Go through a release, a codebase or your own career one check at a time. Each checklist on Sefism says how to verify every item and how much it matters, so you fix the musts first.
Looking for best practices instead? See every best practices guide.
Languages, frameworks, databases and the tools around them.
Checklist · Stacks and tools
A practical web accessibility checklist built on WCAG 2.2 level AA, with a severity and a concrete way to verify every check.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Stacks and tools
A practical web performance checklist built on Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP and CLS, with a severity and a concrete way to verify every check.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Stacks and tools
A pull request checklist to run before you ask for review: scope and size, a clean diff, tests, a clear description, safe releases and a tidy branch, each with a way to verify it.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Shipping, running and watching software in production.
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Prepare for and handle production incidents: on-call, severity levels, declaring, roles, mitigation, security containment, status updates and blameless postmortems.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Check a service before it takes real traffic: ownership, SLOs, capacity, timeouts and retries, alerts, rollout and rollback, backups, security and on-call.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Verify a workload and its cluster before real traffic: requests and limits, probes, PDBs, spread, Pod Security, RBAC, network policies, secrets, images, autoscaling, upgrades and backups.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
FinOps for engineers: tagging and allocation, budgets and anomaly alerts, rightsizing, scheduling, commitments, storage lifecycle, egress, idle resources and unit cost metrics.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Backups and DR you can prove: RPO and RTO per system, backup coverage, off-site and immutable copies, restore tests, zone and region choices, runbooks, drills, dependencies and communication.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Check your dependencies and builds before a release: lockfiles, update bots, pinned actions, CI permissions, SLSA provenance, Sigstore signing, SBOMs and a plan for a compromised package.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Cloud and DevOps
Check a schema or data migration before it ships: expand and contract, lock behaviour, online indexes, batched backfills, rehearsal on real data, backups, rollback, deploy order and monitoring.
Chapters
+ 8 more
Pipelines, analysis and putting models into production.
Checklist · Data and ML
An ML model deployment checklist: baselines, training and serving consistency, validation, model registry, canary rollout, rollback, drift monitoring and ownership, with how to verify each.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Data and ML
A data quality checklist for warehouse tables: ownership, freshness, volume, schema, nulls, uniqueness, referential checks, anomaly monitoring and data incidents, with how to verify each.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Data and ML
An analytics dashboard checklist for launch day: purpose and audience, metric definitions, data freshness, correctness, performance, access, accessibility, ownership and adoption.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Data and ML
A data privacy checklist for people who build with personal data: inventory, minimization, PII classification, pseudonymization, retention, access, transfers, logging, vendors and breaches.
Chapters
+ 8 more
Keeping apps, APIs and the data in them safe.
Checklist · Security
A practical web application security checklist built on the OWASP Top 10:2025 and ASVS 5.0, with a severity and a way to verify every check.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Security
Check your REST or GraphQL API against the OWASP API Security Top 10: authentication, object authorization, rate limits, input validation, SSRF, CORS and logging.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Security
Harden an Ubuntu, Debian or RHEL server step by step: accounts and sudo, SSH, updates, firewall and open ports, permissions, logging and CIS benchmark scans.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Security
Lock down an AWS account: root user, IAM Identity Center, roles instead of keys, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, S3 Block Public Access, IMDSv2 and guardrails.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Security
Check an Android or iOS app against OWASP MASVS: data storage, network security, authentication, platform interaction, code quality, resilience and privacy.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Building with language models, retrieval and agents.
Checklist · AI
A RAG production checklist: chunking, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking, per-user permissions, citations, evals, re-indexing and cost, with how to verify each check.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · AI
An LLM evaluation checklist: success criteria, eval datasets, code and model graders, judge calibration, agent evals, safety tests and production monitoring, with how to verify each check.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · AI
An AI feature launch checklist: use case fit, evals, UX for errors, disclosure, human override, abuse filters, rate limits, cost caps, prompt privacy, monitoring and rollback.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · AI
An AI agent and MCP security checklist: least-privilege tools, MCP server auth, prompt injection through tool output, approvals, sandboxing, secrets, audit logs and supply chain.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · AI
An EU AI Act readiness checklist for teams building or deploying AI: scope and roles, prohibited practices, risk classification, transparency, GPAI duties, oversight and dates.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · AI
An LLM cost optimization checklist: cost per request, model routing, prompt caching, batch APIs, trimming context, output limits, response caching, retries, budgets and alerts.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Profiles, new jobs, personal branding and growing as an engineer.
Checklist · Career
Check your LinkedIn profile section by section: photo, headline, About, Experience, Featured, Skills, custom URL, Open to Work, posting and privacy.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Career
Check your GitHub profile part by part: name, photo and bio, profile README, pinned repositories, project READMEs, licences, contribution graph, commit email and account security.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Career
What to do before day one, in week one and by day 30, 60 and 90 in a new developer job: setup, codebase, first PR, your manager, questions and feedback.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Career
Run every freelance client project the same safe way: qualify the client, scope, proposal, contract, deposits, international payments, changes, handover and red flags.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Career
Make your first and next open source contributions the way maintainers expect: pick a healthy project, read the rules, claim an issue, fork, open a clean pull request and handle review.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Career
Land a remote developer job safely and do well in it: spot fake employers, read the contract, get paid across borders, set up your workspace, work across time zones and asynchronously.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Career
Move abroad for a developer job step by step: research visa routes on official sites, check the offer and sponsor, avoid immigration scams, prepare documents and money, and settle in.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Career
Compare and accept a developer job offer with your eyes open: total pay, equity basics, notice, IP and non-compete clauses, benefits, remote terms, team, growth and negotiating politely.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Career
Prepare for a layoff before it happens and act well if it does: emergency fund, documents and contacts, severance, benefits, references, a record of your work and a plan for the search.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Checklist · Career
Move into software from another field step by step: choose a direction, follow a learning plan, build proof of skill, use your previous domain, network, plan your runway and target a first role.
Chapters
+ 4 more
Checklist · Career
Check your developer portfolio site end to end: clear intro, 3 to 5 strong projects, live demos and code, speed, accessibility, SEO basics, custom domain, contact, analytics and upkeep.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Freelancing, shipping your own products and getting paid for your work.
Checklist · Build and earn
Launch a mobile app on the App Store and Google Play: accounts, build rules, review guidelines, privacy labels, Data safety, listing, in-app purchases, testing, crashes and staged rollout.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Build and earn
Get paid by foreign clients safely: agree currency and fees, send proper invoices, choose a payment platform available in your country, keep records for tax and follow your own country's rules.
Chapters
+ 3 more
Checklist · Build and earn
Build a freelance profile that wins work on Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal or Contra: niche, title, overview, portfolio, rates, first jobs, proposals, reviews, and each platform's rules and fees.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Build and earn
Sell templates, starter kits, e-books, courses or plugins the safe way: product choice, licensing, platforms, merchant of record, pricing, delivery, refunds, taxes, marketing and updates.
Chapters
+ 6 more
Checklist · Build and earn
Launch a side project or indie product properly: validate the idea, cut scope, build a landing page, take payments, handle tax basics and legal pages, measure, launch, support users and iterate.
Chapters
+ 5 more
Reading is free. Adding a roadmap, keeping a cheat sheet or asking Tauseef a question uses credits, which only make sure the platform goes to people who are actually learning.
Writing only gets you so far. If you want an answer to your situation rather than the general case, book a session and we will work through it together. Sessions are free for approved Sefism members, and a few slots open each week.
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