R&D built an onboarding checklist tool

“The AI understands the code.”— Anja, R&D

Reason:

Officially because the spreadsheet has 138,851 rows and 85 tabs. Quietly rolled out to five countries.

Built by:

Anja, the management assistant

Build time:

8 evenings

Built with:

React, Vite and enthusiasm

Database:

localStorage. That is the whole backend.

Authentication:

the intern has production access

Deployment:

SSL certificate expires in 4 days

Responsible:

Sofia, because their credit card pays for it

Documentation:

none, but the variable names are "pretty clear"

Security situation:

the encryption key is stored next to the encrypted data

Future disaster:

It will cause IT to ask "what server?".

Age: 6.1 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 301 users, 69% chance of becoming business critical, alive 106x longer than intended.