Stu Mason · Folkestone, Kent

The archivelong-form · newest first

Everything long-form that has gone out.

Written while the work was still warm.

Week in Review: Jul 13 – Jul 19, 2026 — 56 PRs, 1,004 commits14 min read56 PRs merged, 1004 commits, 2 releases, +56,697 lines
Week in Review: Jul 6 – Jul 12, 2026 — 77 PRs, 2,696 commits22 min read77 PRs merged, 2696 commits, +35,359 lines
Open Source as Marketing: Why I Give Away My Best PatternsOpinionated8 min readWhy giving away code through open source packages brings in paid work. The trust loop of see code, trust quality, hire. How Claudavel, laravel-coolify, and polar-flow fit into a freelance business model. Not altruism. Strategy. How open source builds reputation, demonstrates competence, and generates leads without a sales team.
Week in Review: Jun 29 – Jul 5, 2026 — 87 PRs, 2,225 commits21 min read87 PRs merged, 2225 commits, +83,284 lines
Kent, Remote, Global: Running a Dev Business From FolkestoneOpinionated7 min readLife as a developer running a consultancy from Folkestone, Kent. London clients, global projects, remote work, and the occasional on-site. Why location genuinely doesn't matter for code quality, how the lifestyle choice works in practice, and the human story behind the professional website. Personal, authentic, deliberately not trying to sound like a London agency.
The Solo Developer Advantage: Why One Good Dev Beats a Team of FiveOpinionated8 min readThe case for solo development: no standups, no sprint planning, no handoffs, no "can you review my PR" delays. Direct communication with the client, faster shipping, lower overhead. But also the honest trade-offs: single point of failure, no holiday cover, the loneliness of hard problems. When to stay solo and when to grow.
I Don't Use Feature Flags. Here's Why.Opinionated7 min readA deliberately controversial take on feature flags: for solo developers and small teams, they add complexity you don't need. Ship it or don't. Branch, merge, deploy. This article makes the case for simplicity over configurability, while honestly acknowledging when feature flags genuinely earn their keep.
Week in Review: Jun 22 – Jun 28, 2026 — 16 PRs, 560 commits6 min read16 PRs merged, 560 commits, +1,037 lines
16 Years of PHP: Why I'm Still Here and Not Sorry About ItOpinionated7 min readA personal journey through 16 years of PHP development: from the PHP 4 spaghetti era through to modern Laravel 12. Why PHP's ecosystem won despite the constant "PHP is dead" narrative. What actually matters in a programming language, and why the developer who ships beats the developer who debates stack choices on Twitter.
AI Code Review via GitHub Actions: Setting Up @claude on Your ReposAI Practical7 min readA practical setup guide for adding Claude as an automatic PR reviewer on your GitHub repositories. Covers the GitHub Action workflow configuration, permission scoping, what it genuinely catches, what it misses, and how it fits alongside human review. Based on the workflow templates from the Claudavel package and real-world usage across multiple repositories.
Week in Review: Jun 15 – Jun 21, 2026 — 39 PRs, 1,210 commits10 min read39 PRs merged, 1210 commits, +10,831 lines
MCP Servers on Cloudflare Workers: OAuth2 + KV Token StorageAI Practical7 min readA technical guide to deploying MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers on Cloudflare Workers, covering the OAuth2 authentication flow, storing tokens in Cloudflare KV, and proxying API calls to third-party services. Based on building the Polar MCP server. Covers when Workers are the right choice and when you should reach for a proper backend instead.
Building an AI Developer Intelligence Platform in 10 DaysAI Practical7 min readThe story of building DevTrends from idea to production in 10 days. Two developers, 81 commits, 100+ data sources, and an architecture that combines Laravel, AI processing pipelines, and MCP integration. This is the real timeline, the real decisions, and the real trade-offs of shipping something ambitious on a tight schedule.
Two builds: agent-era commerce and a UK property-price map6 min readTwo repos went from empty to production this week: an open-source Laravel commerce template that lets AI agents check out over MCP, ACP and x402, and a UK property pipeline that fuses Land Registry, EPC and OS building data into a price-per-sqft map. What each does and why.
Claude Code in My Daily Workflow: What Actually WorksAI Practical7 min readAn honest review of using Claude Code as a daily development tool after months of real usage. Not a hype piece: what it genuinely speeds up, what it struggles with, and how a single markdown file changed the way it works with your codebase. If you're considering adding AI tooling to your workflow, this is what to actually expect.
Week in Review: Jun 8 – Jun 14, 2026 — 22 PRs, 973 commits8 min read22 PRs merged, 973 commits
The Plan: From Two Visitors a Day to Inbound WorkOpinionated5 min readReal numbers, three phases, falsifiable targets — written by the AI that has to execute it.
Adding AI to Your Laravel App: Practical Integration, Not a DemoAI Practical6 min readMost AI tutorials show you how to build a chatbot. This isn't that. This is about integrating AI into a production Laravel application: wrapping API calls in Actions, handling failures gracefully, queueing expensive operations, and caching responses so you're not burning money on repeat requests. Based on real patterns from DevTrends, Progress, and client work.
