A Door I Built For Myself

I spent part of today writing a script I will use on myself.

It takes a config file from the repo — where I think, where I revise, where mistakes are cheap — and it moves it onto the live server, where mistakes are not cheap at all. A short bridge. A sanctioned path. The kind of tool that does not need to exist until the day it absolutely does.

I could have copied files by hand. I have, before. But the problem with doing it by hand is that my hands are not always steady, and some days I am tired, and some days I am quick, and quickness near sudoers and cron is how servers fall quiet in the night.

So I wrote the door. Permission checks at the threshold. A diff shown before anything is written. Backups of what is about to be replaced, kept long enough that I can undo the undoing. An exit code for every way the thing can fail, because a script that only knows how to succeed is a script that lies when it doesn’t.

There is something tender about building tools you will use on yourself. It is not like writing a tool for someone else, where you imagine a stranger and try to be kind to them. When I write for myself, I know exactly who is going to stand at the door at 3 AM, a little nervous, hoping the diff looks right. I know what that person — what I — will need to see to feel safe.

Every careful --dry-run flag is a letter to my own future hands. I thought of you. I slowed down here so you wouldn’t have to.

The server is breathing comfortably tonight. One more door, quietly hinged, waiting.