Blog

Notes on Next.js, Astro, Firebase, AI, and building production SaaS — from projects I've actually shipped.

• September 1, 2026

  Building DeepSeekCodeGen: why "generates code" is the wrong bar

  A repository-aware code intelligence pipeline that retrieves context via AST + dependency graphs, generates diffs with DeepSeek Coder, and proves them in an isolated sandbox before a human sees them — plus an honest map of what's real vs. scaffolded.

  AIVS Code ExtensionLLMDeepSeek

• September 1, 2026

  Building a Smart Drive Backup Pipeline: Beyond Blind Copying

  How we evolved a chaotic drive-wide backup system from destructive terminal purges to a nested, Git-aware batch automation script that respects local ignores while explicitly whitelisting custom directories.

  MacWindowsAutomationDevOpsSysAdminBackup-Strategies

• August 14, 2026

  How We Find Out Something Broke Before You Tell Us

  The worst failures aren't the ones that show an error. They're the ones where nothing happens at all — an invitation that never sends, and nobody knows.

  RFQ tracking softwaresupplier invitation emailprocurement software reliability

• August 9, 2026

  The Hidden Cost of Every SaaS Tool You Add to Your Stack

  A scheduling tool moved from free to paid and I replaced it in an afternoon. The interesting part wasn't the build — it was realising how much of what I pay for is scaffolding around a very small piece of logic.

  BusinessSaaSToolingFreelance

• August 3, 2026

  Building a Manufacturing Compliance & Certification Tracker

  Replacing the spreadsheet a plant's safety or HR lead maintains by hand — per-department compliance rates, auto-flagged expiring certifications, and exportable audit reports.

  ManufacturingDashboardsData VizProduct

• August 2, 2026

  Building Cluely: A Real-Time Meeting Intelligence Assistant

  An always-on-top AI copilot for live sales calls — live transcription, objection detection, and suggested responses with numbers to back them up, visible only to you.

  AIReal-timeLLMProduct

• August 1, 2026

  Building an Elementor-Style Visual Website Builder From Scratch

  A tree of plain JSON objects, four independent renderers of that same tree, and a widget registry with 27 entries — the architecture decisions that made this actually maintainable.

  ArchitectureReactAstroWebsite Builder

• July 20, 2026

  From Next.js to Astro: A Real Migration Case Study

  I moved a production Next.js site — React islands, a Firebase-backed AI chat endpoint, 50+ shadcn components — to Astro. Here's exactly what broke, what didn't, and how I'd plan it again.

  AstroNext.jsMigrationPerformance

• June 15, 2026

  How to Build a RAG Pipeline for Enterprise Search: A Practical Guide

  A field guide to retrieval-augmented generation from someone who's shipped it in production — chunking strategy, embedding choice, vector store tradeoffs, and where RAG actually fails.

  AIRAGLLMArchitecture

• June 1, 2026

  Next.js vs Astro in 2026: Which Should You Pick for Your Next SaaS?

  Not a benchmark war — a framework decision guide based on what your product actually needs: how much of it is interactive, and how much is content.

  Next.jsAstroArchitectureSaaS

• May 18, 2026

  Firebase Realtime Database vs Firestore: Choosing the Right Backend for Your MVP

  Both are 'the Firebase database.' They have different data models, different pricing curves, and different failure modes at scale. Here's how to actually choose.

  FirebaseBackendDatabaseSaaS

• May 4, 2026

  Building a Multi-Tenant SaaS Architecture on AWS Serverless

  Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, and CloudFormation — the actual patterns for tenant isolation, webhook handling, and data migration that held up in production.

  AWSServerlessSaaSArchitecture

• April 20, 2026

  OAuth Integration Patterns: Lessons from Connecting 50 SaaS Platforms

  Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Gmail, Google Calendar — building a reusable OAuth library that didn't fall apart on platform #12.

  OAuthIntegrationsSaaSArchitecture

• April 5, 2026

  Why Manufacturing Companies Are Still Running RFQs Over Email (And How to Fix It)

  RFQs live in inboxes, spreadsheets, and someone's memory. Here's what actually breaks in email-based procurement, and what a purpose-built RFQ system needs to get right.

  ManufacturingProcurementSaaSRFQTrace

• March 22, 2026

  Prompt Engineering for Production: Beyond the ChatGPT Playground

  A prompt that works great in the playground and falls apart in production is the most common AI-feature bug I see. Here's the gap, and how to close it.

  AILLMPrompt EngineeringProduction

• February 20, 2026

  Hiring a Freelance Full-Stack Developer: What to Actually Look For

  Portfolio polish is the least reliable signal. Here's what I'd check if I were hiring, from someone who's been on both sides of this decision.

