Field notes
First-person breakdowns of processes, trade-offs, and mistakes — from crypto protocols to deploys on self-managed iron. No marketing, no conference selfies.
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GChat after the April beta: Mac as a real device, calls you can investigate
May-June 2026. GChat moved from a friends-only build to pre-release: an independent Mac client, profiles, honest offline mode, and call telemetry instead of guesswork.
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A week of GChat beta: calls, iCloud, and the build that finally linked
Late April 2026. Calls work, then they crash, then Xcode fails because iCloud touched the Pods folder. Honest notes on fixes, regressions, and what is still open.
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Why I run my production on my own hardware
Self-hosting, for me, is neither a hobby nor nostalgia. It's a rational choice that saves money, buys control, and teaches DevOps faster than any course. Why — and how I set it up.
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A year at DomikSmart: what rewired my view of SaaS
From March 2025 to March 2026 I ran a CRM for short-term rentals — 50 properties, calendars, messengers, a public site. What I'm taking from that year into GChat and every product after it.
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How I started writing an E2E messenger, solo
March 2026. One person, an empty repo, X3DH and Double Ratchet on paper — and six months to ship it to production. Why I signed up for this and what I learned in the first two weeks.