The 30-second rollback rule
If you can't undo it that fast, don't ship it. Make 'undo' a deploy gate, not a guideline.
A dispatch makes one move. Here's the move:
We don't ship anything that can't be rolled back in under 30 seconds. Not as a guideline — as a deploy gate. CI runs pnpm panic against the new deploy on every pull request and fails the build if the rollback can't restore the previous version inside the budget.
That single test changes the whole conversation about risk. We don't argue about whether a change is "scary." We measure whether the seatbelt works.
Two years in, we've used the rollback five times in production. Average time to restore: 14 seconds. The rule pays its rent.
If your stack can't roll back fast, your stack has a feature gap, not a culture gap. Fix the stack.
- mind·2026-04-22·3 min
Why we refuse to ship anything that can't be rolled back in 30 seconds
The seatbelt rule that changed how my team thinks about risk, debt, and the difference between courage and stupidity.
read essay → - teach·2026-04-29·3 min
How to ship a rollback in under 30 seconds
A reproducible recipe for atomic-swap deploys with a working starter repo. No magic, no SaaS, no excuse.
read essay → - world·2026-04-22·1 min
When to quit a tool
Three signals it's time to leave, even if you spent a month learning it.
read essay →
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