Why you need a NUKE button for your startup
If you are the only developer on your startup.
🚨 You need a NUKE button right now.
Here's how it saved my a** (and my date night):
Imagine this, you are shopping in the mall with your wife and your Saas goes on fire.
It's very real because it just happened to me today.
A mistake in my code cause an email to be sent repeatedly to 2 of my users every minute.
What are your options?
- Rush home and fix the bug?
- Call a friend and give them access?
- Cry?
First I panicked because I only had my phone, so I couldn't push any new changes.
I also didn't plan to be home until 4 hours later.
But with an emergency shutoff button, I was able to get on with my life in 5 minutes.
So instead of trying to fix the bug right away, I just deleted the cloud function that sends emails.
Then I put away my phone and had fun shopping with my wife, and enjoyed our date night.
When I got home 4 hour later, I fixed the issue properly.
The lesson for all indie hackers:
- Monitor key usage metrics
- Set alerts on critical services
- Have an emergency shut-off button you can access anywhere
- Let your business support your life, not the other way around.
Most people are using AI agents wrong
I learned the hard way that strategy fails without proper diagnosis
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I alos think it is quite a niche case. Nice that it worked for you, but not something everyone should implement with every function.
I just make sure I have access to the db and Github on my phone.
And not make any "dangerous" changes when I know I won't be home for X time.
With that I can just fix stuff in a decent timeframe (not very comfortable on the phone but it works).
+1 having access on your phone, that's definitely a must have.
I first tried to fix it manually but then realized there's more than one error and it'd take forever to fix it on my phone, then I just nuked the cloud function.
Hey mate! Just wanted to say it's like having a secret weapon in your back pocket. Keep crushing it!
Nice idea: It should probably display alert banner too
Deleting a cloud function as a quick fix only works in your case. If such strategy is employed , sometimes you will welcome unwanted complexity.
I think that's the point he's getting with having a shut off button. Deleting the cloud function was a hacky way. Ideally he had a shut off button.
What I wish OP got into is his recommendations on HOW to set up a shut off button.
There are many ways but I think most people need to think through them beforehand, and sometimes design with that in mind.
For example doing a rollback of a website, deleting a function, flipping a flag in the database etc...
You cannot shutdown a component like that when they are dependent on each other.
In his case, send email is not an input to the next step in the process. Hence we was able to delete the cloud function and forget about it.
Imaging there a 2 function where F1's output is an input to F2. Only after F2 outputs the process is complete. Now F1 started malfunctioning , then you can just shutdown F1 and forget about it.
Whole system will come down if you shutdown F1.
It's really best practices to program defensively and not have everything deeply coupled. You should be able to take down any serverless function and your system should still work (it'll be degraded sure, but nothing blows up).