Still Legacy Publishing
Catching the Bug
Living with Claude Code, for the not-really-a-programmer
You fixed the bug in ten minutes. Then you spent three days building the thing that would make sure it never happened again. That second part is what this book is about.
About ninety minutes to read.
What it is
I'm not a developer. Thirty years of helpdesk, networks, and databases, and I've never written production code. I built a real product anyway, over a year and a half, almost entirely through Claude Code. It mostly worked.
Then, twice, wearing two different disguises, I watched myself do the same thing: catch a small, real bug, and respond by building an entire system so it could never happen again, at a cost that dwarfed the bug. Both times I would have told you, confidently, that it was necessary.
It does not show up as recklessness. It shows up dressed as diligence.
What's in it
- The actual setup. Skills, subagents, layered CLAUDE.md files, a memory system, a decision log. Named roles, real paths, and what specific defect each one earned its place with.
- A one-page primer on the plumbing for anyone who came up through operations rather than development, including the difference between a check and a gate.
- Both spirals in full, including the part where the safety net disabled the only thing enforcing anything.
- Eleven rules that came out the other side, on one page.
- A glossary for anyone whose mom just asked what "vibe coding" means.
Not a best-practices manual. Written with Claude, under my direction and then rewritten by hand, which is also the subject.
Hear about the next one
There might be more of these, because the tooling keeps moving and I keep finding new ways to over-correct. No date promised, because a promised date is exactly the kind of thing the book argues against. Leave an address and you'll hear when something lands, along with the occasional note. Nothing else.
Or just email StillLegacyHQ@gmail.com and say "add me."
Notes
Some thoughts from time to time, along with any announcements. Nothing here yet.
About
Donald W. Murphy has spent thirty-plus years in Windows IT: helpdesk, networks, databases, and, lately, supporting document management systems for banks and credit unions, which mostly means being the person who finds out why something that worked yesterday stopped working overnight. He is not a professional developer, which is the entire reason the book exists. The product described inside was started because no one wanted to build it for him. It's just a data-conversion app, not sexy stuff. It got built because of a little desire on his part and the tools, the AI, finally getting good enough that not knowing how to write the code stopped being the blocker.
Project Anxious-Gibbon is still running and it is still not finished. But it is in a good state and Donald is still adding features. That is probably the most fun state for it to be in.