There's no team behind Standups & Snacktime. It's me, with a stack of mostly free tools that do a surprising amount of heavy lifting.

And it all happens in the gaps. Every change to this site, every new template, social post and changelog entry gets built during nap time or after bedtime. That only works if picking a project back up takes seconds, not a half hour of remembering where I left off.

I'm an ops person, so of course I set it up like a system. Here's the whole stack.

The website: Cloudflare

This site runs on Cloudflare Workers. It hosts the pages, runs the live status page for my house, handles the contact form, and powers the little music player. For a site this size, it fits comfortably in the free plan. Apart from the domain name, it costs nothing.

The code: GitHub

All the site's code lives in a private GitHub repository. That gives me a full history of every change, so if something breaks, I can roll it back. Better still, Cloudflare watches the repo: when a change lands, the site updates itself a minute later. No uploading files, no command line.

The templates: Google Sheets

Every free template on the site is a Google Sheet. When you click "get a copy," Google makes you your own version, and mine stays untouched. No sign-ups, no email wall, no app to download.

The filing cabinet: Google Drive

Everything else lives in Google Drive, organized like a team would organize it: brand files, templates, a "ready to post" folder with one folder per post, and a "posted" archive. There's even a start-here doc and a switching-computers checklist, because a single point of failure is still a single point of failure when it's your laptop.

The playlists: Spotify

The 16 playlists on the playlists page live on a separate brand Spotify account, so my personal listening stays personal. Spotify is one of the few things I pay for. The "now playing" on the site is the one exception, and yes, you'll catch me listening to a lot of emo.

The co-pilot: AI

I use Claude for a lot of this: writing and fixing code, building the templates, designing carousels and reels in my brand colors, and organizing that Drive. It's the closest thing I have to a team. (This one I pay for too.)

What I'd tell you if you're starting something

• Start with what's free. You can go a long way before anything needs to cost money.
• Organize like future-you is a stranger. Clear folders, clear names, and a doc that explains where things live.
• Automate the step you dread. For me it was deploying. For you it might be posting or invoicing.
• Keep secrets out of shared places. Passwords go in a password manager, never a doc or a repo.

Want a walkthrough of any piece of this? Tell me which one, and I'll write it up.