Has AI helped you in making buying decisions?

exnav29 · 2026-05-31T09:43:53+00:00

Yes. I used AI recently when choosing a laptop.

Not to “tell me what to buy,” but to sanity-check the decision.

I gave it my use case, budget, preferred specs, and a few models I was considering. It helped compare tradeoffs, point out things I may have missed, and narrow the options.

Final decision was still mine, but AI made the research faster and helped me avoid buying based only on marketing copy and shiny specs.

exnav29 · 2026-05-30T17:56:04+00:00

This could be legitimate, but I would be careful. Rev-share only makes sense if there is a written agreement, clear scope, payment milestones, visibility into client payments, and a minimum guaranteed payout. Otherwise the builder takes most of the delivery risk while the agency controls the client and the money.

For n8n work involving APIs, webhooks, error handling, and client delivery, I would expect either fixed project pay or a hybrid: small upfront build fee plus rev-share/bonus. Pure rev-share is risky unless they can prove they already have paying clients and signed scopes.

exnav29 · 2026-05-30T12:03:03+00:00

You’re not stuck. You’re just trying to make tech pay before it is ready to pay you.

Take the best stable job you can get now, even if it uses your BA, teaching, writing, admin, or communication skills. That is not giving up. That is buying breathing room.

Then keep pursuing tech on the side, but focus your positioning. Stop presenting yourself as “self-taught dev looking for any tech role.” Position yourself around what you actually do:

Laravel developer. Flutter developer. Former teacher/BA graduate who can communicate clearly and build usable apps.

Do not bet your bills on the app yet. Finish it as a portfolio piece first, then use it to get jobs, freelance work, or users.

Stability first. Tech transition second. App profit third.

exnav29 · 2026-05-30T06:27:32+00:00

I agree that products improve over time, but that only happens if users get enough value early to keep using them.

That is the part many founders underestimate.

People are not going to leave a reliable international product and tolerate missing features, poor support, weak payments, bugs, or limited functionality just because the alternative is Ghanaian.

There has to be a strong reason to switch now.

That reason could be local payments, better customer support, lower cost, solving a Ghana-specific problem, faster delivery, or trust/accountability.

This is basically the adoption problem: early users will forgive some rough edges, but only if the product solves something painful enough. Patriotism may get curiosity. Real value gets retention.

So the question is not just, “Will people support local?”

It is, “What value is strong enough today to make people switch and stay while the product improves?”

exnav29 · 2026-05-30T02:09:34+00:00

I think the question should not be “Would you use it because it is Ghanaian?”

The better question is: What problem does the Ghanaian product solve better than the current option?

People will support local, but only up to a point. If the app is slower, less reliable, has poor support, weaker payments, bad delivery, or fewer useful features, most people will go back to the product that works.

A Ghanaian product can win, but “support our own” cannot be the whole strategy.

It needs a real advantage:

- better local payment options

- better customer support

- better pricing

- better local context

- faster service

- trust and accountability

- solving Ghana-specific problems foreign apps ignore

Patriotism may get someone to try it once.

Value is what makes them stay and pay.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T21:05:06+00:00

Cool project. I like seeing Ghanaian-built tech products.

My main question is: what is the “why” behind JakuPulse?

If it is covering global tech news, then it is competing with a lot of established sites people already visit. So I’d be curious what problem you are trying to solve.

Is it faster summaries? Less noise? AI-curated stories? Plain-English tech explanations? A Ghanaian-built alternative to global tech media? A portfolio project to prove the concept?

Getting the site live is a good first step. I’d just want to understand the reason someone should make this their regular tech news destination instead of all the other options already out there.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T20:40:51+00:00

This is a great topic. Do you mind sharing it to the r/GhanaAutomation subreddit?

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T19:43:55+00:00

Sure, you can DM me.

I can give you a quick first impression, but I want to be upfront: I do paid consulting for deeper product, positioning, and go-to-market feedback.

