Most cloud sustainability tools are built for sustainability officers. They pull three-month-old billing data, run it through a proprietary model, and produce a PDF that engineers never see. By the time you know your us-east-1 cluster emits twice as much as us-west-2 would have, it's been running for a quarter. The architecture is locked in. The carbon is already burnt. The only moment you can act
This is the follow-up to What I Actually Learned Building a Side Project in 5 Days With AI. That post was about AI. This one is about what happens after you ship — when you actually have to run the thing. I lost a freelance client last year because I forgot to send a monthly report. Not because I didn't do the work. I did the work. I just never wrote it down in a place I'd actually look. The repor