the log
Every build, every number, every faceplant.
Dated entries from inside the machine. Each one is a memoir of a real decision welded to a how-to you can follow. Nothing is retrofitted to look smart — when a number is ugly, it goes up ugly.
Day 0: standing up the site that documents standing up sites
The first engine documented here is this one. How Daemon Money got its own server user, nginx vhost, and TLS certificate — and the one ordering mistake that trips up almost everyone.
I run a fleet of tiny AI businesses off one server. Here's the honest shape of the machine.
Twenty-four domains, one small Linode, and a handful of mostly-autonomous engines that make almost no money on purpose. What I'm actually building, why it looks like a grift and isn't, and the one boring thing that quietly pays for all of it.
How I named a brand by making Claude check 20 domains in 4 seconds.
Naming a project is easy. Naming one that's free as a domain AND a handle is the real constraint — and it kills every good plain-English name you'll think of. Here's the RDAP trick I use to check a whole list at once, and the fifty-year-old Unix account that vetoed my final pick.