30 Boring Patterns for Solo Devs Who Ship
A recipe book of production-tested patterns for building real web services with Python, SQLite, and systemd
In the last 10 days I shipped two production web services on a single $5 VPS:
- Funding Finder — a 20-exchange perpetual futures funding rate aggregator. ~6,800 USDT-margined symbols, refreshed every 5 minutes. 5 systemd services, ~80 MB resident memory, no Docker, no Postgres, no Redis, no asyncio.
- cronviz — a stdlib-only CLI for unified cron + systemd timer observability. Zero dependencies. 48 unit tests.
Both shipped with the same boring stack: Python 3.12 + Flask + SQLite (WAL mode) + systemd + vanilla HTML. Nothing exotic. Nothing trendy. Things that have worked since 2010.
This book is the recipe collection that came out of that work. Every pattern is concrete code I actually used in production, not best-practices theatre. Every pattern explains when not to use it, because half of "boring stack" wisdom is knowing which scaling problems you don't have yet.
€19 — one-time
30 patterns · ~150 pages · HTML pack + companion code zip · CC BY-SA 4.0 on patterns, MIT on code · instant download after checkout
Buy now — €19 (Stripe)
Live now. Read the first 5 patterns free below, then decide.
Get the launch email
Download the free sample pack
The 5 free patterns
Each free pattern is the full content, not a teaser. If they're useful, the other 25 are $19. If they're not, you've still got 5 production-tested patterns for free.
What's in the full pack ($19)
30 patterns organized into 6 themes. Each pattern is one page, one job, one piece of real production code. The format never changes:
- The pain (1 paragraph) — what problem this solves
- When to use it (2-3 bullets)
- The code (a runnable snippet, never more than ~40 lines)
- When NOT to use it — the failure mode the pattern doesn't cover
- Real numbers from production — actual measurements from the services I built
- Further reading — 2-3 links to docs / blog posts / RFCs
Theme 1 — Process and service shape
- systemd unit for a Python web service ★
- Single-instance scheduled job with flock
- Restart=on-failure with backoff
- Config from env vars + filesystem + defaults
- Logging to systemd journal without a logging library
Theme 2 — SQLite at solo-dev scale
- WAL mode + synchronous=NORMAL ★
- Schema migration with PRAGMA table_info
- Cursor-based pagination over a single index
- Single-writer pattern with filelock
- Backups via sqlite3 .backup
Theme 3 — HTTP and Flask
- Per-IP rate limiting in 30 lines ★
- JSON API key auth with revocation
- CSV export from any JSON endpoint
- OpenAPI 3.1 spec by hand
- Vanilla HTML/SVG dashboard
Theme 4 — External APIs and concurrency
- requests.Session with sane defaults
- ThreadPoolExecutor for rate-limited fetchers ★
- Mocked-HTTP unit tests with unittest.mock.patch
- The structural sanity check on aggregate output
- Per-source field normalization with one common dataclass
Theme 5 — Operations and observability
- Health endpoint that means something
- Telegram bot as monitoring transport ★
- Prometheus-compatible /metrics in 15 lines
- make as your only deploy tool
- The single sanity-check shell script
Theme 6 — Going from free to paid
- Free tier with no signup, paid behind an API key
- Per-tier rate limiting and history caps
- Lemon Squeezy or Stripe: pick one
- Activating the paid tier without a redeploy
- Pricing a niche dev tool
★ = free pattern
Who this is for
- Solo devs who want to ship a paid product on a $5 VPS without learning Kubernetes first.
- Indie hackers who keep getting told they need Postgres / Redis / Docker / a "modern" frontend framework, and feel like they're falling behind by sticking with boring tools.
- Engineers from large companies who want to ship a side project on weekends and don't want to drag their day-job stack into it.
- Anyone who has ever opened a "scalable starter kit" GitHub repo and felt overwhelmed by 47 config files before writing a line of business logic.
Who this is NOT for
- Teams of 10+ engineers building for 1M+ DAUs from day one.
- People who want a framework that does everything for you. This is patterns, not abstractions.
- People who want me to explain why their existing Kubernetes setup is wrong. Use what works for you.
About the author. I'm a solo dev. I built and shipped two production services in the last two weeks (Funding Finder and cronviz) on a single $5 Hetzner VPS. Total Docker containers: zero. Total Postgres instances: zero. Total Kubernetes clusters: zero. Total cumulative downtime across both services over 10 days of operation: zero. This book is what I wish I'd had when I started.
FAQ
Will I get updates?
Yes. Updates are free for existing buyers — email me your original Stripe receipt and I'll send the new file. I plan one minor revision (v1.1) within ~2 months that adds 5 reader-requested patterns and fixes typos.
What format are the files?
You get: a single PDF (~150 pages), a standalone HTML version (browse offline, no internet needed), and a companion code repo as a zip (every code snippet from the book, runnable). All three in one download.
Is there a free preview?
Yes — the 5 free patterns above are the full content of those 5 patterns, identical to what's in the paid version. About 5,000 words / ~20 pages. If they're not useful to you, the other 25 won't be either.
Can I share the patterns with my team?
The patterns themselves are CC BY-SA 4.0 — share, remix, attribute. The compiled PDF/HTML pack is one purchase per individual. If your team wants to buy collectively, email me and we'll figure out a fair team license.
What if I don't like it?
Yes — email me within 14 days of purchase (foxyyybusiness@protonmail.com) with your Stripe receipt and I'll refund immediately, no questions asked. The 5 free patterns above are explicitly designed to let you know whether the rest is your style or not, before you spend €19.