Corporate Communications built a returns processing tool

“ChatGPT can probably regenerate it.”— Katrin, Corporate Communications

Reason:

Allegedly because the dashboard disagrees with Finance by €249. With dark mode and no error handling.

Built by:

Katrin, an intern

Build time:

9 evenings

Built with:

a Slack bot doing database writes

Database:

the production database, directly, with write access

Authentication:

the audit log is a text file called audit-final.txt

Deployment:

running on Ubuntu 22.04 and nobody wants to upgrade it

Responsible:

Jens, because their credit card pays for it

Documentation:

none, but the variable names are "pretty clear"

Security situation:

the API key is called PUBLIC_API_KEY

Future disaster:

It will eventually process €2,400 per month.

Age: 34 days · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 34 days ago

Rated legendary mostly because: 5 accidental connections, direct production access, 30% chance of becoming business critical.