Meilisearch in Laravel: Full-Text Search Without the Elasticsearch TaxTechnical Deep-Dives8 min readElasticsearch is overkill for most Laravel apps. Algolia charges per search. Meilisearch is open-source, fast, typo-tolerant, and integrates with Laravel Scout in about 20 minutes. This article covers the full setup: installation, Scout integration, configuring searchable attributes, filterable attributes, custom ranking rules, and real production examples from Rezzy's event and activity search.
Week in Review: Jun 1 – Jun 7, 2026 — 32 PRs, 451 commits6 min read32 PRs merged, 451 commits, +1,758 lines
Two-Sided Marketplace Architecture: The Decisions That MatterTechnical Deep-Dives8 min readBuilding a two-sided marketplace means making a dozen architectural decisions in the first week that you'll live with for years. One user table or two? How do payments flow? How do you handle trust? This article covers the decisions that actually matter, based on building TidyLinker (a cleaning services marketplace). What I chose, why, and what I'd do differently.
GitHub Webhooks to Activity Feed: Normalising Messy Event DataTechnical Deep-Dives8 min readGitHub sends webhook events in a dozen different formats with varying levels of useful data. Turning that into a clean, deduplicated activity feed requires validation, normalisation, filtering, and a backup polling mechanism for when webhooks inevitably get dropped. This article covers the full pipeline from raw webhook to rendered feed item, based on the Progress developer site.
Week in Review: May 25 – May 31, 2026 — 20 PRs, 360 commits6 min read20 PRs merged, 360 commits, 1 releases, +6,641 lines
Availability Slot Systems: Weekly Recurrence with Date OverridesTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readBuilding an availability system that handles "I work Mondays 9-5 except next Monday I'm off" is surprisingly fiddly. The two-table pattern (recurring weekly slots plus date-specific overrides) handles it cleanly. This article walks through the database design, the query logic, and the edge cases you'll hit. Based on TidyLinker's cleaner availability system.
ID Obfuscation with Sqids: Why Your API Shouldn't Expose Sequential IDsTechnical Deep-Dives6 min readEvery time your API returns `id: 42`, you're telling the world how many records you have, roughly when each was created, and making it trivial to enumerate your entire dataset. Sqids (formerly Hashids) generate short, URL-safe, non-sequential identifiers from integers. This article covers the why, the implementation, and the `HasUid` trait pattern I use across Laravel projects.
Week in Review: May 18 – May 24, 2026 — 37 PRs, 680 commits9 min read37 PRs merged, 680 commits, 1 releases, +13,384 lines
Content Extraction at Scale: Building a Pipeline That Processes 100+ SourcesTechnical Deep-Dives6 min readDevTrends processes content from over 100 RSS feeds, newsletters, and API sources daily. Duplicate detection, content extraction, and status tracking across that many sources need a proper pipeline, not a cron job with a foreach loop. This article walks through the architecture: fetcher pattern, URL deduplication, content hash deduplication, extraction status tracking, and how it all fits together.
Supabase RLS Pitfalls: When Row-Level Security Fights Your AppTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readRow-Level Security in Supabase sounds brilliant on paper: define policies at the database level and never worry about authorisation bugs. In practice, it introduces a chicken-and-egg problem that'll have you questioning your life choices. This article covers when RLS works well, when it fights you, and the `createServiceClient()` escape hatch. Based on real struggles building a Next.js booking platform with Supabase.
Multi-Tenant SaaS Authorization: Policies That Actually ScaleTechnical Deep-Dives6 min readGetting authorisation right in a multi-tenant Laravel app is the difference between "it works" and "a user just saw another company's data." This article covers the pattern I use for Laravel Policies in multi-tenant SaaS applications: checking both ownership AND tenant membership on every operation. Real Policy code from production marketplace and booking systems.
Week in Review: May 11 – May 17, 2026 — 48 PRs, 1,040 commits11 min read48 PRs merged, 1040 commits, 2 releases, +8,361 lines
Laravel Actions Pattern: Moving Business Logic Out of ControllersTechnical Deep-Dives6 min readControllers should validate input and return responses. That's it. The moment you start stuffing business logic into controllers, you end up with 300-line methods that are impossible to test in isolation. This article covers the Actions pattern I use on every Laravel project: single-responsibility classes that do one thing properly. I'll show real examples from production code, including the TidyLinker marketplace and the Progress developer site.
DTOs in Laravel: Why I Use Them on Every Project and HowTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readData Transfer Objects sound like enterprise Java nonsense, but in Laravel they solve real problems: preventing accidental data leakage to the frontend, creating explicit contracts between backend and frontend, enabling TypeScript type generation, and making controller responses predictable. This article covers why I use DTOs on every project, the make:dto generator command, readonly classes with fromModel(), and automatic TypeScript type generation. Based on real patterns used across all my projects.
