The cost incident that started this Three weeks after we put our chatbot into production, I opened the OpenAI billing dashboard on a Monday morning and stopped breathing for a second. One session — not one user, one session — had burned through roughly four times the daily budget for the entire app. Over a single afternoon. The session wasn't malicious. It was a test account someone forgot to lo
Most agency onboarding fails before the kickoff call happens. Not because the team isn't good. Not because the client is difficult. Because nobody collected the right context upfront, and the kickoff call becomes the place where everyone discovers what they don't know yet. The intake form is the fix. Not a 3-question "tell us about your project" form. A real one. Here's the framework we use — 27 q
Just wrapped up the core setup for my e-commerce API (Impextech): Auth, Products, and Users. Everything is running on Node.js, Express, and TypeScript. Instead of just getting it to work, I spent this week focusing on security, keeping the code clean, and fixing some annoyances in my dev environment. Here’s a breakdown of what I built and a few "gotchas" I learned along the way. I split everythin
A LinkedIn recruiter pitched me a remote "Software Engineer at a DEX" project this week. Reasonable comp range, tech stack squarely in my wheelhouse. After a couple of friendly exchanges, she asked me to "review the codebase before the technical interview" and sent me a GitHub repo link plus a Calendly invite for the call. The repo was malware. It didn't get me, but it's something developers shoul
What is Azure Storage? Azure storage is Microsoft's cloud storage solution. It allows storage of unstructured data, pdfs, file shares etc. The following steps in this article outlines how I was able to create storage for the department's testing and training. In the Azure portal, search for and select Resource groups Select + Create Give your resource group a name. For example, storagerg
If you've worked with Drupal long enough, you've faced this decision: Do I build a custom module for this or can ECA handle it? Use ECA When The logic is workflow-based Non-developers need to maintain it ECA workflows live in the admin UI. Your client or site admin can read, modify, and debug them without touching code. A custom module cannot offer that. Speed matters A workflow that would tak
Disclosure: I'm a senior backend tech lead and I run HostingGuru, where Telegram alerts ship as a built-in feature. This tutorial works on any platform — it's the manual version of what HostingGuru does for you. Useful even if you never become a customer. There's a hierarchy of where production alerts go, ranked by how likely you are to actually see them. Email → 14% open rate within an hour, less
What do you need for UCP? There are two levels of UCP readiness. The first is the minimum viable manifest — the bare requirements to pass validation and appear in the UCP directory. The second is the agent-ready setup — what it actually takes for an AI agent to browse, cart, and check out at your store without friction. Think of this as your UCP checklist — the minimum requirements plus the recomm