2026-04-16 · Vericode Team · 6 min read
Solo shipping is not an excuse for silent diffs. You still need a moment between “it works on my machine” and “this is the new production behavior.” A checklist makes that moment mechanical.
Read the diff as if you did not write it. Confirm the title matches the change. If the PR says “fix timeout” and also rewrites export paths, split it. Future you will thank present you when bisecting.
State the risk. Empty inputs, auth boundaries, migrations, and anything that touches money or personal data deserve an explicit sentence. If you cannot write that sentence, you do not understand the change yet.
Run the tests you have, then add the one case you skipped. Solo developers under-test the sad path: missing JSON fields, expired sessions, empty search boxes. Those are the bugs users find first.
Comment only what the diff cannot say. A pre-PR pass with Vericode (or any structured review) is useful here: you want leftover TODOs, obvious null mistakes, and a readable explanation you can paste into the PR body.
Check observability. If this path can fail in production, will you know? A log line, a metric, or an alert is part of the change, not a follow-up fantasy.
Sleep on anything irreversible. Schema drops, permission changes, and public API removals should not ship in the same hour they were typed. A calendar reminder is a valid engineering tool.
Ship the smallest version that teaches you something. Solo roadmaps die when every PR tries to finish the product. The checklist’s last box is “this can be reverted.” If it cannot, write a rollback note before you merge.