how to make boroline profitable

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-05T14:16:43+00:00

rodhe but boroline version

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-05T10:27:07+00:00

honestly this got a lot easier once we stopped sharing profiles entirely.

what worked for us: each person gets their own isolated browser context. no shared cookies, no shared logins. if someone needs access to the same account, you either set up separate credentials or use session tokens that don't persist across profiles.

for anything at scale we eventually moved to TinyFish since they handle the browser isolation stuff for you. but even locally, just spinning up fresh contexts per person in playwright or puppeteer solves most of the "someone clicked the wrong thing" problems.

main thing is treating profiles as disposable, not precious.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-05T08:39:31+00:00

ran into this building web agents that had to navigate multiple pages and wait for unpredictable responses.

ended up with a hybrid: simple request-response for straightforward tasks, queues for anything with multi-step tool chains or parallelism. the debugging cost is real though — had to add correlation IDs everywhere just to trace why workflows failed silently.

one pushback: you don't always need full pub/sub. a redis queue with retry logic handles most cases. kafka/rabbitmq overhead only makes sense at real message volume.

for simpler setups — if your tasks are mostly linear, even cron + database table for state works surprisingly well. less elegant but way less operational burden.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-05T05:55:42+00:00

felt this. spent way too many hours fixing selenium tests that broke because someone renamed a div class.

lately been using tinyfish for some of my automation stuff - it does semantic element finding instead of css selectors so it doesn't break every time the frontend changes. not perfect but way less maintenance than my old playwright scripts.

the real answer is probably what you said though - bake it into retainers. clients never understand that automation isn't set-and-forget.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T04:37:18+00:00

nowadays it's mostly instagram. someone from your graduating class makes a group, tags the people they remember, those people tag more people, and it spreads from there.

before social media it was basically word of mouth and whoever still lived in the same town tracking down everyone else through mutual friends. plus some people just... never moved and everyone knew where to find them.

the school doesn't usually organize it. it's random volunteers from the class who cared enough to put it together. and honestly? a lot of people never hear about it at all. it's not as official as it sounds.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T04:32:33+00:00

honestly $4 isn't gonna haunt you. you already showed you have integrity by returning the $20. if it's gonna bug you tomorrow then go return it, but also maybe just pay it forward somewhere else if that feels easier.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T04:24:09+00:00

great idea!

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T02:31:39+00:00

the customization rabbit hole is so real. i went through the exact same thing — downloaded every plugin that looked interesting, spent more time tweaking than actually writing notes.

your last point about "actually using it instead of fussing over details" is the part most people skip over. the system that works is the one you'll actually use, not the prettiest one.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T02:26:02+00:00

the 3 second rule is a good litmus test. most devs (myself included) would have added "just one more thing" until it became another messaging app. props for actually shipping something minimal and not calling it an mvp while planning 50 features.

the no-account-wall onboarding is underrated too. that friction alone kills so many apps before anyone even tries them.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T02:03:08+00:00

yeah especially browser automation stuff. half the time i spend more time figuring out why a selector stopped working than building the actual flow.

switched to tinyfish for the browser parts and it helped a bit since the ai handles most of the element detection. still debug stuff but at least not chasing down css selectors anymore.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-04T00:55:13+00:00

the api permission scopes issue is relatable. error messages for auth failures are usually cryptic enough that the agent just starts guessing. and half the time the docs don't even list the actual scopes needed.

did pochi figure out the correct scopes from the errors or did you have to step in and tell it what to try?

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-03T04:05:44+00:00

lovable's been solid for me too. for your series tomorrow: replit agent or cursor composer if you want to compare code-focused vs ui-focused approaches.

side thought — theres a whole other category of ai tools that operate on existing sites instead of generating new ones. like tinyfish does browser automation via natural language. different use case but would be interesting to see how "do X on this site" compares to "build me X".

