I wanted to figure out how people build payment systems without losing everyone's money. It turns out, my first attempt was a great way to lose a lot of it. I started with what felt like a simple Go service. One endpoint, one database table, and a third-party provider to handle the actual charging. The plan was straightforward: Decode the request. Call the provider to charge the user. Save the res
We are currently witnessing a massive shift in AI development. We’ve moved past the "Chatbot" era and into the era of Agentic Systems—AI that doesn’t just suggest text, but actually executes code, moves money, and modifies databases. However, there is a fundamental architectural flaw in how most agents are built today: we are giving "Intelligence" and "Authority" to the same probabilistic model.
Building AI calling agents shouldn't require a commercial license or massive per-minute markups. If you are a Python developer, you should be able to spin up a sub-500ms latency voice agent on your own machine. Prerequisites Python 3.10+ A Twilio or Telnyx SIP Trunk LiveKit Credentials An OpenAI API Key First, clone the Siphon repository and install the requirements. pip install siphon-ai Next, c
I was reading a Stripe tutorial last week and watched the author write amount: req.body.amount. That single line lets any user buy Premium for $1. It's also a common pattern in Stripe Checkout starter code. This post is about why, and how to make it impossible. You're building a paywalled product. You wire up Stripe Checkout, follow a popular tutorial, ship it. Looks great. Tests pass. Users are p