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Product updates, guides, and ideas for teams building with clarity.

Refract Vault: write-only secrets, decrypted only where the job runs

Refract Vault: write-only secrets, decrypted only where the job runs

Refract kept the keys to sensitive org values in host environment variables, inside our most exposed process. tools.vault replaces that: secrets go in, never come back out, and only decrypt on the consumer. Here's how, and what's missing.

Refract vs. SupaStarter

Refract vs. SupaStarter

AI writes the code. Your foundation determines how much architecture it has to invent. SupaStarter and Refract both get you to a SaaS; the difference is convention-driven Next-shaped surface versus contract-first boundaries that humans and coding agents modify for years.

How to Evaluate a SaaS Foundation Before You Bet a Quarter on It

How to Evaluate a SaaS Foundation Before You Bet a Quarter on It

Betting a quarter on a SaaS foundation isn't a feature checklist problem. It's a cost-of-change problem: billing blast radius, authorization boundaries, dependency isolation, revenue-path regression coverage, and ecosystem risk. Here's the framework, including who should walk away.

Evaluate a SaaS Architecture Like a Staff Engineer

Evaluate a SaaS Architecture Like a Staff Engineer

A staff engineer doesn't evaluate whether a SaaS codebase works today, they evaluate what it costs to change tomorrow: pricing, a provider swap, a team that triples, a stack the community still trusts. Five checks.

Why Your AI Calls Shouldn't Know Which Model They're Talking To

Why Your AI Calls Shouldn't Know Which Model They're Talking To

Your domain code should ask for a completion, not an Anthropic client. Here's how Refract's tools.ai contract keeps model choice out of business logic.

Production Best Practices for AI Coding Specifications

Production Best Practices for AI Coding Specifications

Agents fail when specs are vague, duplicated, or missing. This is how we structure instructions so tools can follow them, using Refract's shipped AGENTS.md tree, and how that compares when you're shopping boilerplates.