Architecture
Boring architecture is a feature
The 1 a.m. version of your system will be debugged by a tired human. Choose shapes that survive that human.
2025-06-02 · 6 min
Novelty is a cost center. A typed API, a relational database with constraints, a queue with retries, and logs you can grep will outlive the framework that was exciting at kickoff.
Draw the request
If you cannot draw the path of a user action — including the worker and the third party — you are not ready to add another box. Diagrams are not decoration. They are how the team shares a brain.
Idempotency is respect
Networks retry. Humans double-click. Payment webhooks arrive twice. A system that cannot survive that is not 'real-time'. It is fragile.