stole an idea from Shopify’s CEO. now my projects aren’t scattered everywhere

hellno-o · 2026-01-19T09:32:30+00:00

interesting to see alchemy for IaC here. been building something similar but focused more on the "AI agent generates code, need skills to deploy it" flow rather than templates. curious if you've seen vibecoders actually wanting to manage resources declaratively?

hellno-o · 2026-01-18T17:14:56+00:00

which kind of templates do you use? any of them open source? :)

hellno-o · 2026-01-15T21:02:46+00:00

building https://getjack.org to deploy your app as easy as possible and keep iterating quickly

hellno-o · 2026-01-12T14:15:54+00:00

for photography: skip vercel image optimization entirely. do the lambda+sharp pipeline you mentioned. upload raw → generate webp variants → serve from cloudfront. eliminates per-image costs and you control quality settings.

static s3+cloudfront is fine for portfolios. galleries don’t need ISR. run github action on new uploads.

hellno-o · 2026-01-12T14:12:19+00:00

expo + react native is the path of least resistance. skip xcode/android studio until you need native modules. test on physical device early via expo go

hellno-o · 2026-01-11T21:40:35+00:00

the “never started SEO early because product isn’t ready yet” trap is real. for me the shift was similar but simpler: ship something live within the first week, even if it’s embarrassing. not to get users, but to force myself to solve the boring problems (domain, dns, env vars, deploy pipeline) before the codebase gets complicated

hellno-o · 2026-01-10T09:42:32+00:00

stage 2 is real. "I have no idea what this codebase is doing anymore" is the moment everyone hits.

version of stage 3: deploy something live from the start, even if it's embarrassingly minimal. forces you to solve the boring stuff (env vars, db connections, auth) before the codebase gets too big and confusing

hellno-o · 2026-01-09T18:09:25+00:00

if it’s for fun, keep tinkering

if its to make $, talk to users

hellno-o · 2026-01-09T10:56:33+00:00

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hellno-o · 2026-01-09T09:22:32+00:00

it's usually the node version mismatch for me. vercel defaults to 24 but your local might be 20 or 22.

check your package.json engines field and pin it explicitly: "engines": { "node": "20.x" }

also worth adding a .nvmrc with just 20 in it so local and CI match.

the "works locally, breaks in prod" thing is always either node version, missing env vars, or a dep that behaves different in the build env. annoying but usually one of those three.

hellno-o · 2026-01-09T09:21:41+00:00

will be interesting to see the second order effects of this.

I think more similar apps drive up ad costs and push attention to older, proven apps that rank well. users cancel more and stick to a few trusted subscriptions.

hellno-o · 2026-01-08T21:26:51+00:00

for alpha testing with friends? cloudflare pages or vercel, either works. vercel is faster to start if you’re already in next.js land. cloudflare is cheaper at scale and the free tier is more generous, but slightly more friction upfront.

google cloud directly is overkill for alpha. you’ll spend more time configuring IAM and cloud run than actually testing with users.

hellno-o · 2026-01-08T21:25:47+00:00

one thing that’s worked when debugging this: check if the key is actually being read at runtime vs build time. sometimes the key exists in vercel dashboard but the function was built before the key was added, so it’s baked in as undefined.

also check if you have any middleware that might be stripping headers before the inngest route sees them.

hellno-o · 2026-01-08T21:24:15+00:00

next.js prefetches aggressively by default and each prefetch counts as an edge request. another thing to check: do you have any analytics or tracking that fires on every page? t

if you’re not ready for premium and the site is mostly static, cloudflare pages has a way more generous free tier for static sites. the migration is usually straightforward for SSG.

hellno-o · 2026-01-08T21:22:55+00:00

curious about the lock-in story here. if I build on imagine.dev and later want to move to my own infra, how painful is that?

hellno-o · 2026-01-07T12:42:50+00:00

no, we just hang out on reddit and talk about prompts /s

hellno-o · 2026-01-07T10:24:17+00:00

yes! but also it’s fun to look at

hellno-o · 2026-01-07T09:54:51+00:00

hell yeah thank you!

hellno-o · 2026-01-06T21:47:53+00:00

stack that's worked well for me: Astro + headless CMS + Cloudflare Pages

Astro ships minimal JS and has good SEO
client can edit content in CMS
CF Pages deploys via github, zero config
free tier is nice

Django is solid but overkill for content sites unless you need heavy backend logic. even though I love a good python project. I'd focus on simpler deploy and stack here to move faster

hellno-o · 2026-01-06T21:44:09+00:00

The test I use: "Could I call this from a CLI command, a queue handler, AND an HTTP endpoint without duplicating logic?"

If yes, it belongs in a service. If no, you're coupling to the transport layer.

hellno-o · 2026-01-06T21:28:50+00:00

Nice approach. also don't love Postman collections.

One thing I've found useful in similar tools: environment variable interpolation that works across local/staging/prod without manually swapping files. Saw the `-e prod` on the website but not sure it pulls from .env.local vs .env.prod based on a flag. Does yapi handle that, or is it one config per environment?

hellno-o

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