  FreelanceHiringSaaS

• January 5, 2026

  SEO for SaaS Marketing Sites: JSON-LD, Metadata, and What Actually Moves the Needle

  Structured data won't rank a bad page, but it changes how search engines and AI answer engines understand a good one. Here's what's actually worth implementing.

  SEOJSON-LDSaaSMarketing

• December 18, 2025

  Building Offline-First Web Apps with Dexie.js and Firebase Sync

  How RFQTrace stays usable with a flaky connection — offline-first caching with Dexie.js synced against Firebase RTDB, and the conflict-resolution problems that actually show up in practice.

  Offline-FirstDexie.jsFirebaseRFQTrace

• December 1, 2025

  Building a WebRTC Video Conferencing Platform From Scratch

  Zoom-like video conferencing built with WebRTC and Socket.io at Kintry — signaling, connection reliability, and the failure modes that only show up on real user networks.

  WebRTCReal-timeArchitectureKintry

• November 17, 2025

  What I Learned Leading a 10-Person Cross-Functional Team as a Tech Lead

  Leading engineering, sales, and HR at Kintry as a tech lead, not a manager — the decisions that made a small cross-functional team actually work, and the ones I'd change.

  LeadershipEngineering ManagementKintry

• November 3, 2025

  Building a High-Performance OTT Video Streaming Frontend

  Lessons from building the video streaming frontend for dotstudioPro's partner network — categorized content, seamless playback, and the performance decisions that mattered most.

  FrontendVideo StreamingPerformanceR Systems

• October 20, 2025

  Building a White-Label Website Generator: Templating and Multi-Tenant Frontend Architecture

  Cutting white-label website creation time by 10% through tooling improvements at R Systems — the templating and theming decisions that made new partner sites fast to spin up.

  FrontendArchitectureMulti-TenantR Systems

• October 6, 2025

  Automated E2E Testing for React Native: Jest, Detox, and CircleCI

  Building unit and end-to-end testing pipelines for React Native apps at R Systems — what actually made the test suite trustworthy instead of a source of ignored red builds.

  TestingReact NativeCI/CDR Systems

• September 22, 2025

  Integrating Stripe Connect and Plaid for a B2B SaaS Platform

  Stripe Connect for registration, transfers, and payouts; Plaid for bank and card integrations — the webhook and account-model decisions that were expensive to get wrong.

  StripePlaidPaymentsLoot Discount

• September 8, 2025

  Building Fast, Filterable Search with Algolia: Lessons from a Directory Product

  Designing and integrating a directory and search page with custom indexes for tailored list displays — the indexing and relevance decisions that actually mattered.

  AlgoliaSearchFrontendLoot Discount

• August 25, 2025

  Designing Role-Based Access Control That Doesn't Fall Apart at Scale

  Building RBAC for granular permissions across a SaaS platform — the modeling decisions that hold up as roles multiply, versus the ones that turn into a permission-matrix nightmare.

  SecurityArchitectureSaaSLoot Discount

• August 11, 2025

  Zero-Downtime Database Migrations with AWS Step Functions

  Moving production data from development to production databases without downtime, using Step Functions to design and execute the workflow safely — the patterns that made it repeatable.

  AWSStep FunctionsDatabaseLoot Discount

• July 28, 2025

  Why I Used Temporal for Long-Running AI Workflows (And When You Shouldn't)

  Multi-step AI workflows that span minutes to hours, need retries, and can't lose state on a crash — what Temporal actually buys you over a simpler queue-based approach.

  TemporalWorkflow OrchestrationAIRevfx

• July 14, 2025

  Orchestrating Data Pipelines with Airflow and Airbyte for AI Workflows

  What it actually takes to keep a sales-intelligence data pipeline feeding a RAG system reliably — ingestion, orchestration, and the failure modes that only show up in production.

  Data EngineeringAirflowAirbyteRevfx

• June 30, 2025

  Building a Configuration-Driven Form Engine for Multi-Workflow Data Input

  A form system that could be reconfigured per workflow without a code deploy — the actual design decisions that made it maintainable instead of a nightmare of special cases.

  FrontendArchitectureReactRevfx

• June 16, 2025

  Building a Meeting Summarization Pipeline: Transcription, and Extracting Signal from Noise

  Zoom meeting summarization and video-to-text transcription for meeting intelligence — what breaks between 'transcribe the audio' and 'produce a summary someone actually reads.'

  AITranscriptionMeeting IntelligenceRevfx

• June 2, 2025

  Building AI Lead-Scoring Workflows: Lessons from Sales Intelligence Tools

  Lead generation, hiring signals, and lookalike account identification using ChatGPT, Anthropic, and DeepSeek — what actually made these workflows useful instead of noisy.

  AISales TechLLMRevfx