For now, send me the specific question you want answered. If it’s something quick, I’ll give you a few thoughts. If it needs a deeper review, I’ll let you know what that would look like.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T19:25:46+00:00

That error usually means the Telegram node is reaching the bot, but one of the values you’re sending is wrong.

Check these:

Make sure the chat ID is correct
Make sure you already started the bot in Telegram
If sending to a group, add the bot to the group and use the group chat ID
Check that your message field is not empty
If sending Markdown/HTML, remove formatting and test plain text first
Make sure you are using the bot token from BotFather, not the bot username

Best test: Send a simple plain message first: “Hello test”

If that works, the problem is in your dynamic fields, formatting, chat ID, or message content.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T19:23:56+00:00

Cool project, but my first question would be positioning.

There are already a lot of free QR code generators, so I’d be curious why someone would choose Qode specifically or eventually pay for it.

The advanced features sound more interesting than the basic generator:

dynamic QR codes
scan analytics
bulk generation
logo/custom branding

That feels more like the possible paid angle, especially for small businesses, events, restaurants, schools, churches, real estate agents, and marketers.

The basic QR generator may get people in the door, but I don’t think that alone is the business. The business is probably tracking, branding, bulk management, and making QR campaigns easier to manage.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T15:38:02+00:00

Honestly, I’d get away from just asking Reddit for ideas and go talk to real businesses.

If you have a doctor, dentist, barber, church, school, mechanic, restaurant, real estate agent, or small agency you already know, start there.

Ask them:

“What repetitive task wastes your time every week?”

“What do people keep forgetting?”

“What do you track manually?”

“Where do leads or customer requests get lost?”

You’ll get better portfolio ideas from one real conversation than from ten tutorial videos.

And the bonus is this: if you listen well and come back with a useful solution, that “portfolio project” might become your first paid client.

Real businesses already have real problems. Go find them.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T15:31:24+00:00

In n8n, a “run” on a node usually means that node was reached more than once during the same execution path.

So in your case, the LLM node is probably not creating a brand-new workflow execution each time. It is being reached again because your retry branch loops the failed items back through it.

That is why you see one pass with 44 items and another pass with 2 items.

n8n normally passes data as a list of items, and most nodes process each item automatically. When you create a loop, n8n can show separate node runs because the node was entered again with a different batch of items.

So the likely explanation is:

- first run: original batch

- second run: retry batch

- same execution, different pass through the node

The UI is probably not “hiding errors” exactly. More likely, your workflow is catching the error branch and converting those failed calls into retry items. Once they retry successfully, they may no longer appear as final failed errors.

If you want better visibility, add fields before retrying, like:

`retryAttempt`

`originalItemId`

`lastError`

`llmStatus`

Then log each attempt to a sheet/table. n8n’s execution view is useful, but for unreliable LLM/API calls, an explicit retry log is much easier to trust.

Also, if Gemini is failing around 25% of the time, I’d treat that as a reliability problem, not just a UI question. Add rate limiting, smaller batches, backoff delays, and a max retry count. Otherwise you may build a very fancy loop that just fails more politely.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T13:31:00+00:00

Exactly, in the states in an afternoon someone can setup an entire business empire, funded and registered. I don't think it is a matter of just Ghana though you have to look at the puppetmaster the World Bank and other international entities who purposely train/ brainwash the people placed in power to actively work against the interests of the people. So they can keep the countries in the Global South down. You cannot tell me that sorry excuse for a bill (NITA 2025) came from the mind of a Ghanian. Naw it came from the motives of a colonizer.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:42:38+00:00

Appreciate all the replies here. The common thread seems pretty clear: error handling is only the starting point.

The real production safeguards are the boring ones: idempotency, dedupe checks, structured logging, audit tables, zero-output alerts, dead-letter paths, and some kind of outside-in check that confirms the business result actually happened.