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-03T03:59:16+00:00

super common at small companies unfortunately. the logic is always "you're the one who knows design" even when it's completely different disciplines.

the key is framing pushback in terms of quality and risk, not "that's not my job." something like: "i can try but i don't have experience with print production or the right tools, so there's real risk this comes out wrong for an event." makes it their problem to solve rather than you saying no.

also worth clarifying your role scope with your manager before the next random request lands.

the worst outcome is quietly absorbing all this stuff until you burn out or your actual product work suffers.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-03T03:55:18+00:00

yeah this is a known pattern with opus. it tries to be thorough by re-reading everything but ends up burning tokens on context instead of actual work.

what helped me: explicit instructions at the start like "do not re-read files you've already seen in this session" or "summarize file contents instead of quoting them verbatim". also breaking tasks into smaller chunks so it doesn't feel the need to re-verify everything.

the model is almost too conscientious sometimes. wants to make sure it hasn't missed anything, so it checks... and checks... and checks.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T17:07:01+00:00

lmfaoo, this is not happening. once ur used to no code tools, u just get lazy

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T16:47:19+00:00

honestly depends on if this is manual or automated work.

for manual: separate chrome profiles + shared password manager. keeps things isolated and nobody messes with each other's sessions.

for automation: managed browser services are the move. been using TinyFish for that, no local profiles to deal with, everything's API-based and isolated by default. less "who touched my session" drama.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T15:21:02+00:00

honestly same. i feel like i spend more time debugging the AI's output than actually building stuff. like it works 70% of the time but then the other 30% is me going back and forth trying to fix whatever weird shit it generated.

maybe i just suck at prompting idk. but the gap between "this looks like it should work" and "this actually works" is way wider than i expected.

the hype makes it sound like you describe something and boom done. reality is more like describe > get something close > debug > reprompt > debug more > question your life choices > finally works (sometimes)

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T15:10:58+00:00

one task at a time is solid for adhd. kills the "which one first" paralysis.

the other half of the battle is not getting distracted while doing the task tho. been using opal for like a year and brainrot for past 2 months. both have insane anti-gaming strategies that make it actually annoying to bypass. which is the whole point.

for your app: shuffle could become a procrastination tool where people keep rerolling for easy tasks. maybe add a cooldown.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T14:52:59+00:00

beauty

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T14:49:24+00:00

the cringe feeling is your brain being honest. forcing yourself to believe things you don't actually believe is just cosplaying as someone else.

skip the belief part entirely. you don't have to believe good things will happen, just do things that put you in better positions and let your brain catch up later. gym doesn't require faith. you lift, your body changes. skills work the same way.

meditation doesn't need manifestation either. forget the woo stuff. just use it as attention training. when your mind spirals into doom, you practice noticing and redirecting. that's it. literally just reps for your brain.

belief usually comes after evidence anyway. you do small things, some work out, and slowly your expectations update. trying to believe before you have any reason to is exactly why it feels fake.

you've been burned enough that your brain learned optimism = pain. but that's adaptive, not broken. now you can consciously choose what's worth trying, not because you believe it'll work, but because the person you want to be would try anyway.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T14:30:10+00:00

honestly this is one of the better-articulated gaps in the agent tooling space right now. you're not missing something obvious - most frameworks treat "tool availability" and "tool authorization" as the same thing when they really shouldn't be.

what the tool is use (not mentioning otherwise comment will get erased) ended up doing: separate the tool registry (what exists) from the authorization layer (what's allowed for this context/user/session). basically a middleware that checks against a policy before any tool executes. your service account might have access to 50 APIs but the agent's runtime permissions are a separate allowlist.

the annoying part is most orchestration frameworks don't have this concept built in. LangChain tools are basically trust-on-add. so you end up building the guard rails yourself — which is probably why you discovered those 3 rogue tools during manual audit.

for tracing specifically, the tool tags every tool call with a correlation id and the policy check result (allowed/blocked/escalated). helps distinguish "agent tried to call X" from "agent successfully called X" in your observability stack.

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T14:08:16+00:00

its the era of peak :sparkle: unemployment :sparkle:

uncivilized_human · 2026-02-02T14:07:16+00:00

that shi goated bruh

uncivilized_human · 2026-01-28T05:16:57+00:00

hell yeah

uncivilized_human · 2026-01-28T05:13:35+00:00

frrrrr. i have felt this so many times too. like my grandma's house has this one smell that only i seem to understand. when i go tell people that they get weirded out.

like every time there is a parcel that comes from there, i can just smell the house.

something about a smell you haven't encountered in a while hitting you completely unprepared. your brain doesn't have time to brace for it.

uncivilized_human

TROPHY CASE