Notes

~ 4 min

• n8n
• mcp
• claude
• automation
• sme

Building n8n workflows with Claude and MCP — instead of clicking them together

n8n has been the pragmatic self-hosted Zapier for years. With the official n8n MCP server and Claude in the IDE, production-grade workflows now grow out of a plain-prose description — validated, version-controlled, deployable. Notes from a few recent SME projects.

~ 3 min

• consulting
• business

Why I bill by the hour, even on fixed-scope projects

Fixed-price contracts feel safer to the client. In practice they hide risk in padding, misalign incentives, and reward whichever side is better at scope-policing. A short defense of hourly billing with a hard cap.

~ 3 min

• frontend
• architecture
• stack

Astro, Next.js, or Angular in 2026 — a decision tree that actually works

The frontend framework question still lands in almost every project. The honest answer is not about benchmarks or developer experience; it is about which problem class fits which tool. Here is the tree I use.

~ 2 min

• mqtt
• iot
• architecture

MQTT topic design: rules that survive contact with a real fleet

Topic structures look tidy on a whiteboard and embarrassing six months into production. A short list of design rules I keep coming back to, after running several MQTT backends in the wild.