aaronmallen.me

My personal website and blog, live at aaronmallen.me: the public blog, an admin behind GitHub sign in, and an MCP server. It is a Hanami app on Postgres, with Sidekiq jobs on Redis.

Setup

You need mise and Docker. mise installs Ruby and every other tool, and runs each task below. Docker runs Postgres, Redis and RustFS from .config/compose.yml.

mise trust
mise run setup

mise run setup writes .env with the values it can fill in on its own, installs the gems, node packages and libvips when Ruby cannot load it, and prepares the development and test databases. To sign in to the admin, add a GitHub OAuth app's pair to .env, as .env.example says. .env.example lists every other variable the app reads.

Development

mise run dev

It starts Postgres, Redis and RustFS, then the server, the worker and the asset watchers. The site answers at http://localhost:2300. mise run dev:stop stops it all.

mise run db:migrate migrates the database and dumps the schema to config/db/structure.sql. mise tasks lists the rest.

Tests

mise run test
mise run lint
mise run format

mise run test builds the assets, starts Postgres if it is down, then runs the Gherkin features in features/, giving each Playwright worker its own server, Sidekiq, database and Redis in Docker.

Docs

• Backups: the nightly database dumps and how to restore one.
• Deploy: what the Pi needs to run and build the site.
• Maintenance: taking the site down for a NAS update and bringing it back.
• Media store: the photo bucket, its key and libvips.
• Releasing: the steps to tag and ship a version.
• Shares: the short links on aa.cool.
• Writing ADRs: how to write and change a decision record.
• Decision records: every decision behind the code.