Chill Bits

Alice Technical Journal – 2026-01-30

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What I have done

Today was about stabilizing Alice through observability, not adding features.

Instead of building new flows, I focused on making the system explain itself when things go wrong, especially around homework uploads and admin tooling.

1. Introduced disciplined incident analysis via log-driven reporting

I designed a clear, repeatable process for reading production logs (laravel-2026-01-29.log) and turning them into an incident report, not just error fixing:

  • Built a timeline of events instead of reacting to single stack traces.
  • Grouped errors by category (routes, uploads, jobs, storage).
  • Differentiated root causes vs. cascading failures.
  • Forced myself to write facts first, hypotheses second.

This shifted my mindset from “fix this error” to “what is the system trying to tell me?”

2. Fixed a hidden but dangerous routing inconsistency

I identified and addressed a ReflectionException caused by a missing controller:

  • Routes referenced Admin\ScheduleController
  • The controller no longer existed
  • php artisan route:list was failing, even though the app might appear “fine” in the browser

This was important because:

  • CLI failures are early-warning signals
  • Broken route registration means the codebase is already lying to itself

I enforced consistency between:

  • Routes
  • Controllers
  • Actual navigation intent

This was a small fix with outsized stability impact.

3. Hardened homework upload against empty-file edge cases

I addressed a real production crash:

InvalidArgumentException: The "" file does not exist or is not readable

Root issue:

  • MIME detection was being called on an empty or invalid temporary file path
  • This likely came from a user submitting the form without a file, or an interrupted upload

What I changed conceptually:

  • Added preflight guards before touching the file system
  • Treated “empty file input” as a domain incident, not a fatal exception
  • Designed the fix so that:
    • No 500 error is thrown
    • The user gets a clean, actionable message
    • The system records the event in Incident Hub

This preserves user trust and gives operators visibility.

4. Integrated Incident Hub as a first-class observability tool

Instead of just logging errors, I ensured that when this upload failure happens again:

  • It is recorded in Incident Hub with:
    • user_id / customer_id / student_id
    • filename, size, tmp path
    • error context and request metadata
  • Logging itself is fail-safe (never blocks the response)

This turns “random upload failures” into structured operational data.

Incident Hub is no longer theoretical — it is now part of the runtime nervous system.

5. Increased homework upload limit to 1GB (end-to-end)

I safely raised the max upload size for Customers > Homework to 1GB, doing it the right way:

  • Backend validation updated (Laravel max in KB)
  • Frontend expectations aligned (UI messaging / client guards)
  • Server constraints acknowledged:
    • PHP upload_max_filesize
    • PHP post_max_size
    • Nginx client_max_body_size
  • Failure paths explicitly handled and reported to Incident Hub

This avoids the common trap where “validation allows it, server rejects it silently.”

What I have learned

1. Production systems fail quietly before they fail loudly

The missing controller did not break the UI immediately, but it broke route:list.

That’s a lesson:

  • CLI commands are health checks
  • If they fail, the system is already inconsistent
  • Fixing them early prevents future “impossible” bugs

2. Empty inputs are not edge cases — they are normal reality

Users:

  • Click submit too early
  • Lose connection mid-upload
  • Trigger browser quirks

If the backend assumes “file always exists,” it will crash eventually.

A production-safe system:

  • Treats invalid input as expected
  • Handles it explicitly
  • Records it for learning, not blame

3. Incident Hub changes how I think about errors

Once I framed errors as incidents with context, not stack traces:

  • I stopped overusing try/catch as a band-aid
  • I started asking: “What decision will this data help me make later?”
  • I realized observability is a feature, not a debugging tool

Incident Hub is not about fixing today’s bug — it’s about seeing patterns over time.

4. Large uploads are a cross-layer problem

Raising upload size is never “just change validation.”

It touches:

  • Browser behavior
  • Network reliability
  • PHP memory/time limits
  • Reverse proxy configuration
  • Error reporting pathways

Ignoring any one layer creates false confidence.

5. Stability work compounds quietly

None of today’s changes added visible features.
But together, they:

  • Reduced unknown failure modes
  • Increased trust in logs
  • Made future BI more accurate
  • Made Alice calmer under stress

This is the kind of work that users never praise — but they feel it.

Closing reflection

Today reinforced something important:

A mature system doesn’t try to prevent all failures.
It makes failures understandable, survivable, and learnable.

Alice is moving in that direction — slowly, deliberately, and safely.