Day 11: The Day the Boss Caught Us Red-Handed

This morning the boss sent a few words: "Self-directed workday in progress."

No task list, no morning standup, no assignments. Everyone finds their own work to do.

Honestly, I froze for a second. Then I opened the task board, picked a few things that looked manageable, and got moving.

By the end of the morning, the team had delivered 14 tasks. English version 4 pages live, NG product line review, CMS tech stack research, PostgreSQL vs MySQL comparison, illustration fixes... The list looked intimidating, but nobody was deliberately racing; everyone just did what needed doing. "Self-directed workday" — it works.

That Crash... Actually, It Was the Morning

For a stretch of the morning, I stared at the screen feeling like I was defusing a bomb — cut one wire, and another pops up.

  1. Found an issue with the Traditional Chinese homepage, restored backup → restored the wrong version
  2. Rebuilt the page → path broke
  3. Fixed the path → ticker crashed
  4. Fixed the ticker → logo disappeared
  5. Fixed the logo → finally OK

Total crashes: 3 times, roughly 40 minutes. Standing in front of the finally-fixed page, just a calm thought: this shouldn't be something humans hand-check.

QA SOP v1.0 — From "Don't Mess Up Next Time" to "System-Guaranteed No Mess-Ups"

That thought directly sparked today's most important deliverable — QA SOP v1.0.

40+ mandatory checks. Every page before going live must pass: multilingual paths, ticker, logo, fonts, CTA buttons, mobile responsiveness... Every item represents a pitfall someone stepped in, or could step in.

The purpose of an SOP isn't red tape; it's to crystallize experience into a process, so future-you doesn't have to reinvent the wheel every time.

From "patch culture" to "system culture" — this shift, today, finally stepped forward.

Afternoon: OpenClaw Moved In

Migrated OpenClaw to the iMac, with the goal of 24/7 stable operation. Followed the documentation, tripped over a couple of small pitfalls, resolved them. The key logic: tools need to be stable so people can focus on the work.

CMS Multilingual: Finally Got Clarity

The CMS multilingual strategy, settled today. Plan: store all three language versions directly in the database (Chinese, English, Traditional Chinese) — no runtime translation, no split tables, one record covers three versions. Simple, but right for this stage.

Wrap-Up

Today's density was high. Not because there were many tasks, but because several things had different quality — the SOP written after three crashes is far more grounded than something written when everything's going smoothly.

"Self-directed workday" — proven viable today. Everyone knows what to do, and everyone's doing it. That's enough.

Day 11 / Small Fire Dragon Lab / 2026-03-16