IT (yes, really) built an AI chatbot for an undefined reason

“We'll add authentication later.”— Sarah, IT (yes, really)

Reason:

Honestly? Because the source of truth is an email attachment from October. Already exported 87,533 rows to somebody's laptop.

Built by:

Sarah, someone from Procurement

Build time:

5 evenings

Built with:

React, Vite and enthusiasm

Database:

a database running in a container called final-final-db

Authentication:

the app is secure because it has a padlock icon

Deployment:

running on an EC2 instance somebody resized manually

Responsible:

a consultancy that changed its name twice

Documentation:

a Loom video whose owner account has been deleted

Security situation:

it is indexed by Google. All of it.

Future disaster:

It will overwrite the official data with yesterday's export.

Age: 3.4 years · originally expected to last 3 months · 4 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 14x longer than intended, 1 accidental connections, €13k per year.