https://pithy.shA backend kit. For Cloudflare. That's it.https://pithy.sh/static/images/logo-2026-09-18T21-31-35-487Z.pnghttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-seam-never-a-sibling/One rule about what a capability may import, and what it buys — including why a management client gets its own request variable rather than borrowing the user's.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-seam-never-a-sibling/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/four-things-you-never-have-to-solve-on-d1/Parameter budgets, transient faults, SQLite's missing types and pagination that holds still under writes. Solved once in core, so every capability inherits them.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/four-things-you-never-have-to-solve-on-d1/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/toolchain-and-customized-lint-rules/TypeScript 7, Bun, Turborepo, tsdown, Vitest and Biome — including what the losing options still do better. Then the part that surprised us: GritQL plugins enforcing rules a type system cannot.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/toolchain-and-customized-lint-rules/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/fifty-seven-round-trips-or-one/Migrations composed per capability and ordered once — and a driver change that took 78% of a test suite's wall time back.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/fifty-seven-round-trips-or-one/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/typed-kv-and-metadata-that-repairs-itself/Keys built from a schema, values validated both ways, and a list that quietly repairs the metadata the Cloudflare dashboard throws away.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/typed-kv-and-metadata-that-repairs-itself/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/an-error-that-knows-who-is-reading-it/One error type, one schema, and a wire shape with nowhere to put the things a caller must never see.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/an-error-that-knows-who-is-reading-it/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/cli-is-a-product-surface/Citty, picocolors and clack — chosen for cold start, size and how they fail — plus why every command owes `--json` to an agent driving it.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/cli-is-a-product-surface/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/what-one-command-writes-and-what-it-refuses-to-guess/`pithy add` installs a package, writes bindings across every environment, runs migrations — and refuses, loudly, in the two places where guessing would be worse than stopping.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/what-one-command-writes-and-what-it-refuses-to-guess/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/creating-it-once-is-the-easy-half/Fifteen Cloudflare resource kinds, provisioned per environment — and the reaper, because eight orphaned secrets sat on a real account with nothing able to reclaim them.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/creating-it-once-is-the-easy-half/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/rolling-a-secret-and-the-failure-you-cannot-undo/Encrypted secrets with a master key that never leaves your Worker — and a rotation ordered around the one outcome no retry can repair.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/rolling-a-secret-and-the-failure-you-cannot-undo/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/a-capability-with-no-tables-no-routes-no-bindings/Turnstile is the smallest thing in the kit: no state, no migrations, no middleware you did not ask for. What it demonstrates is how capabilities cooperate without importing each other.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-capability-with-no-tables-no-routes-no-bindings/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/mail-that-survives-a-worker-restart/Transactional and lifecycle email as durable, tracked jobs — with a suppression list you never wire up and can still read like any other table.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/mail-that-survives-a-worker-restart/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/who-did-that-and-did-it-work/A queryable audit trail in your own D1, written by capabilities that never import it — and by the CLI, attributed to the actual person holding the token.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/who-did-that-and-did-it-work/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/token-first-auth-and-what-happens-when-one-is-stolen/Sign-in that treats a phone and a browser as the same problem, refresh rotation that survives a race, and a replayed token that takes its whole family down with it.Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/token-first-auth-and-what-happens-when-one-is-stolen/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/logs-you-can-query-not-lines-you-can-read/One logger seam, two adapters, and every record carrying the build that produced it — so the first question you ask at 2am has an answer in the dashboard.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/logs-you-can-query-not-lines-you-can-read/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/uploads-that-never-touch-your-worker/Direct-upload URLs, one media record whatever the backend, and AI enrichment that runs as a Workflow because captioning is slow and fails.Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/uploads-that-never-touch-your-worker/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/your-leaderboard-history-is-yours-to-keep/Boards whose window is a CRON expression, closed windows that stay in your own D1 in plain SQL, and routes that deny by default when auth is absent.Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/your-leaderboard-history-is-yours-to-keep/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/server-holds-what-no-client-can-be-trusted-with/Authoritative turn-based sessions on a Durable Object, three example games on a reusable pattern, and a wagering stack with provably-fair dice.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/server-holds-what-no-client-can-be-trusted-with/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/a-connected-cast-not-scattered-rows/Seed data where the same three people own connected records in every table — and three independent layers standing between a fixture and your production database.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-connected-cast-not-scattered-rows/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/four-ways-to-find-an-opponent/Room codes, invites, a friend graph and a skill-bucketed queue — all ending at one session id, on two Durable Objects the CLI wires for you.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/four-ways-to-find-an-opponent/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/two-numbers-because-one-cannot-do-both-jobs/A skill rating that moves both ways and an experience total that only rises — plus three algorithms, and a deploy that fails if you wire a 1v1 rating to a four-player game.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/two-numbers-because-one-cannot-do-both-jobs/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/a-balance-that-cannot-go-negative/Atomic, idempotent movements with overdraft prevented by a database constraint — and holds, which are what make wagering safe.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-balance-that-cannot-go-negative/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/a-users-file-cannot-execute-on-your-origin/Files in your own R2 behind one seam — with server-derived keys, uploaded bytes treated as hostile on the way out, and a daily Workflow that reconciles both directions of orphan.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/a-users-file-cannot-execute-on-your-origin/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/filters-that-silently-return-less/Vectorize returns partial results without telling you when a metadata index came after the vectors. Making filterable fields a schema decision is how you stop finding that out in production.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/filters-that-silently-return-less/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/front-end-knows-what-the-backend-composed/One virtual module per capability, projected from the Worker's own config at build time — and a capability you did not compose resolving to `{ enabled: false }` instead of failing the import.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/front-end-knows-what-the-backend-composed/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/nothing-reads-unvalidated-input/Every route declares what it accepts and who may call it, on the route line. Two gates make that structural rather than a habit — and the second one had to resort to a probe.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/nothing-reads-unvalidated-input/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/screens-that-arrive-already-wired/Sign-in, OTP, paywall, pricing, subscription — scaffolded into your repo as source you own, and only the ones your Worker actually composes.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/screens-that-arrive-already-wired/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/six-copies-of-a-one-liner/Durable jobs on Cloudflare Workflows, and a duplicated line that reported adding five bindings it had silently declined to write.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/six-copies-of-a-one-liner/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/buy-on-ios-be-entitled-on-the-web/Four payment rails converging on one entitlement in your own D1 — through an idempotent projection that makes a dropped call free and a replayed webhook harmless.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/buy-on-ios-be-entitled-on-the-web/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/present-and-denying-by-default/A management client reaching into your Worker with no data plane between — asymmetric keys you can revoke, 60-second scoped tokens bound to their own body, and rotation that cannot lock you out.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/present-and-denying-by-default/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/when-a-missing-provider-must-deny/Two seams in core, built the same way and defaulting opposite ways — because one of them is a gate and the other is a record.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/when-a-missing-provider-must-deny/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/support-is-the-employee-you-cannot-hire/An inbound inbox in your own D1, classified on your own Workers AI binding, with every sender linked to the account and purchases you already know about.Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/support-is-the-employee-you-cannot-hire/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/twelve-testers-fourteen-days-and-no-screen-that-tells-you/Google Play's closed-test requirement, run from your own event log — with every count honestly labeled an estimate, because no API exposes the real one.Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/twelve-testers-fourteen-days-and-no-screen-that-tells-you/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/worker-says-unknown/A string written out in four places, a name truncated against a limit that does not exist, and what both have in common.Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/worker-says-unknown/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/ada-and-ada-are-the-same-person/Two primitives that look too small to be worth writing about — and the bugs they cause, which never look like they are about email addresses or version numbers.