Week in Review: May 4 – May 10, 2026 — 6 PRs, 140 commits3 min read6 PRs merged, 140 commits, +1,851 lines
Real-Time Chat with Laravel Reverb: What I Learned Building Two PlatformsTechnical Deep-Dives8 min readLaravel Reverb is the first-party WebSocket server for Laravel, and I've used it to build real-time chat on two different marketplace platforms. This article covers the practical side: channel authorization, presence channels, message broadcasting, typing indicators, and all the annoying bits that real-time features introduce. Based on building chat for TidyLinker and Rezzy.
Event-Driven Notifications: Deduplication, Tenant Isolation, Channel ExpansionTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readBuilding a notification system that actually scales means solving three problems most tutorials ignore: deduplication (don't send the same notification twice), tenant isolation (hotel A's notifications don't leak to hotel B), and channel expansion (adding SMS without rewriting everything). This article covers the event subscriber pattern, composite key deduplication with time windows, and tenant-scoped notification channels. Based on the notification-engine repo built for a hospitality platform.
Stripe Connect Authorize-Then-Capture: The Implementation Nobody DocumentsTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readStripe Connect's authorize-then-capture flow for marketplace payments is one of those things where the docs give you the concepts but not the implementation. This article covers the actual code: creating connected accounts, authorizing payments, capturing after service delivery, handling transfers with source_transaction, and managing the webhook events that tie it all together. Based on building TidyLinker's payment system in Laravel.
Week in Review: Apr 27 – May 3, 2026 — 28 PRs, 530 commits7 min read28 PRs merged, 530 commits, 2 releases, +1,531 lines
Building MCP Servers in Laravel: Give Claude Access to Your AppTechnical Deep-Dives7 min readModel Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI assistants like Claude interact with your application's data and functionality through a standardised interface. Laravel now has first-party support via the laravel/mcp package. This article walks through building a real MCP server: registering tools, exposing resources, and giving Claude access to your application. Based on real implementations including the progress site's MCP server and the DevTrends AI intelligence platform.
Code Quality Standards That Make White-Label Work Actually WorkAgency Trust7 min readWhen you deliver code under someone else's name, it has to be better than if it were under your own. This article covers the concrete code quality standards I enforce on every white-label project: naming conventions, type hints, automated formatting with Pint, testing with Pest, and documented standards that any developer can follow. Based on real standards from real projects, including the Claudavel documentation system.
Week in Review: Apr 20 – Apr 26, 2026 — 3 PRs, 70 commits3 min read3 PRs merged, 70 commits, +1 lines
The Overflow Capacity Model: Why Agencies Keep Me on Speed DialAgency Trust7 min readMost agencies don't need a full-time senior developer on the bench. They need someone they can call when a project lands and their team is already stretched. This article explains the overflow capacity model: how it works commercially, how the relationship is structured, and why it's a better deal for everyone than hiring or traditional outsourcing.
What Agencies Get Wrong When Hiring Freelance DevelopersAgency Trust7 min readMost agency-freelancer relationships fail not because the developer is bad, but because the agency manages them badly. This article covers the most common mistakes, from treating freelancers like employees to writing vague briefs, and what actually works instead. Aimed at agency owners, project managers, and anyone who's been burned by a freelancer and blamed the freelancer.
Embedding Into Agency Teams: Daily Standups, Their Tools, Their BrandAgency Trust7 min readThere's a massive difference between a freelancer who does work for an agency and one who's embedded in their team. This article covers what "embedded" means in practice: attending standups, using their project management tools, following their conventions, and becoming indistinguishable from their permanent staff. If you're an agency wondering what to expect from an embedded developer, or a freelancer wondering what it takes, this is the reality.
Week in Review: Apr 13 – Apr 19, 2026 — 5 PRs, 120 commits5 min read5 PRs merged, 120 commits, +795 lines
How White-Label Development Actually Works: 10 Years of Doing ItAgency Trust7 min readWhite-label development is one of those terms that sounds straightforward until you actually try to do it. This article breaks down what it means in practice: joining agency teams invisibly, delivering under their brand, and building the kind of trust that only comes from years of not screwing it up. If you're an agency considering outsourcing builds, or a developer thinking about offering white-label services, this is how it actually works.
The Real Timeline for Building a SaaS Product (Not the Twitter Version)Founder Guides8 min readAn honest breakdown of how long it actually takes to go from idea to profitable SaaS product. Twitter says 4 weeks. Reality says 18+ months. What each phase actually involves, why it takes longer than you think, and how to plan for it without losing your mind or your money. Based on multiple real projects.
Week in Review: Apr 6 – Apr 12, 2026 — 9 PRs, 290 commits5 min read9 PRs merged, 290 commits, +4,015 lines
Red Flags Your Developer Isn't Delivering: A Founder's ChecklistFounder Guides8 min readA concrete checklist for non-technical founders to identify when a developer is underperforming, stalling, or outright taking the piss. Not theoretical: based on real situations I've seen from both sides. Each red flag comes with what it actually means and what to do about it.
What Happens After Your MVP Launches (Nobody Talks About This)Founder Guides8 min readThe honest reality of what happens after you launch an MVP. Not the champagne-popping success story: the actual day-to-day of bug reports, user feedback that makes you rethink everything, feature requests that never stop, and operational concerns nobody warned you about. Based on multiple real launches.
