MISSION LOGS
> Declassified post-mortems of rescued projects.
> Names redacted to protect the guilty.
Deploy pipeline took 45 mins. 50% failure rate. Secrets committed to git. "We just restart the server manually when it crashes."
- Containerized legacy Node app.
- Moved secrets to GSM.
- Implemented Github Actions CI with auto-rollback.
- Deploy time reduced to 3 mins.
Burning cash on LLM tokens. No idea where. "We treat OpenAI like a free buffet."
- Implemented full observability (LangSmith/Helicone).
- Added aggressive caching layer.
- Reduced API costs by 2x immediately.
- "Wow! We can actually survive Q1."
zero observability. "Users say it's slow". No logs. No metrics. Founder debugging via SSH in production console.
- Removed SSH access (sorry, not sorry).
- Integrated Sentry + Datadog.
- Identified and fixed N+1 query killing performance.
- Setup PagerDuty for actial alerts.
Tried to deploy "simple" pet project at 3 AM. Wife found him screaming at Docker logs in the kitchen. Threatened divorce if he didn't come to bed.
- Took over the repo.
- Deployed to Vercel in 10 mins.
- Sent him to bed.
- Wrote a script to auto-reply "Yes, dear" to his wife.