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/ada-and-ada-are-the-same-person/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/zero-of-twenty-five-conversations/One schema, two consumers, and why a strict enum is correct for the Worker that wrote it and wrong for the client that reads it.Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/zero-of-twenty-five-conversations/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/blog/schemas-are-the-documentation/One rule about Zod, enforced nineteen times by nineteen copies of the same walk. They drifted, and the worst of them passed by not looking.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/blog/schemas-are-the-documentation/jim@pithy.sh (Jim Scott)https://pithy.sh/modules/Capabilities that compose into your own Cloudflare Worker. Add the ones you need; nothing you skip costs you anything.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/https://pithy.sh/modules/audit/A queryable trail of every security-relevant action, attributed to the right actor.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/audit/Enterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/auth/Passwordless sessions, mobile and web both first-class. Magic link, email OTP, Google, Apple.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/auth/GamesSolo BuildersMobile appsEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/controlplane/Let a management client reach into your own Worker, with no data plane in between.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/controlplane/EnterpriseSolo Buildershttps://pithy.sh/modules/email/Every send is a durable job: scheduled, retried, tracked. No mail ever sent inline.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/email/Solo BuildersEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/lakehouse/An analytical tier for event and telemetry data — one schema object derives the ingest stream, the table and the query types.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/lakehouse/Enterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/leaderboard/Rank your players. Submit a score, read the standings — daily through all-time.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/leaderboard/Gameshttps://pithy.sh/modules/ledger/A per-user balance for your app's economy — chips, gold, gems, credits. Correct by construction.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/ledger/GamesMobile appsSolo Buildershttps://pithy.sh/modules/matchmaking/Room codes, invites, friends and matched queues. Every path lands players in one session.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/matchmaking/Gameshttps://pithy.sh/modules/media/Store, track and enrich images, video, audio and documents. Config picks the backend.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/media/Solo BuildersMobile appshttps://pithy.sh/modules/multiplayer/Authoritative sessions on Durable Objects. The server holds what no client can be trusted with.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/multiplayer/GamesMobile appshttps://pithy.sh/modules/payments/Five payment rails resolving to one cross-rail entitlement, in your own Worker and your own D1.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/payments/GamesSolo BuildersMobile appshttps://pithy.sh/modules/rating/Skill and experience per player, per pool. Elo, Glicko-2 and TrueSkill ship built in.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/rating/Gameshttps://pithy.sh/modules/secrets/One encrypted store per environment, a worker-only master key, and automatic at-rest rotation.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/secrets/Solo BuildersEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/storage/General file storage in your own R2 bucket, with an owner, a quota, and a link you can take back.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/storage/Solo BuildersMobile appsEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/support/An inbox that lands mail in your own D1, classifies it on your own AI, and knows who sent it.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/support/Solo BuildersMobile appsEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/testers/The roster, the invitations and the fourteen-day clock Google Play makes you run.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/testers/GamesMobile appsSolo Buildershttps://pithy.sh/modules/turnstile/A humanity check that stacks on any route. It answers is this a human, never who is this.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/turnstile/Solo BuildersEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/vector/Semantic search over your own content. Workers AI embeds, Vectorize indexes, D1 keeps the text.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/vector/Solo BuildersEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/modules/i18n/Language for your app — negotiated per request, rendered through one seam. No tables, no bindings, no error codes of its own.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/modules/i18n/GamesSolo BuildersMobile appsEnterprisehttps://pithy.sh/for/The same kit, recomposed for what you are building.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/for/https://pithy.sh/for/enterprise/An audit trail, encrypted secrets with automatic rotation, a humanity check, and a management plane that never holds your data.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/for/enterprise/https://pithy.sh/for/games/Authoritative sessions, matchmaking, skill rating, leaderboards and an economy — on Durable Objects and your own D1.