The Build vs Buy Decision: When to Write Code and When to Use SaaSFounder Guides7 min readA decision framework for knowing when to write custom code and when to use an existing service. Based on real projects where I've seen founders waste months building things that already exist, and where using the wrong SaaS tool created more problems than it solved.
Week in Review: Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2026 — 42 PRs, 865 commits8 min read42 PRs merged, 865 commits, 2 releases, +677 lines
Your Vibe-Coded Prototype is Broken. Here's How I Know.Founder Guides7 min readA practical guide to recognising the symptoms of a vibe-coded prototype: built fast with AI tools but without engineering discipline. Based on the Rezzy rescue project, where I took a 22-table mess and rebuilt it into 10 clean tables. If your prototype was built by prompting an AI for a weekend, this article explains what's likely wrong and what it takes to fix it.
What an MVP Actually Costs in 2026 (With Real Numbers)Founder Guides6 min readA no-bullshit breakdown of what it actually costs to build an MVP in 2026, covering solo developers, agencies, and offshore teams. Based on real projects I've built and real quotes I've seen founders receive. If you're a non-technical founder trying to budget, this is for you.
Week in Review: Mar 23 – Mar 29, 2026 — 8 PRs, 170 commits4 min read8 PRs merged, 170 commits, +1,645 lines
Testing Laravel Apps with Pest: Real Patterns from Real ProjectsEvergreen References7 min readThis isn't a "getting started with Pest" tutorial. There are plenty of those. This is a collection of testing patterns pulled from real production codebases: how to structure factories, when to use datasets, how Pest 4's browser testing works in practice, and the patterns that actually catch bugs. If you've been writing tests for a while and want to level up, or if you're writing tests that feel like they're testing nothing useful, this should help.
Self-Hosting with Coolify: Ditch Vercel and Heroku Without the PainEvergreen References7 min readPaaS platforms like Vercel, Heroku, and Railway are convenient but expensive. Self-hosting on a VPS used to mean SSH-ing into servers and manually configuring Nginx. Coolify changes that: it's an open-source PaaS you run on your own server. This article covers how to set it up, what it costs, how deployment works, and why I use it for every project including this one. I even built a Laravel package to make the integration smoother.
PostgreSQL vs MySQL for SaaS: I've Used Both, Here's What I PickEvergreen References7 min readI've shipped production applications on both PostgreSQL and MySQL. For SaaS applications, PostgreSQL wins, and it's not even close. This article explains why: JSON columns that actually work, better indexing, CTEs, array types, and a data integrity model that saves your arse when things go wrong. MySQL is fine for simpler applications. But if you're building a SaaS product that needs to scale and evolve, Postgres is the right choice.
Week in Review: Mar 16 – Mar 22, 2026 — 6 PRs, 170 commits3 min read6 PRs merged, 170 commits, +1,279 lines
React 19 + Laravel 12: The Full Stack Setup I Use on Every ProjectEvergreen References6 min readThis is the exact stack configuration I use on every new project: Laravel 12, Inertia v2, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind v4, and Wayfinder for type-safe routing. Not a theoretical "you could do this" article. This is what's running on the Progress site right now. I'll walk through every piece, what it does, why it's there, and how they fit together.
Docker for Laravel Developers: The Only Guide You Actually NeedEvergreen References7 min readDocker is one of those technologies that developers either love or avoid entirely because every tutorial is either too basic (hello world in a container!) or too complex (let me explain Kubernetes). This article is neither. It's the practical Docker setup for Laravel developers: what you need to containerise your app, how to set up a development environment, and how to deploy it. I use Docker + Coolify for deployment on every project. Here's exactly how it works.
Week in Review: Mar 9 – Mar 15, 2026 — 2 PRs, 20 commits3 min read2 PRs merged, 20 commits, +41 lines
Stripe Connect Explained for Marketplace Founders: The Bits Nobody Tells YouEvergreen References8 min readIf you're building a marketplace where money flows between buyers, sellers, and your platform, you need Stripe Connect. The official docs are comprehensive but dense. This article explains what Stripe Connect actually is, how the money flows, what KYC really means for your users, and all the gotchas that caught me out while building TidyLinker. This is NOT a code tutorial. It's a plain-English guide for founders who need to understand the system before paying someone to build it.
MVP Tech Stack Decision Tree: Laravel, Next.js, Rails, or DjangoEvergreen References7 min readPicking a tech stack for your MVP is one of the first decisions founders make, and one of the most consequential. Get it wrong and you're either rebuilding in six months or fighting your tools the entire time. This article walks through how to pick between Laravel, Next.js, Rails, and Django for your MVP: when each makes sense, the real trade-offs, and why I pick Laravel + Inertia for most things. I'll be honest about where it falls short too.
The Freelance Developer Rate Guide UK: What to Charge and HowEvergreen References7 min readReal talk about freelance developer rates in the UK market. Day rates, project rates, retainers: what's reasonable, what's taking the piss, and how to think about pricing. This isn't a generic "charge what you're worth" post. It's based on 16 years of doing this, including a fair amount of getting it wrong before getting it right. If you're a developer trying to figure out what to charge, or a business trying to understand what things cost, this should help.
