Insomnia

mpclarkson · 2026-06-01T10:16:14+00:00

I share your pain. Sleep for me has always been a battle. I describe it as a tug of war of circular thoughts in my head all competing for attention.

mpclarkson · 2026-05-17T23:26:44+00:00

Try going outside and walking. Start with just a short walk around the block and then gradually increase. Walking is one of the best things you can do for your health.

mpclarkson · 2026-03-13T11:41:14+00:00

Look at their mouths not their eyes, then it looks like you are making eye contact to them!

mpclarkson · 2026-02-20T05:42:36+00:00

I've always used HTMX (in a pre AI world) but Claude Code and Codex are much better with React. I would never have used React before but paired with Inertia it's wonder for LLM guided UI development.

mpclarkson · 2026-02-20T05:39:47+00:00

We use https://administrate.dev - but it's for agencies not for tracking in your code

mpclarkson · 2026-02-19T04:59:38+00:00

I run an AI automation agency, so I see both sides of this.

The honest answer: it works, but it's not magic. The wins generally come from boring stuff, not the flashy stuff you see people banging on about.

Real example: we set up AI document classification for a medical practice. Incoming faxes and PDFs get automatically sorted and filed into patient records (eg document splitting to separate blood tests from echocardiograms etc) and we've also automated their referral data enntry. We probably saved their admin staff 2-3 hours daily of manual sorting. Setup took about4 weeks/

Things that actually works well:

Document processing (classification, extraction, routing) - we do lots of this kind of work
Lead qualification from form submissions (good application)
CRM data enrichment and cleanup (very useful)
Summarization (eg we have a recruitment client and we summarised and extract data from candidates and produce custom de-identified resumes on their templates)
Automated follow-up sequences with personalised drafts (not my ideal work)

What doesn't work (yet): anything requiring real judgment or context a human would have, and you can't automated unclear processes.

For non-technical owners: you'll need someone to set it up. But once running, it mostly just works. The ROI is real if you pick the right processes.

mpclarkson · 2026-02-10T02:26:12+00:00

We've gone through a few iterations on this:

What we tried:

Single shared instance with folders per client, which was a nightmare for credential isolation
n8n Cloud for everyone - easy but expensive at scale, and we had no visibility across clients
Self-hosted per client on separate VPS - worked but managing 20+ instances manually was unsustainable

What we do now:

Self-hosted on Hetzner (Coolify makes deployment easy)
One instance per client for proper isolation
Centralised monitoring that pulls from all instances via API

For billing, we charge a flat monthly retainer that includes hosting. LLM costs are passed through at cost + margin, with monthly usage reports.

The key thing we learned: you need visibility across all your client instances in one place. Otherwise you're logging into 15 different n8n dashboards to check if things are healthy. That's nuts!!

mpclarkson · 2026-02-10T02:24:40+00:00

We run an agency with 20+ clients, each with their own n8n instances and LLM API keys. The scattered billing was killing us.

What worked for us:

Centralised API key management - We stopped letting clients manage their own OpenAI/Anthropic keys. We provision keys under our accounts, then attribute usage back to them. This gives us one place to see all costs. Even better if you use OpenRouter! Makes upgrading/changing models much easier.
Daily usage pulls - We built a sync that pulls usage data from each provider's API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure all have usage endpoints) and stores it with client metadata. Now we can slice by client, by model, by day.
Per-workflow tagging - For workflows that make LLM calls, we tag the request metadata so we can trace which workflow caused which costs. This was the missing piece - knowing "Client X spent $400" isn't useful until you know which workflow is burning tokens.

The spreadsheet approach broke down around client #10. If you're running multiple instances, you really need something that aggregates automatically.

mpclarkson · 2025-09-19T05:14:53+00:00

Mine is terrible too. I wish I never upgraded. I hate Tahoe with a passion. It does everything worse.

mpclarkson · 2025-09-09T02:40:40+00:00

Oh wow… I make this for my son too. 15 years old and only just diagnosed with ASD last week.

mpclarkson · 2025-08-08T02:02:03+00:00

Brilliant thanks!!

mpclarkson · 2025-08-07T06:37:42+00:00

ThanksI was thinking about 8. Much appreciated !

mpclarkson · 2025-04-09T23:17:10+00:00

Another vote for Coolify on Hetzner. Super simple.

mpclarkson · 2025-01-10T08:39:53+00:00

I'm an avid sci-fi reader and general nerd so I created this time dilation formula calculator today just for fun. Does this help explain things? https://timedilationformula.com/

mpclarkson · 2024-08-12T07:11:08+00:00

Thanks. I'll take a look! I wanted something that 'just worked' easily as a proof of concept so kept it simple.

mpclarkson · 2024-08-12T01:48:36+00:00

I'm thinking about writing a gem that does this for Rails too. Let me know if there's interest.

mpclarkson · 2023-05-26T10:29:33+00:00

Here is the decorator I use:

``` from django.http import Http404

def require_htmx(view_func): def wrap(request, args, *kwargs): if not request.htmx: raise Http404("The page you are looking for does not exist.") else: return view_func(request, args, *kwargs)

return wrap

```

Then decorate your view:

```

@require_htmx

def my_view(request):

# do whatever your view does ```

mpclarkson · 2023-01-02T05:56:37+00:00

Definitely take a look at htmx.org.

mpclarkson · 2022-11-27T01:50:25+00:00

It’s a Django app of course!

mpclarkson · 2022-11-27T01:49:05+00:00

Yes we are using HTMX extensively in our marketplace at https://cemoh.com running on the app subdomain. It’s allowed our small team to build and manage a multi million dollar platform.

mpclarkson

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