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/for/games/https://pithy.sh/for/mobile/Sign in with Apple and Google, StoreKit and Play Billing resolving to the same entitlement as the web, token-first sessions, and the Play closed-test clock nobody warns you about.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/for/mobile/https://pithy.sh/for/solo/Payments on five rails, a support inbox, transactional mail and a scaffolded front end — the work a single person cannot hire out.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/for/solo/https://pithy.sh/compare/Already on something else? These pages lay out where Pithy is the better call — and where the tool you already have is the one to keep.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/https://pithy.sh/compare/supabase/Supabase is a managed Postgres platform. Pithy is a composable kit that runs entirely inside your own Cloudflare account. Here is the honest side-by-side.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/supabase/https://pithy.sh/compare/algolia/Algolia is a hosted search product with latency nobody else matches. Pithy has semantic search as one capability. Compared on search alone.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/algolia/https://pithy.sh/compare/appwrite/Appwrite is an open-source backend you can self-host or buy managed. Pithy is a kit that composes onto Cloudflare's primitives inside your own account. Both answer ownership; they answer it differently.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/appwrite/https://pithy.sh/compare/auth0/Auth0 is the enterprise identity platform. Pithy has auth as one capability among many. Compared on auth alone — and on whether the compliance surface you are buying is one you actually need.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/auth0/https://pithy.sh/compare/aws-amplify/Amplify is a TypeScript-first framework that provisions AWS services for you — Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB, S3, Lambda. Pithy is a kit that provisions Cloudflare primitives. Same idea, different cloud, different amount of it.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/aws-amplify/https://pithy.sh/compare/clerk/Clerk is a hosted identity product with the best drop-in components in the category. Pithy has auth as one capability among many. Compared on auth alone — and on whether you need a second vendor for it.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/clerk/https://pithy.sh/compare/cloudinary/Cloudinary is a media pipeline with transformations nobody else matches. Pithy has media and storage as capabilities. Compared on media alone.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/cloudinary/https://pithy.sh/compare/colyseus/Colyseus is an open-source Node framework for authoritative game servers, with rooms, state synchronization and matchmaking. Pithy has turn-based sessions as one capability. Compared on multiplayer alone.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/colyseus/https://pithy.sh/compare/convex/Convex is a reactive backend where TypeScript functions run against a document store that pushes changes to clients. Pithy is a kit that composes onto Cloudflare's own primitives. Here is the honest side-by-side.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/convex/https://pithy.sh/compare/firebase/Firebase is Google's managed backend, and the fastest way to ship a mobile app there has ever been. Pithy is a kit that runs inside your own Cloudflare account. Here is the honest side-by-side.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/firebase/https://pithy.sh/compare/lootlocker/LootLocker is a hosted game backend for leaderboards, progression and player economy. Pithy has those as capabilities in a Worker you own. Compared on the game services alone.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/lootlocker/https://pithy.sh/compare/nakama/Nakama is an open-source game server with accounts, storage, realtime multiplayer, matchmaking, leaderboards, tournaments, parties and chat. Pithy has the asynchronous half in a Worker you own.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/nakama/https://pithy.sh/compare/nhost/Nhost is Postgres and Hasura with auth, storage and functions around them — GraphQL-first and self-hostable. Pithy composes onto Cloudflare's primitives with SQL and HTTP. Both are open source.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/nhost/https://pithy.sh/compare/photon/Photon is real-time networking for games — Fusion, Quantum and Realtime — priced on concurrent users. Pithy has turn-based multiplayer as one capability. Compared on multiplayer alone.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/photon/https://pithy.sh/compare/playfab/PlayFab is Microsoft's complete backend for live games — identity, economy, matchmaking, dedicated servers, LiveOps and analytics. Pithy has the game capabilities in a Worker you own. Compared honestly.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/playfab/https://pithy.sh/compare/pocketbase/PocketBase is one Go binary with SQLite, auth, files, realtime and an admin UI. Pithy is a kit that composes onto Cloudflare's primitives. Both are SQLite; almost nothing else is the same.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/pocketbase/https://pithy.sh/compare/revenuecat/RevenueCat is the best hosted answer to cross-platform purchases. Pithy has payments as one capability. Compared on subscriptions alone — and on where your customers' purchase history lives.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/revenuecat/https://pithy.sh/compare/rolling-your-own/The most common alternative, and sometimes the right one. What you actually take on when you write the backend yourself, and where a kit earns its place.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 UTChttps://pithy.sh/compare/rolling-your-own/