Shipping Htmx in Production (A Post-Mortem)

5 hours ago

The Reddit Lead Qualification and Analysis System is designed to find, evaluate, and categorize potential customers on Reddit before they enter a sales pipeline.
HTMX was chosen to reduce development friction and eliminate the need for complex frontend frameworks, focusing on hypermedia principles.
The system includes an autonomous lead qualification pipeline with stages like summary generation, qualification, key point extraction, and draft response.
HTMX allows for sub-500ms feedback loops and sub-5-minute feature implementation times, improving developer velocity.
The system uses FastAPI for the backend, with HTMX handling UI updates, reducing the need for client-side state management.
Semantic search is implemented using pgvector for manual discovery of leads, with HTMX providing a seamless search experience.
Error handling in HTMX requires custom logic to manage UI events, as server errors can disrupt the user experience.
HTMX reduces code footprint and maintenance by eliminating client-side state managers and routers.
The system demonstrates that HTMX is suitable for production SaaS applications, not just internal tools or hobby projects.
Lessons learned emphasize the importance of simplicity and focusing on solving business problems rather than managing frontend plumbing.

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