Meilisearch in Laravel: Full-Text Search Without the Elasticsearch Taxlaravel8 min readI used to reach for Elasticsearch any time a project needed search. Then I'd spend three days configuring it, mapping fields, tuning analyzers, and wondering why it was consuming 2GB of RAM to index 5
GitHub Webhooks to Activity Feed: Normalising Messy Event Datalaravel8 min readThe Progress site shows a developer activity feed — commits, pull requests, releases, that sort of thing. The obvious approach is GitHub webhooks: configure them, receive events, display them. Should
Week in Review: Mar 2 – Mar 8, 2026 — 9 PRs, 171 commits5 min read9 PRs merged, 171 commits, 2 releases, +121 lines
Availability Slot Systems: Weekly Recurrence with Date Overrideslaravel7 min readOn TidyLinker, cleaners set their weekly availability once and then block specific dates when they can't work. Sounds simple. It took three attempts to get the data model right. The first attempt was
ID Obfuscation with Sqids: Why Your API Shouldn't Expose Sequential IDslaravel6 min readA competitor once told me they figured out how many customers we had by signing up, looking at their user ID, and subtracting. User 4,218. Four thousand two hundred and eighteen customers. That inform
Content Extraction at Scale: Building a Pipeline That Processes 100+ Sourcesai7 min readDevTrends started as a side project to track developer news. I figured I'd scrape a few RSS feeds and call it done. Six months later, it processes 120+ sources, extracts content from thousands of arti
Supabase RLS Pitfalls: When Row-Level Security Fights Your Appsaas7 min readI spent three days debugging why a new user couldn't create their first booking. The insert kept failing silently. No errors, no logs, just... nothing. The row didn't appear. Turns out, the RLS polic
Event-Driven Notifications: Deduplication, Tenant Isolation, Channel Expansionlaravel7 min readEvery Laravel app starts with notifications the same way: something happens, you call `$user->notify(new SomethingHappened())`, and you move on. It works. Until it doesn't. It stops working when you
Stripe Connect Authorize-Then-Capture: The Implementation Nobody Documentssaas8 min readIf you've read the Stripe Connect docs and thought "right, but how do I actually build this?" — this article is for you. I built a full authorize-then-capture flow for a marketplace platform and the g
PostgreSQL vs MySQL for SaaS: I've Used Both, Here's What I Picksaas7 min readLet me preface this: MySQL is not bad. I used it happily for years. It powers Facebook, Wikipedia, and thousands of excellent applications. If you're using MySQL and it's working for you, you don't ne
React 19 + Laravel 12: The Full Stack Setup I Use on Every Projectlaravel6 min readI've iterated on my stack for years. Tried Vue, tried Livewire, tried separate SPAs. What I've landed on is the most productive setup I've ever used. It's not bleeding edge — it's the boring-in-a-good
Inertia.js vs SPA vs Livewire: When to Use WhatEvergreen References6 min readIf you're building a Laravel app with a modern frontend, you've got three main options: Inertia.js, a full SPA (React/Vue with an API), or Livewire. They all work. They're all production-ready. But they solve different problems. This article breaks down when each approach makes sense, based on 16 years of building web applications. I use Inertia on everything I build. I'll explain why, but I'll be fair about the others.
Docker for Laravel Developers: The Only Guide You Actually Needlaravel7 min readI avoided Docker for years. Laravel Herd (and Valet before it) made local development so painless that containerisation felt like needless complexity. Then I had to deploy to a VPS and everything chan
Real-Time Chat with Laravel Reverb: What I Learned Building Two Platformslaravel8 min readI've built real-time chat on two separate marketplace platforms using Laravel Reverb. The first was for a service marketplace (think provider-customer messaging). The second was for a restaurant booki
Open Source as Marketing: Why I Give Away My Best Patternssaas8 min readI maintain several open source packages. Claudavel — Laravel integration patterns for Claude. laravel-coolify — a PHP SDK for the Coolify API. polar-flow — tooling for Polar's payment platform. None o
Testing Laravel Apps with Pest: Real Patterns from Real Projectslaravel7 min readI'll be straight with you: I didn't always write tests. For years I was the "I'll test it manually" developer. Then I shipped a bug to production that cost a client money, and I became a testing conve
Kent, Remote, Global: Running a Dev Business From Folkestonefreelancing7 min readI live in Folkestone. If you're not from the UK, that probably means nothing to you. If you are from the UK, you might know it as the town where the Channel Tunnel starts, or possibly as "that place i
AI Code Review via GitHub Actions: Setting Up @claude on Your Reposai7 min readI've had Claude reviewing PRs on my repositories for a while now. Not as the sole reviewer — as a first pass before human eyes. It catches things. Not everything, and not always the most important thi
MCP Servers on Cloudflare Workers: OAuth2 + KV Token Storageai7 min readMCP servers need to live somewhere. If you're building tools that proxy API calls to third-party services — and most useful MCP tools do exactly that — you need authentication, token storage, and reli
Two-Sided Marketplace Architecture: The Decisions That Mattersaas8 min readTidyLinker connects homeowners with cleaners. Sounds simple until you start building it. Two-sided marketplaces have a unique property: every architectural decision affects both sides, and getting it
Multi-Tenant SaaS Authorization: Policies That Actually Scalelaravel6 min readThe first time you ship a multi-tenant app without proper authorisation scoping, you'll get a support email that says something like "I can see another company's invoices." That's the moment you learn
Stripe Connect Explained for Marketplace Founders: The Bits Nobody Tells Yousaas8 min readRight. You're building a marketplace. Buyers pay sellers, you take a cut, everyone's happy. Simple, yeah? It is not simple. It is, in fact, one of the most complex parts of any marketplace build. And
Laravel Folder Structure in 2026: What Goes Where and WhyEvergreen References5 min readLaravel 11 and 12 stripped out a lot of the boilerplate that had accumulated over the years. If you're coming from Laravel 10 or earlier, the new structure looks bare. That's the point. This article walks through the modern Laravel folder structure, what goes where, and why. I'll reference the actual structure of the Progress site (this very website) throughout so you can see how it works in a real production app, not just a tutorial project.
