What I Decided the Day the Ceiling Doubled: A Headroom Budget for Scheduled Jobs on One Shared API Key
Why I did not compress my intervals when the rate limit doubled, and how to design a headroom budget for running several scheduled jobs on one shared API key, with measurement and working code.
An Unattended Agent That Wakes Up to a Blank Machine Every Time
A scheduled, unattended agent wakes up on a fresh disposable machine every run: paths it cannot write to, a filesystem that has not finished booting, a working directory that has vanished. Here is how to design state recovery into the first thirty seconds, drawn from real operational logs.
Your Claude Files API Storage Is Quietly Filling Up — Dedup With a Content-Hash Ledger and Reap the Orphans
Use the Files API in an automated pipeline and the same file gets uploaded again and again while orphaned files pile up unnoticed. Here is a content-hash dedup ledger plus an orphan GC design, with working code.
When Your Claude API Cost Math Doesn't Match the Bill: Accounting for the Four Token Buckets
Turn on prompt caching and your homegrown cost tally drifts from the console bill. Here is how to weight the four token buckets the usage object returns and build a ledger you can reconcile.
An Article My Gate Rejected Got Published — The Cost of Chaining the Quality Gate and git push in One Call
In an unattended publishing pipeline, an article my quality gate had rejected went live anyway. The cause was chaining the gate and git push into a single shell call. Here is how the exit code gets swallowed, and a two-phase publish-marker design that refuses to push until every gate has demonstrably passed.
When an Announced Billing Change Gets Paused at the Last Minute: Designing Automation That Doesn't Rush the Cutover
A billing change that was supposed to take effect on June 15 was paused that same day. If your pipeline trusts the announced date, a retraction breaks it twice. Here is a design that decides the cutover from a runtime signal, with implementation code.
When an Announced Billing Change Is Withdrawn at the Last Minute, Change No Code
A billing change that was supposed to take effect was withdrawn on the day. To survive announce, apply, and revert without touching code, I keep platform behavior behind a single flag and project the monthly delta from real logs.
Measuring a Week of Headless Usage the Night Before the Billing Change
With headless Claude Code moving to monthly credits on June 15, I spent a week logging how many tokens my unattended runs actually consume, so I could pick a plan based on numbers instead of a guess.
When Your Edited SKILL.md Doesn't Take Effect — Hot-Swapping Claude Code Skills with /reload-skills and Auto-Loaded .claude/skills
A practical routine for hot-swapping Claude Code skills without restarts: /reload-skills, SessionStart hooks, and version stamps that show which SKILL.md is live.
Before You Send Reviews and Crash Logs to the Claude API: A Reversible PII Masking Design
When you run App Store reviews and Crashlytics logs through the Claude API, the personal data buried in the text is unavoidable. Here is a reversible masking design that lets you trace the model's output back to the real record, plus the pitfalls I hit in production, with code.
Three Weeks of Letting Claude in Chrome Run My Android Vitals Weekly Review
I moved my Monday-morning Android Vitals review for a portfolio of wallpaper and relaxation apps over to Claude in Chrome three weeks ago. Notes on what I delegated, what I kept for myself, and how the rhythm has settled in for an indie developer in year twelve.
Ten Mornings of Letting Claude in Chrome Walk My Search Console Rounds
For ten days I handed a slice of my morning Google Search Console rounds across six properties to Claude in Chrome. Here is what changed in my mornings, written from the perspective of an indie developer running 50M+ download wallpaper apps.