Niraj Budhathoki — Writing https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing Engineering case studies and notes from real production work. en Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:56:34 GMT Making AI features survive real users https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/ai-features-that-survive-production https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/ai-features-that-survive-production Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Case study A practical case study on shipping reliable, cost-controlled AI features in production — retry and rollback, quota accounting, billing gates, and session caching around language-model calls. Keeping the same data in sync across every screen https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/keeping-ui-state-in-sync https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/keeping-ui-state-in-sync Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Case study Patterns for keeping derived UI state consistent across views in a real-time app — one canonical source of truth, value-based diffing, and cache-busting keyed on identity changes. Modeling a relationship lifecycle that doesn't leak https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/relationship-lifecycle-that-doesnt-leak https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/relationship-lifecycle-that-doesnt-leak Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Case study How to model a bidirectional invite/relationship lifecycle correctly — enforcing accept-before-share, scoping disconnects to a single edge, idempotent cancels, and quota that settles on acceptance. Building a database from scratch, in public https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/building-a-database-from-scratch https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/building-a-database-from-scratch Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Note Why I'm building mini_db, a database engine from scratch in C++ — climbing under the abstractions I've shipped on for years, and how fundamentals and shipping fluency compound. Shipping a full product solo — on your own infrastructure https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/shipping-solo-on-your-own-infra https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/shipping-solo-on-your-own-infra Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Note Lessons from building and self-hosting a full Next.js travel platform solo — self-hosted Supabase on a VPS, a GitHub Actions deploy pipeline, CORS proxying, i18n, and a structured CMS. Server-driven UI without the JavaScript spaghetti https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-driven-ui-without-spaghetti https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-driven-ui-without-spaghetti Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Case study Patterns for server-driven UI with Turbo and Stimulus in Rails: multi-step flows over Turbo Frames, Stimulus outlets instead of global window events, and small, single-purpose controllers. When search silently drops the right results https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/when-search-drops-results https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/when-search-drops-results Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT Note A short note on a search bug where live events vanished from results at a date boundary — why silent omissions are the worst bugs, and why reindexing logic needs integration tests. Server-rendering a marketing site for SEO https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-rendering-for-seo https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-rendering-for-seo Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Case study How moving marketing and landing pages to server-side rendering fixed search visibility and Core Web Vitals on a high-traffic events site — plus why SEO and performance are the same problem. Modelling money and approvals you can trust https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/modelling-money-and-approvals https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/modelling-money-and-approvals Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Case study Lessons from building the finance and payroll core of an operations SaaS: modelling money as an append-only ledger, making approvals first-class, and why reversible migrations matter early.