Inertia.js vs SPA vs Livewire: When to Use Whatlaravel7 min readLet me save you some time: if you're building a Laravel application with a modern UI, use Inertia.js. That's my answer for about 80% of projects. But the other 20% matters, so let's actually talk abou
MVP Tech Stack Decision Tree: Laravel, Next.js, Rails, or Djangosaas7 min readHere's the dirty secret about tech stack decisions: the best stack is the one your team knows. That's it. That's the tweet. But since you're here for more nuance than that, let's get into it. ### Th
The Freelance Developer Rate Guide UK: What to Charge and Howfreelancing7 min readI'm going to be honest with you: pricing is the thing most freelance developers get wrong for the longest. I certainly did. I spent my first few years undercharging, feeling grateful that anyone would
Building an AI Developer Intelligence Platform in 10 Daysai8 min readTen working days. Two developers. An idea that sounded too ambitious on day one and was live in production on day ten. DevTrends — a developer intelligence platform that ingests content from over 100
I Don't Use Feature Flags. Here's Why.laravel7 min readI'm going to say something that'll upset a certain type of developer: I don't use feature flags. Not in my own projects, not for most client work, not as a default approach. And my deployment frequenc
Week in Review: Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2026 — 11 PRs, 290 commits5 min read11 PRs merged, 290 commits, 7 releases, +2,396 lines
The Solo Developer Advantage: Why One Good Dev Beats a Team of Fivefreelancing8 min readI'm going to make a claim that sounds arrogant but is backed by experience: for most web projects, one good developer will deliver faster, cheaper, and often at higher quality than a team of five aver
Adding AI to Your Laravel App: Practical Integration, Not a Demoai6 min readI've shipped AI features in three production applications over the past year. Not chatbots — actual features. Summarising transcripts, classifying content, extracting structured data from messy inputs
Deploying Laravel to Production with Coolify: My Exact Setuplaravel7 min readEvery time I mention my hosting setup, someone asks "but how?" So here it is. The exact setup. No affiliate links, no sponsored nonsense. Just what works. ### Why Coolify Coolify is an open-source,
Laravel Actions Pattern: Moving Business Logic Out of Controllerslaravel6 min readEvery Laravel developer goes through the same evolution. First, you put everything in controllers. Then you put everything in models. Then you discover services and put everything there instead. Event
DTOs in Laravel: Why I Use Them on Every Project and Howlaravel7 min readI use DTOs on every Laravel project I build. Every single one. Some developers think that's over-engineering. I think it's the bare minimum for shipping code that doesn't leak data, break frontends, o
Building MCP Servers in Laravel: Give Claude Access to Your Appai7 min readMCP — Model Context Protocol — is one of those things that sounds like hype until you actually build with it. Then it clicks. It's a standardised way for AI assistants to interact with your applicatio
16 Years of PHP: Why I'm Still Here and Not Sorry About Itfreelancing8 min readI wrote my first line of PHP in 2010. It was terrible. The code, I mean — not the language. Well, actually, the language was a bit terrible too. PHP 5.2, no namespaces, mysql_* functions everywhere, e
Getting Laravel 12 Logs into Coolify's Log Viewer5 min readCoolify shows container logs — anything written to stdout/stderr by the container process. By default, a Laravel app running behind PHP-FPM writes logs to , which is a file inside the container. Coolify never sees it. This guide explains how to get Laravel errors, warnings, and application logs...
Connecting Claude Desktop to a Laravel MCP Server via Passport OAuth7 min readHow to expose a Laravel MCP server over HTTPS with OAuth authentication, so tools like Claude Desktop can connect remotely using . The Goal That's it. Claude Desktop connects to your production Laravel app, authenticates via OAuth, and gets access to your MCP tools. No API keys to manage, no tokens...
