Build Log

Real progress on whatever's actually being built, shipped, or broken this week.

2026-09-09 · 9 min read

How Much Does It Cost to Build a SaaS? The Number Is in the Parts Nobody Puts in the Quote

A SaaS can cost almost nothing in cash to start and still be expensive. The number people miss is not the first invoice. It is the months spent building the wrong version cleanly.

2026-09-09 · 11 min read

Can You Use Vibe Coding in Production? Yes, If You Stop Calling Every Commit the Same Kind of Risk

AI can generate a working feature before you finish your coffee. Production software still has customers, money, permissions, and data. The gap between those facts is where the useful rules live.

2026-09-07 · 10 min read

The Startup Tech Stack I Keep Coming Back To After Eight Years of Rebuilding the Same Things

The best startup tech stack is not the one with the most greenfield momentum. It is the one you can change without spending a week translating your own decisions.

2026-09-06 · 14 min read

GPT-6 Astra Costs 2.5x More Per Token. I Went Looking for the 2.5x.

OpenAI called it a generational leap. The top Hacker News comment said the first chart goes from 61 to 61. Both readings are defensible, which is the actual story, so I went and separated the price change from the cost change.

2026-08-31 · 8 min read

Do You Need a SaaS Boilerplate? What Seven Product Launches Taught Me

ShipFast, MakerKit, supastarter: I get asked about all three constantly and have never bought one. Here's the actual decision, not a ranked listicle.

2026-08-20 · 6 min read

I Was Losing Context Across 100 Chats, So I Built My Own Memory

A hundred open chats and no idea which one had the context I needed, so I built mybutler: a local, provider-agnostic AI assistant that remembers outside of any single conversation and only retrieves what's actually relevant.

2026-08-13 · 3 min read

Building in Public With Nothing to Show

Why this newsletter exists, what I'm actually going to write about, and why I'm doing it in public instead of waiting until it's ready.