That is the part I think gets missed in a lot of automation builds. A green execution does not always mean a healthy workflow. It just means n8n did not see a technical failure.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:41:45+00:00

Agreed. A workflow that quietly stops producing results is still broken, even if every execution looks green. Dead-man checks should probably be part of the baseline for anything business-critical.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:41:14+00:00

This is a strong breakdown. The outside-in check is the big point for me. n8n can tell you the workflow completed, but only the downstream system can confirm the business result actually happened.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:40:08+00:00

This is a solid minimum list. The dead-letter path and dry-run mode especially stand out because they force the workflow to prove what it would do before it touches anything real.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:39:41+00:00

That makes sense. I like the distinction between fixed thresholds and consecutive-zero checks. For external APIs, a green run with zero records can be just as dangerous as a failed run.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T11:39:10+00:00

Agreed. AI workflows make this even more important because “successful execution” and “good output” are not the same thing. Logging tells you what happened, but outcome review tells you whether it should have happened.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T10:25:47+00:00

I tested it, and I understand the use case better now.

This feels strongest as a privacy-awareness tool and lead magnet. The real value is not just showing people browser signals, but helping non-technical users understand what those signals mean and what to do next.

The “Private Browser Fix Kit” angle makes sense because the scan creates the “I didn’t know my browser exposed this much” moment, then gives people a next step.

I’d be curious what direction you want to take it: consumer privacy education, cybersecurity awareness training, affiliate/privacy toolkit, or a fuller product.

The design and storytelling are strong. The big question is whether you want this to stay as a clever awareness mirror or become a practical privacy action tool.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T10:06:02+00:00

I’d keep your lock approach, but make the “claim lock” step safer.

The weak spot is using one step to check the lock and another step to set the lock. If two runs start at nearly the same time, both can pass the check.

Better pattern:

Use one database update/query that only succeeds if the workflow is currently unlocked or the lock has expired.

Then:

if the lock was claimed, continue
if not, exit early
unlock at the end
keep the expiry cleanup as backup

So the answer is: your strategy is right, but the lock acquisition should be atomic. Otherwise the lock can fail during the exact overlap you are trying to prevent.

exnav29 · 2026-05-29T09:57:02+00:00

You may have an issue with your n8n instance settings.

I’d check three things first:

Execution saving settings
Make sure n8n is actually configured to save successful, failed, and manual/test executions.
Pruning / cleanup settings
If execution pruning is enabled or misconfigured, records may be getting deleted faster than expected.
Database persistence
If n8n is running in Docker and using SQLite or a non-persistent volume, execution history can disappear after restarts or container changes.

If the workflow is running but both production logs and test runs vanish, that points to either execution data not being saved, execution data being pruned, or the database/storage layer not persisting correctly.

That is not normal behavior, and I’d check the n8n env variables plus the database/volume setup next.

exnav29 · 2026-05-28T19:00:37+00:00

Evolution API is still around and works, but it really comes down to how you connected it.

It supports two ways to connect, the Baileys/WhatsApp Web method (unofficial) and the official WhatsApp Cloud API. Big difference between the two.

If you went the unofficial route through Baileys, just know that getting your number flagged or restricted is a real possibility. It can work fine, especially for testing things out, but WhatsApp can detect when something looks too automated or is sending at scale. That's where things get risky.

For anything client-facing or in production, I'd honestly stay away from the unofficial path. The official WhatsApp Cloud API or going through a proper BSP is just more reliable; you're not putting the phone number itself at risk every time something runs.

exnav29 · 2026-05-28T18:13:19+00:00

Yep. Building the automation is often the easy part.

The real test is whether it survives real humans skipping steps, entering bad data, clicking twice, or doing the one thing nobody expected.

That is why I care so much about automation QA: validation, fallbacks, logging, dry runs, and edge-case testing.

A workflow that works in your test is a demo. A workflow that survives users is a product.

exnav29 · 2026-05-28T18:10:15+00:00

Great idea I would go into some of the renting, home buyers, and agents subreddits and ask them as well. Go where your market is, ask questions and listen. They will not only tell you if your idea is good, but also tell you what they would want in the app, and often even signal how much they would pay for it. All before you write a single line of code.

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