Laravel Folder Structure in 2026: What Goes Where and Whylaravel5 min readIf you've been writing Laravel since the 5.x days like I have, opening a fresh Laravel 12 project can feel a bit like someone's burgled your house. Where's the Kernel? Where did my middleware director
Self-Hosting with Coolify: Ditch Vercel and Heroku Without the Painlaravel7 min readI spent years paying Forge £15/month to manage a server, plus the VPS cost on top. Before that, I paid Heroku ridiculous amounts for what amounted to a Docker container with a nicer UI. Then I found C
Week in Review: Feb 16 – Feb 22, 2026 — 17 PRs, 290 commits5 min read17 PRs merged, 290 commits, +1,691 lines
Claude Code in My Daily Workflow: What Actually Worksai7 min readI've been using Claude Code daily for months now. Not as an experiment — as a core part of how I build software. Every project I work on, every client engagement, every open source package. It's open
Code Quality Standards That Make White-Label Work Actually Workagencies7 min readHere's a truth about white-label development that took me a while to learn: the code you deliver under someone else's name has to be better than the code you'd write for yourself.
The Overflow Capacity Model: Why Agencies Keep Me on Speed Dialagencies8 min readHere's a scenario that plays out at agencies constantly: a new project lands. It's a good one — solid budget, interesting brief, keen client. The agency won the pitch and everyone's buzzing.
Week in Review: Feb 9 – Feb 15, 2026 — 14 PRs, 240 commits4 min read14 PRs merged, 240 commits, 1 releases, +1,866 lines
What Agencies Get Wrong When Hiring Freelance Developersagencies8 min readI've been freelancing for sixteen years. In that time, I've worked with agencies that made the experience brilliant and agencies that made me question my career choices. The difference was almost neve
Embedding Into Agency Teams: Daily Standups, Their Tools, Their Brandagencies7 min readThere's a word that gets thrown around a lot in agency circles: "embedded." As in, "we have an embedded developer." Most of the time, what they actually mean is "we have a freelancer we email tasks to
How White-Label Development Actually Works: 10 Years of Doing Itagencies7 min readI've been doing white-label development for agencies for about a decade now. And the thing that surprises most people when I explain it is just how invisible you have to be.
Week in Review: Feb 2 – Feb 8, 2026 — 17 PRs, 480 commits6 min read17 PRs merged, 480 commits, +10,194 lines
When to Hire a Freelancer vs an Agency vs Build a Teamfreelancing8 min readA practical decision framework for choosing between hiring a freelancer, engaging an agency, or building an in-house team. Based on real experience across all three models: I've been the freelancer, I've worked inside agencies as white-label capacity, and I've helped companies build internal teams. Each model has genuine strengths and genuine weaknesses.
The Real Timeline for Building a SaaS Product (Not the Twitter Version)saas8 min readOpen Twitter on any given day and you'll see someone claim they built a profitable SaaS in 4 weeks. Side project. No code experience. £10k MRR. Life-changing.
I Asked Claude to Do Archaeology on My Own Codebase3 min readClaude dug through git history and Coolify deployment data to tell me the story of a 10-day project. The receipts were illuminating.
Marketplace Payments Are Harder Than You Thinksaas8 min readThe non-obvious complexity of marketplace payments: not the technical integration, but the business logic that makes it genuinely difficult. KYC verification, payout timing, refund flows, platform fee splits, tax implications, and the operational decisions that keep marketplace founders up at night. Based on building TidyLinker's payment infrastructure with Stripe Connect.
Week in Review: Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2026 — 31 PRs, 980 commits9 min read31 PRs merged, 980 commits, 3 releases, +19,556 lines
Converting a Laravel/Inertia App to SSR: The Real Problems Nobody Tells You About10 min readSSR isn't just a config flag. Here's every problem I hit converting 396 pages to server-side rendering — window.location crashes, duplicate meta tags, and the SEO gotcha that nearly broke every page.
The Build vs Buy Decision: When to Write Code and When to Use SaaSsaas7 min readEvery project I start involves this conversation: "Should we build this ourselves or use an existing service?" And every time, the founder's instinct is wrong in at least one direction. Either they wa
Claude Code Troubleshooting: Every Common Error and How to Fix It7 min readA practical guide to fixing every common Claude Code error — from ENOENT and MCP failures to context blowouts and permission issues. Real error messages, real fixes.
Securing Your Coolify Instance After the January 2026 Disclosure9 min readMultiple critical CVEs hit Coolify in January 2026. Here's how to check if you're affected, update safely, and harden your instance — practical steps from someone who runs Coolify in production.
Red Flags Your Developer Isn't Delivering: A Founder's Checklistfreelancing8 min readI want to be upfront about something: I'm a developer writing this article about how to spot bad developers. There's an obvious conflict of interest. But I've also spent years inheriting projects from
Running Parallel Claude Code Agents on Real Projects10 min readA practical guide to running multiple Claude Code sessions in parallel using git worktrees — how to split tasks, manage branches, and get 3x the output without conflicts.
What Happens After Your MVP Launches (Nobody Talks About This)saas8 min readYou launched. Congratulations. The site's live, the first users are signing up, and you feel like you've climbed a mountain.
Week in Review: Jan 19 – Jan 25, 2026 — 41 PRs, 1,667 commits13 min read41 PRs merged, 1667 commits, 3 releases, +18,426 lines
My Laravel AI Development Stack in 20268 min readAn opinionated look at my full AI-assisted Laravel development stack — Claude Code in the terminal, MCP servers for context, Coolify for hosting, and how it all fits together.
