Developer Workflow

Git, testing, logging, staging, backups and the habits that keep servers healthy.

What a repository actually is, and how to clone, commit and push it — with VS Code's buttons and with the command line — so you're ready to point it at a Falix server.

Branches without fear

Feature branches let you build without breaking what's live. How to create, switch and merge branches — and why the branch Falix auto-deploys must stay deployable.

Where to edit your code

File Manager editor, SFTP with your own local editor, or Code-Server in the browser — an honest chooser for how you edit code on Falix, with a decision table.

Run your project locally first

Install Node or Python on your own machine, run your app before you deploy, mirror SERVER_PORT with a local env var, and settle into the edit-locally, push, deploy loop.

Your first test suite

Write real tests with Node's built-in test runner and with pytest, run them before every push, and know exactly what "green" means — plus the honest truth that Falix doesn't run CI for you.

Logging that helps at 3am

console.log discipline, structured logs with pino, and Python's logging module — plus where those lines actually show up on the Console and Logs pages.

Health checks that actually tell you something

A verified /health route for external monitors, plus the honest truth about what Falix Schedules can and can't watch — and how to get automatic restarts.

It's down: a 10-minute triage runbook

A calm, ordered process for when your server stops working — read the console, classify the failure in one glance, roll back if players are waiting, then fix the real cause instead of guessing.

Dependency hygiene

A fifteen-minute monthly habit — read the Packages page's Requested / Installed / Latest columns, clear the vulnerability flags, apply safe updates, and commit your lockfile so every start is reproducible.

Semantic versioning

What MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH actually promises — how to read a dependency's version before you update it, how version ranges like ^ and ~ behave, and how to number your own bot or app releases.

A staging instance next to production

Test risky changes without breaking the live thing — clone your production instance into a staging copy, experiment there, and switch back untouched if it goes wrong. Plus the honest limit: only one instance runs at a time.

A backups strategy that actually saves you

Backups only help if they cover the right things at the right cadence — and a server-files backup does not include your managed databases. Here's what to back up, how often, and how to compose files plus databases into one plan.

Profiling Node.js on a panel host

Honest performance investigation without a local debugger — time slow code with console.time, measure endpoints with curl, watch memory with process.memoryUsage, and know why --inspect isn't practical here.

Automation recipes: gluing the platform together

The capstone — combine Schedules, Git deploy, webhooks and templates into automations that run your server for you, from nightly backup-and-restart to deploy-on-push with a build step to a Discord ping when a backup completes.