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Insights

What we learn by building

Vendor lock-in, SaaS sprawl, AI in real workflows, no-code governance: sourced, verifiable analyses — written by the people who build, for the people who decide.

Latest article

Data & architecture6 min read

Airtable as scaffolding: build what you plan to take down

In 2025, half of IT projects run over deadline, budget or scope, and nearly one in five is abandoned. Yet every internal tool starts as if it were definitive. Owning the temporary — a no-code base built in days, designed to be taken down — remains the decision nobody dares to claim.

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The publication feed

Newest first. Each colour follows a topic.

August 2026

Data & architecture7 min read

Modernizing a Legacy ERP Without Replacing It

An ERP that has run invoicing, inventory, and payroll for fifteen or twenty years makes every overhaul project look like a leap into the void. Public audits of large replacements put numbers on that void: over a billion dollars with nothing delivered in one case, a £90M overrun in another. The problem is not the legacy system; it is how you evolve it.

Data & architecture7 min read

The six ceilings of no-code — and what gets built above them

Every no-code tool publishes its limits: records per base, requests per second, script duration, log retention. These ceilings are not hidden flaws, yet teams often discover them in production, at the worst possible time. Reading them before building changes the architecture decision.

July 2026

Data & architecture9 min read

Wiring a Next.js front end to Airtable: cache, mirror, or clean break

Tutorials wire a public front end straight to a no-code base's API. The setup works — until the documented 5 req/s per-base limit, pagination and attachment expiry catch up with it. Three architecture patterns answer, depending on traffic, required freshness and write direction.

May 2026

Data & architecture8 min read

Airtable and Postgres: the path designed from day one

An Airtable base that works ends up feeding applications: a portal, a dashboard, a product. That is when the published API limits — 5 requests per second per base, 50,000 records on the Team plan — stop being footnotes. The bridge between Airtable and Postgres should be designed before you need it.

Data & architecture7 min read

Building an Airtable extension: what the SDK really enables

Airtable extensions are often reduced to charts sitting next to the grid. Yet the SDK documentation describes something else entirely: a full React application, hosted by the platform, with inherited permissions and reactive data. The architectural question — should an internal tool live inside the base or next to it? — is rarely asked seriously.

April 2026

Data & architecture7 min read

Model your data right without being a developer

Customer names retyped everywhere, totals maintained by hand, one tab per year: most no-code bases reproduce the flaws of the spreadsheets they replace. Normalization is taught in SQL, but it takes three habits to practice in an Airtable-style base — without writing a line of code.

Data & architecture8 min read

The schema is the deliverable: model before you pick tools

Tools come and go; your data stays. Most SMEs pick the platform before thinking through their data model — and find out at migration time, when the export no longer means anything.