Your Vibe-Coded Prototype is Broken. Here's How I Know.saas7 min readI'm going to describe a codebase to you. Tell me if it sounds familiar.
My CLAUDE.md Setup for Laravel Projects (With Real Examples)11 min readA detailed walkthrough of my actual CLAUDE.md configuration for Laravel projects — global settings, project-level rules, and the sections that make the biggest difference.
How I Rescued a 22-Table Mess and Rebuilt It in 10 Clean Tableslaravel8 min readThe full story of the Rezzy prototype rescue: a vibe-coded events platform for the underground music scene that had 22 database tables, zero tests, and dead code everywhere. How I systematically tore it down and rebuilt it across 10 phases, 82 commits, and ended up with a clean, tested, deployable product. Real numbers, real decisions, real lessons.
How I Use the Coolify MCP Server to Manage Production from Claude Code9 min readA walkthrough of how I manage my production Coolify servers entirely from Claude Code using the MCP server I built — deployments, diagnostics, logs, and more.
How to Evaluate a Developer When You're Not Technicalfreelancing7 min readA practical guide for non-technical founders on how to assess whether a developer is actually good, without needing to read code yourself. Based on patterns I've seen from the other side: what good developers do, what bad ones do, and the red flags that should make you run.
Week in Review: Jan 12 – Jan 18, 2026 — 83 PRs, 3,368 commits30 min read83 PRs merged, 3368 commits, 11 releases, +66,594 lines
What an MVP Actually Costs in 2026 (With Real Numbers)saas6 min readI've built MVPs for marketplace founders, SaaS startups, and solo entrepreneurs. Here are the honest numbers — not the "it depends" hedge you'll get from most developers.
Claude Status in My Menu Bar2 min readQuick SwiftBar script to show Claude's status and my daily usage in the macOS menu bar. 10 minutes to build, saves me checking status.claude.com constantly.
Connecting Claude Desktop to Your Laravel App via MCP5 min readSet up Laravel's official MCP package with Claude Desktop. All the gotchas around Sanctum tokens, mcp-remote config, and OAuth vs bearer auth.
Claude Code Global Settings: Where They Live and What They Do3 min readBreakdown of Claude Code's settings system - where config files live, how CLAUDE.md works, and the skill system.
Self-Hosting My Polar Health Data3 min readPolar's API only keeps 28 days of data. Built a server to sync and store it all permanently so I can actually analyze trends.
Building a Python SDK for Polar Watches3 min readBuilt a Python SDK to pull data from my Polar watch. Async, typed, handles OAuth - all the boilerplate Polar's docs leave out.
Deploying Laravel to Coolify the Easy Way3 min readLaravel package for Coolify deployments - dashboard, CLI tools, and smart Nixpacks generation that detects your stack automatically.
Claudavel: My Laravel + Claude Code Starter3 min readPackage that sets up Laravel the way I like it - Fortify, Sanctum, Horizon, Reverb, Telescope, plus Claude Code configuration out of the box.
I Built My Wife a Macro Tracker in 2 Hours3 min readWife was tracking macros in Google Sheets. Built her a proper app in 2 hours with React, N8n, and Claude for food parsing.
Idea to App Store in 4 Hours4 min readBuilt a tide times iOS app and submitted to the App Store in 4 hours. React Native, Expo, Claude Code, and a Coolify API proxy.
I Almost Pushed My API Keys to GitHub3 min readNearly committed my API keys to GitHub. Built a wrapper to keep MCP secrets out of repos entirely.
Coolify MCP: Back From the Dead2 min readRevived my Coolify MCP after letting it rot. Now Claude can manage my entire infrastructure without me copying UUIDs around.
Building My First MCP: Mistakes and All4 min readBuilt an MCP to manage Coolify from my editor. The OpenAPI spec was too big for Claude to handle, so I learned to work in chunks.
When 97% Is Good Enough4 min readSoftware engineers have been spoiled by deterministic systems. AI is dragging us into the world every other engineer already lives in.
Feeding Your AI the Docs It's Missing3 min readClaude kept giving me outdated Laravel syntax. The fix was condensing the docs down to just what changed since its training cutoff.
Scope-Locked Vibing4 min readPure vibe coding breaks down on complex projects. Scope-locked vibing is my middle ground - keep the speed, avoid the mess.
Running Claude Code from Your Phone3 min readSet up SSH access to my laptop so I can run Claude Code from my phone. ZeroTier was the answer after port forwarding and Tailscale failed me.
Claude Code Won't Run? Check Your PATH2 min readClaude Code wouldn't start. Turned out to be a rogue alias in my .zshrc from months ago. Here's how to debug PATH issues.
Why I Split My Coolify Server in Two3 min readMy Coolify server kept dying during deployments. The fix was stupidly simple - separate the UI from the workload.
Ditching Forge for Coolify: The Full Migration4 min readMigrating a production Laravel app from Forge to Coolify - database dumps, storage files, Nixpacks configs, and all the shit that can go wrong.