2 minute read

TL;DR

Milestone 5 is mostly complete.
The admin UI is now honest, read-only, and resilient — with one small follow-on issue (5-2) remaining to finish the milestone cleanly.

The goal

Milestone 5 was about one thing:

Treat the admin area as an observability layer, not a control panel.

That means:

  • no hidden writes
  • no pretend buttons
  • no rescuing errors into silence
  • no UI that implies authority the system doesn’t yet have

If the platform can’t safely act yet, the admin UI shouldn’t lie about it.

What actually happened today

1. Admin buttons lied (so they had to go)

Across multiple admin views, there were actions that looked real:

  • approve
  • reject
  • assign
  • message
  • bulk actions

Some were placeholders.
Some depended on assumptions the system couldn’t guarantee.
None belonged in a read-only observability phase.

So they weren’t disabled or commented out — they were removed.

In their place: explicit messaging that says what the admin can and cannot do right now.

2. Optimistic data assumptions got cleaned up

A lot of the admin UI assumed data would always exist:

  • counts without guards
  • collections assumed non-nil
  • stats read optimistically

That works… until it doesn’t.

Today turned into a small campaign against that optimism:

  • force numbers to be numbers
  • treat missing collections as empty
  • replace rescue-and-hope with explicit guards

Not glamorous — but the admin pages no longer crash or lie when data is missing.

3. One syntax error tried to ruin the vibe

At one point:

  • tests were green
  • then suddenly red
  • then red again

Classic ERB problem: a missing end hiding at EOF.

Instead of guessing, I stopped, ran the tests, found the exact error, fixed it surgically, and moved on.

That moment alone justified the slower pace.

4. The user profile page was the last boss

It had everything:

  • action buttons
  • alerts pretending to be features
  • metrics without guards
  • mixed layout conventions

By the end of the day:

  • it’s read-only
  • metrics are safe
  • fake affordances are gone
  • admin intent is explicit

It finally matches the rest of the system.

The important decision

I wanted to refactor.

There are stat blocks begging to be partials.
There’s repetition.
There are obvious cleanups.

But I didn’t — not yet.

Instead:

  • correctness first
  • safety second
  • refactor later

Those refactors are captured explicitly as Issue 5-2, so they don’t get lost or mixed into behavior changes.

That separation matters.

Where Milestone 5 actually stands

This is the honest status:

  • Issue 5-1: complete
    (Admin made read-only, resilient, and truthful)

  • Issue 5-2: remaining
    (small, intentional cleanup and polish to fully close the milestone)

The finish line is close, but it’s not crossed yet — and that’s okay.

What I learned (again)

  • Remove beats disable
  • Rescue hides problems
  • Read-only UIs build trust
  • Refactors deserve their own issue
  • Pace matters more than speed

Also: ERB will absolutely humble you if you rush.

What’s next

Finish Issue 5-2, close Milestone 5 cleanly, then move on with confidence.

That’s a good place to stop for the day — and a better place to pick back up tomorrow.

Updated: