Field Notes
Notes from the Workshop
What I learn shipping production EdTech, retirement-advisory SaaS, and AI tooling as a solo founder. Patterns that worked, mistakes that cost, and the trade-offs nobody talks about in the docs.
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5 min readMigrating a Next.js portfolio off Vercel to Coolify
Cutover steps from Vercel to a homelab Coolify, what broke, and why operational coherence beat the symbolic cost savings.
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6 min readWhat I changed in next.config.mjs when leaving Vercel
Three diffs that earn their place: output standalone, edge runtime switch, explicit compression. Plus the security headers you stop getting for free.
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4 min readGitHub Deploy Keys Are Unique by Public Key, Not by Repo
I tried to reuse an SSH deploy key across two repos. GitHub returned a 422. The key is globally unique per user account, not per repo.
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5 min readThe Coolify monorepo webhook that silently skipped 3 of 4 apps
A commit to shared CSS across four Next.js apps in the same monorepo only deployed to one. The other three reported 'finished' but served stale code.
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6 min readWhy I write this blog in MDX instead of using a CMS
Zero monthly cost, same git workflow as code, type-checked frontmatter, and no preview environment juggling. Trade-offs are real but acceptable for a solo site.
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5 min readWhy I run two analytics tools: Umami for pageviews, PostHog for funnels
Self-hosting Umami for pageviews and using PostHog Cloud for funnels costs me almost nothing and keeps each dashboard answering exactly one question.
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6 min readOne Cloudflare Tunnel for a Fleet of Small Next.js Apps
I route 10+ hostnames through a single cloudflared daemon on a Coolify host. Here is the config shape and why it works better than one tunnel per app.
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5 min readSelf-hosting MinIO for free S3-compatible storage on your homelab
I replaced AWS S3 with a self-hosted MinIO instance on Coolify. Zero storage bill, zero egress costs, same SDK. Here is how I set it up and the trade-offs.
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5 min readSelf-hosting Umami in two hours, dropping GA4 across the fleet
I replaced GA4 with a self-hosted Umami instance across six production sites. Setup took two hours, data stays on my Postgres, and I no longer need cookie banners.
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4 min readAdGuard-Only Docker DNS: A Footgun for Self-Hosted Builds
When your Coolify host points Docker containers at a single AdGuard DNS server, any hiccup breaks builds and runtime fetches. Here is the diagnosis and the tradeoffs.
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2 min readWhy this blog exists, and who it is actually for
Field notes from a solo founder shipping six production sites in three sectors. What I write here, what I do not, and why it might be useful to a few of you.
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