How Geocodio went from bash scripts to full internal apps, the system that keeps them maintainable, and where we draw the line between building and buying. At Geocodio, it has always been important to us to automate processes and build our own tools and helpers, so we can save time and be more efficient. For almost ten years, Geocodio was just the two of us. Automation is a big part of what made that possible. Those tools have saved us countless hours over the years. Local bash scripts that set up a development environment or download the specific data files we need for geocoding. Infrastructure scripts that check the health of the load balancer or sync some data down. Small scripts that make the on-premises release process faster and more efficient, with fewer manual steps and less room for human error. One of the bigger ones came along well before the AI era. We built our own deployment tool. It visualizes the deployment process, so we can easily see how far along a deploy is and what is live right now.…