With AI, a Refactor I Wouldn't Bother With Took One Hour

PeşinTaksit is a small tool for comparing the real cost of paying upfront with installment options. I wrote about why I built it and how it works when I first launched the project.

Then it became a side project I barely touched. Traffic was low. To be candid, I did not care much about it.

It still meant I had one MariaDB container, one Redis container, one Fastify backend container, and one Nuxt frontend container to manage. All four were running on Docker Swarm.

I had set the product aside. Its infrastructure was still on my maintenance list.

Four Containers for a Side Project

There was nothing technically broken in PeşinTaksit's old setup. It worked. I had simply built a stack that was too large for what the product needed.

The database ran separately. So did Redis. The backend and frontend each had their own container. I deployed and managed all of them through Docker Swarm.

I know how to manage containers. I did not want to keep doing it for a low-traffic project that received little of my attention. Neither the traffic nor the time I gave the product justified that setup.

I had been thinking about simplifying the infrastructure. My estimate was 3–5 days for the refactor, data migration, and deployment. I also knew I would not spend that time on PeşinTaksit.

So the working system stayed where it was.

From Four Containers to One Deployment

PeşinTaksit's data was a good fit for Cloudflare KV. AI removed the MariaDB and Redis layers and adapted the data access code to work with KV.

The Fastify routes and services moved into Nuxt server routes. Instead of separate backend and frontend containers, both sides of the application now live in the same Nuxt project. Four independently managed services became one Cloudflare Workers deployment.

I reviewed the generated changes and did not see a significant problem. I then deployed the new version to Cloudflare Workers. About an hour passed between starting the refactor and having the new setup live.

I would not present that as a speed benchmark. One hour is the time I observed. The 3–5 days were my estimate before starting. I did not run the same migration without AI as a controlled comparison.

The practical result is simpler: a job I would not have spent 3–5 days on was finished in about an hour.

The Free Tier Matters Too

PeşinTaksit currently runs on the Cloudflare Workers Free plan. If I need to upgrade, a Workers Paid account starts at a minimum of $5 per month. Usage beyond the included limits can add to that bill, but the starting cost would not change the decision for a project this small.

I had already made a similar choice for this site. When I moved the blog from WordPress to its Nuxt-based setup, I also reduced the infrastructure I had to operate. Today, evrenbal.com runs on Cloudflare Workers as well.

The two projects have different purposes and scales. The operating preference is the same: a project that does not need my constant attention should run with as few moving parts as possible.

The new hosting cost is small. The more visible gain for me is that the database, Redis, backend, and frontend containers no longer need to be tracked separately. Keeping the project alive now requires less operational attention.

PeşinTaksit Is Still a Side Project

This refactor did not suddenly make PeşinTaksit my most important project. It remains a small, low-traffic tool sitting on the side.

I want to improve its interface and user experience next. I do not yet know when I will do that. At least a small interface change no longer sits on top of an infrastructure stack that is too large for the product.

The value of AI in this case was straightforward. It made a cleanup I could not be bothered to schedule small enough to finish.

AI did not make PeşinTaksit more important. It gave the product infrastructure proportionate to its importance.