Philosophy
The opinions. Why this stack is shaped the way it is. What I will not do. Why this body of work is a cookbook and not a tool.
Essays
why-one-host.md- the case for not distributing what one machine can dowhy-dogfood-everything.md- ship to use to break to fix to write it down, in that orderwhat-this-stack-is-not.md- hard nos: SaaS lock-in, k8s, microservices, untested fashionmanifesto-vs-framework.md- why this is a cookbook and not a tool
Read these last. They make more sense once you have seen the technical guides they justify.
Recipes in this chapter
Manifesto vs Framework
A cookbook is not a tool. It is a record. The difference matters because tools are owed support and frameworks are owed compatibility; cookbooks are owed only that the recipes still work for the…
What This Stack Is Not
Easier to write a cookbook by listing what is not in it. Every entry below is a thing other people put in their stacks, that I tried, considered, or watched fail, and explicitly do not do here.
Why Dogfood Everything
Ship it. Use it. Break it. Fix it. Write it down. The loop is short on purpose. Anything in this cookbook that did not survive that loop is not in this cookbook.
Why One Host
One bare-metal box. Not a cluster, not a VPS fleet, not a Pi farm. The trade you are making is "operational simplicity now" against "availability you would not actually use." I will take that trade…