insights

Notes from the
engine room.

What actually works in production — architecture calls, commerce stack decisions, and scoping honesty from 19 years of shipping. No fluff, no listicles.

ArchitectureJun 202612 min read

How we shipped NIO's regional EV platform — the architecture calls that mattered

A custom vehicle configurator, Medusa product sync, showroom scheduling and a CMS the marketing team runs themselves. The decisions behind the build — including the ones we'd make differently.

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01 — latest

Recent writing.

CommerceMay 20269 min read

Shopify Hydrogen vs MedusaJS in 2026 — when to pick which

I've shipped both in production. The honest decision tree: catalogue complexity, ownership, budget, and the migration paths nobody mentions in the sales deck.

ProcessMay 20266 min read

The 48-hour scope: how to quote a web project without padding

Agencies pad estimates because they're guessing. The questions that remove the guessing — and why a fixed price is safer for both sides when scoping is done right.

Next.jsApr 202610 min read

Next.js 15 server components in production: patterns that survived

Server actions, revalidation tags and partial prerendering across NIO, Geely and Trivandi — what held up under real traffic and what got refactored out.

AIApr 20267 min read

AI features clients actually use (and the ones they don't)

After shipping chatbots, content generation and intelligent search with the Vercel AI SDK: what moved metrics, what became demo-ware, and how to tell before you build.

AgenciesMar 20268 min read

White-labelling a senior dev: how agencies plug me in without chaos

Proposal support, sprint cadence, client-facing Looms and the handover protocol — the operating model I've refined as an agency CTO from both sides of the table.

CMSMar 20269 min read

Sanity in the real world: building CMS setups marketing teams keep using

The difference between a CMS demo and a CMS that's still in daily use a year later: content modelling, roles, previews — lessons from a dozen live builds.

// new notes land roughly monthly — the useful kind, not the algorithm kind.

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Notes from theengine room.