":391,"project":286,"tags":730,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[405,731,732],"validation","typescript",{"path":734,"title":735,"description":736,"date":737,"author":6,"image":738,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":286,"tags":739,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[289,275,330],{"path":269,"title":5,"description":263,"date":262,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":741,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":200},[274,275,276],{"path":743,"title":744,"description":745,"date":746,"author":6,"image":747,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":392,"tags":748,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",[454,749,314,397],"failure-modes",{"path":751,"title":752,"description":753,"date":754,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":755,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":146},"\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",[297,275,298],{"path":757,"title":758,"description":759,"date":760,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":188,"category":311,"project":286,"tags":761,"draft":264,"series":506,"seriesOrder":126},"\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",[315,314,445,505],{"path":763,"title":764,"description":765,"date":766,"author":6,"image":266,"readingMinutes":200,"category":261,"project":58,"tags":767,"draft":264,"series":271,"seriesOrder":213},"\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",[274,275,276],{"path":769,"title":770,"description":771,"date":772,"author":6,"image":773,"readingMinutes":146,"category":391,"project":266,"tags":266,"draft":264,"series":266,"seriesOrder":266},"\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",1787861097105]