Nick Pagazani

Moving a 360 GB media library off a paid CDN

Problem

425,000 files across 21,000+ posts lived on a third-party image CDN that cost thousands a month.

Did

Wrote custom WP-CLI commands, REST processing, SQL and multithreaded Python to classify, convert, resize and re-upload every file, and rewrote post content and metadata to match, all on the live site.

Site-down alerts that stopped getting lost

Problem

Downtime alerts travelled email → help desk → an internal relay, and some never arrived.

Did

Built a monitoring webhook receiver in the team's ops platform and registered it on ~445 sites. When the SMS path misfired, the fix was up the next morning.

Finishing a stalled fleet rollout, then adding bot protection

Problem

The team's fleet-management plugin had been half rolled out for a year, which blocked other work.

Did

Drove the rollout to completion, then shipped 1.2.0 (bulk status API, CLI commands, an MCP helper) and 1.3.0 (bot protection, live on every Pressable-hosted site). Checked internal tools wouldn't be blocked and got the owning team to move their switch under it.

From a 2018 GlotPress fork to 4.0.3 in four weeks

Problem

Translation infrastructure ran on a GlotPress fork frozen in 2018, with 53 custom plugins on top.

Did

Wrote the foundation (scaffold, loader, core patches), ported 15+ of the plugins, and fixed two data-integrity bugs along the way.

Using an LLM to decide which of 109,000 images to keep

Problem

A copyright request covered a huge archive, and the scope changed four times.

Did

Wrote an LLM attribution script to separate staff shots from third-party images, recovered 350 video thumbnails from backups, and traced missing search thumbnails to a Jetpack Sync race, fixed across ~13,900 posts.

Event search from 40 seconds to a tenth of a second

Problem

A single event search took about 40 seconds.

Did

Replaced the query with a lookup table held in the object cache, simplified the SQL and moved filtering into PHP.

A press-page automation the client could run without us

Problem

New press mentions were added by hand from a shared spreadsheet.

Did

Built a Make scenario from sheet row to WordPress post. Neither Make nor Zapier could fill the custom fields, so I moved them into the site's plugin and mapped a hidden field to the taxonomy. Fit it inside the free plan, then removed our own data connection.

Public: OpenSourceOrg/dotOrg #116

The team's first plugin on WordPress.org

Did

Took the plugin through WordPress.org review and release, and documented the process for the team. Later finished, published and wrote the launch post for the Send to Substack browser extension (2025).

Public: WordPress.org listing · specialprojects.automattic.com

Production Python services delivering signals to subscribers

Built

Flask services for signal generation and results; Telegram delivery; a REST pull API for trading bots; an HMAC-signed webhook service with retries and dead-lettering; a heartbeat watchdog. Runs on Google Cloud with Secret Manager.

A live equities system, from universe to execution

Built

A universe pipeline, walk-forward and Monte Carlo-validated backtests, and a FastAPI execution server that rebalances an Interactive Brokers account on systemd timers, with Telegram alerts.

stl2step: turning 3D-print meshes into editable CAD

An agent "draws" the part with sketches, extrudes and holes, while five deterministic checks measure the result and reject anything wrong. Ships as a Claude Code skill.

Public: github.com/nickpagz/stl2step

text-to-cad: an AI CAD editor in the browser

Drop in a mesh, then click a feature and tell the agent what to change, or drag a parameter slider. A measured A/B benchmark of cost, time and pass rate settled the architecture.