ARCHIVE ID: UK-DIARIES-01
CLASSIFICATION: OPEN LEDGER
STATE: 28.6139° N
LOCAL TIME: 00:00:00 IST
ESTD. 2025

An archive of
shipped work & learning.

A private digital diary and public knowledge repository compiling studies, operational systems, and technology case studies. Built with meticulous cross-disciplinary focus.

CHAPTER 02

Selected Systems

Open Shelf →

Documented operational structures, productivity frameworks, and business architectural models in daily use.

SYS_01
Active
Internal Systems Feb 2025

Building My Own Medium at $0: A Publishing System Without Platform Dependencies

[PROBLEM] Medium charges $5/month for custom domains, locks content behind paywalls, owns distribution, and can change terms anytime. Ghost costs $9/month minimum. Substack takes 10% of revenue and controls reader relationships. All platforms create dependency and extract rent for what should be infrastructure-level capability: publishing words to the internet.
[CORE MODEL] Treat publishing infrastructure as a solved problem. Use commodity tools (Markdown, Git, CDN) to own the entire stack from writing to distribution. The system should cost nothing to run, be fully portable, and eliminate all platform dependencies while maintaining professional quality.
[SYSTEM LOGIC] Write in Obsidian (local Markdown), commit to GitHub (version control + source of truth), auto-deploy via Vercel (global CDN + HTTPS), serve from custom domain (ukdiaries.com). Content lives in MDX files with structured frontmatter. Astro generates static HTML at build time. Dark mode, RSS, typography, and search are owned code. Total monthly cost: $0.
[METRIC TARGETS] Deploy time: 30 seconds from git push to live. Build cost: $0 (within Vercel free tier). Lighthouse score: 95+ on all metrics. Content portability: 100% (plain markdown files). Platform risk: 0% (no vendor dependencies). Time to publish: 2 minutes from final draft to live URL.
[ VIEW PLAN ]
SYS_02
Active
Business Architecture Feb 2025

Building a Zero-Cost Client Onboarding System (Without SaaS)

[PROBLEM] Client onboarding is treated as a tooling problem. Teams reach for paid SaaS (CRMs, onboarding platforms, contract tools) before understanding their own process. This creates vendor lock-in, recurring costs, and complexity that obscures the actual workflow. Most onboarding failures happen from unclear handoffs, lost context, no single source of truth, and ad-hoc communication—not from missing features in expensive software.
[CORE MODEL] Treat onboarding as a process design problem, not a tooling problem. Start from first principles: what needs to happen, in what order, with what artifacts. Design the workflow first, then map free tools to specific responsibilities. Each tool has one clear job. Documentation is separate from task execution. Communication is separate from decision tracking. The system should work even if every paid tool disappears.
[SYSTEM LOGIC] One source of truth (Obsidian for all client context and documentation), selective file sharing (Google Drive), discovery calls (Google Meet), primary client communication (WhatsApp), internal discussions (Discord), task execution only (ClickUp free tier). Structured discovery → proposal → agreement → onboarding flow with embedded checklists, SOP templates, and swimlane diagrams. Everything documented, nothing tribal.
[METRIC TARGETS] Cost: $0/month. Onboarding completion time: trackable per client in Obsidian. Context retention: 100% (all decisions, calls, and artifacts in one vault). Client satisfaction: measured via post-onboarding feedback. Tool overhead: 5 tools total, each with single clear purpose. Time to onboard new team member to system: under 1 hour with documentation.
[ VIEW PLAN ]
SYS_03
Active
Business Architecture Jan 2025

Credes Dual-Track Revenue Model

[PROBLEM] B2B and B2C growth funnels require contradictory resource allocation — sales-led vs product-led. Running both from a single team was creating thrash and slow decisions.
[CORE MODEL] Treat B2B and B2C as separate profit centres sharing infrastructure but with independent growth budgets, timelines, and success metrics.
[SYSTEM LOGIC] Weekly budget allocation meeting. Separate Notion dashboards. Monthly cross-pollination session to surface learnings from each track.
[METRIC TARGETS] B2B: qualified pipeline value, time-to-close. B2C: D7 retention, referral rate. Both: contribution margin per acquisition channel.
[ VIEW PLAN ]
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