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Clear the rest of the fabricated case studies: ratchet 16 to 9 - #591

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purge-remaining-case-studies
Aug 22, 2026
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Clear the rest of the fabricated case studies: ratchet 16 to 9#591
pftg merged 1 commit into
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purge-remaining-case-studies

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@pftg pftg commented Aug 22, 2026

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Finishes the REPAIR tier opened in #583. Ratchet 16 → 9, and the 9 survivors are all in the three fractional-CTO posts — parked by an explicit decision, not by neglect. Every actionable carrier is cleared.

Removed

All invented client work in claims-canon's sense: an anonymous company carrying precise numbers, with no subject a reader could verify.

Post Impressions What it claimed
rails-performance-at-scale 814 "a real example from our work with a fintech startup that grew from 15K to 800K users in 8 months"
complete-guide-ruby-rails-ai-integration-2025 81 349 lines across two sections — see below
tdd-workflow-automation-rails-teams a fabricated VP Engineering pull-quote
internal-product-teams-cost-center-to-profit-driver "How a 12-person team created $5M in value"
when-your-startup-needs-emergency-cto-leadership three invented crisis narratives

The AI-integration guide was the worst of these. Three "Case Study" blocks naming anonymous clients with exact revenue ("HR tech SaaS, 15K customers", "$40M ARR") — plus the post's opening section, "Lessons from $180K in Mistakes", which asserts outright "these aren't hypothetical - they're real projects" and details a "$12,000 Weekend" and "47,000 GPT-4 API calls". The technical spine survives intact: landscape, decision framework, integration patterns, production practices, testing.

The TDD one is arguably the worst item despite zero traffic — a fabricated testimonial. Invented testimonials are banned by name in claims-canon.

Left deliberately

The Weak/Strong Example pair in internal-product-teams reads as a claim out of context, but it's a labelled template teaching the reader to phrase their own success story. Deleting it would have been pattern-matching rather than reading.

Flagged, not fixed

tdd-workflow-automation-rails-teams §"Measuring TDD Automation Impact" is ~103 lines of invented before/after metrics, survey results and a "$562,500 annual value" ROI, all presented as measured. It is not a ratchet hit — I found it incidentally, so hand-fixing it here would be scope creep on a zero-traffic page.

The right fix is a new marker for the fabricated-metrics-table shape, which would catch this and its siblings in one pass instead of one more hand-sweep. That is the same reasoning that produced the ratchet in the first place.

Gates

  • marketing_copy_test — 4 runs, 10 assertions, 0 failures.
  • Ratchet re-proved exact at the new count: dropped to 8, failed with Expected 9 to be <= 8, restored.
  • bin/hugo-build green.
  • Content + test only, so the visual suites correctly do not apply.

508 deletions, 4 insertions.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_016PUkwFTsiv7EB2DYKogbpg

Finishes the REPAIR tier. Every actionable carrier the ratchet listed is now
cleared; the 9 survivors are all in the three fractional-CTO posts, parked by an
explicit decision rather than by neglect.

Removed, all invented client work in claims-canon's sense - an anonymous company
carrying precise numbers, with no subject a reader could verify:

- `rails-performance-at-scale` (814 impr): "a real example from our work with a
  fintech startup that grew from 15K to 800K users in 8 months", with
  month-by-month figures. Its "key lessons" went too - five generic scaling
  points the post's own stage sections already make.
- `complete-guide-ruby-rails-ai-integration-2025` (81 impr): 349 lines across
  TWO fabricated sections. Three "Case Study" blocks naming anonymous clients
  with exact revenue ("HR tech SaaS, 15K customers", "$40M ARR"), and the post's
  OPENING section - "Lessons from $180K in Mistakes", asserting outright "these
  aren't hypothetical - they're real projects", with a "$12,000 Weekend" and
  "47,000 GPT-4 API calls". The technical spine survives intact: landscape,
  decision framework, integration patterns, production practices, testing.
- `tdd-workflow-automation-rails-teams`: a case study ending in a fabricated
  **VP Engineering pull-quote**. Invented testimonials are banned by name in
  claims-canon, which makes this the worst item in the batch even though the
  page has no measurable traffic.
- `internal-product-teams-cost-center-to-profit-driver`: "How a 12-person team
  created $5M in value", $2.8M annual cost.
- `when-your-startup-needs-emergency-cto-leadership`: three invented crisis
  narratives opening "let me share three situations".

Left deliberately: the Weak/Strong Example pair in `internal-product-teams` reads
as a claim out of context but is a labelled template teaching the reader to
phrase their OWN success story. Deleting it would have been pattern-matching
rather than reading.

Ratchet re-proved exact at the new count - dropped to 8, failed with "Expected 9
to be <= 8", restored.

FLAGGED, not fixed - a marker candidate rather than a hand-sweep:
`tdd-workflow-automation-rails-teams` §"Measuring TDD Automation Impact" is ~103
lines of invented before/after metrics, survey results and a "$562,500 annual
value" ROI, presented as measured. It is not a ratchet hit and I found it
incidentally, so hand-fixing it here would be scope creep on a zero-traffic page.
The right fix is a marker for the fabricated-metrics-table shape, which would
catch it and its siblings at once.

Gates: marketing_copy_test 4 runs / 10 assertions / 0 failures. `bin/hugo-build`
green. Content + test only, so the visual suites do not apply.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016PUkwFTsiv7EB2DYKogbpg
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@pftg
pftg merged commit 8c6487d into master Aug 22, 2026
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@pftg
pftg deleted the purge-remaining-case-studies branch August 22, 2026 12:46
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