The Ghost Vendor
Theo's charter site goes down on a holiday weekend. The developer who built it vanishes. The docs that 'definitely exist' — don't.
The Faithful Steward — in the tradition of the prudent steward and the wise virgins keeping oil in their lamps
Friday at the marina. Theo's booking site has been humming for three years. The developer built it once, mostly leaves it alone.
He's a great guy. Says the docs are all there if I ever need them. Why would I ever need them?
Out in Business World, the fog thickened. The Mundane held up a brass keyring of unlabeled keys and smiled.
All those plugins. All those passwords. The repo, the hosting, the DNS — he's got them. Why would you ever need to hold a single key yourself?
Saturday morning of the holiday weekend. Every screen flashed red at once. Bookings frozen. The phone rang with confused captains.
Site's down. I'll just call my dev — he'll know what to do.
Theo. Try the hosting dashboard first. The login is… it's to his email, isn't it.
Twelve hours of voicemail. Texts unread. The Ghost Vendor flickered at the edge of the dock — translucent, fading.
The docs? Oh — they were 'around here somewhere.' A Notion I shared once. An email folder you never opened. Good luck without me, friend.
A horn cut the fog. Captain Marisol, calm on the harbor radio.
Ahoy, Theo. This isn't a tech problem — it's a stewardship problem. Every key on his ring should have been on yours, too. Not instead of his. Alongside.
Good captains don't rent their own front door, Theo. They keep a copy of every key.
Masked Crewsader landed on the marina parapet, voice low.
The mistake wasn't hiring him. He's probably fine. The mistake was never opening the toolbox while he was still here. Stewards check what they hold — before the day they have to hold it alone.
IP Bot scratched the Audit on the back of a paper bag — six lines, no more.
One: domain registrar, in YOUR name. Two: admin accounts, in YOUR name — add him as a guest. Three: source code, in a repo YOU own. Four: a one-page runbook in YOUR drive — deploy, rollback, backups, who to call.
Five: a plugin map — what each does, what each touches, when each renews. Six: YOU log in to every system, this quarter, with your own eyes. If you haven't, you don't actually have access. #AutomateThis!
Theo worked the audit live. Reset the registrar via the credit card on file. Bought back the domain DNS. Found a captain-friend who knew WordPress. By Sunday afternoon, the lights flickered on.
Bookings are coming through. It's running. And I have the keys now — every one.
The Ghost Vendor sputtered at the edge of the dock, growing fainter.
But — you were SUPPOSED to need me! That was the whole bargain! Untested handoff! Sticky-note IOUs! It always works!
Not on a steward, Vendor. We keep oil in our lamps.
Monday morning. Theo ran the Audit on every system the charter business touched. Two more keys came back into his hands. The dev surfaced Tuesday with apologies — Theo welcomed him back as a partner, not a hostage-taker.
Hire good people. Trust them. AND keep your own keys. The faithful steward isn't the one who never delegates — it's the one who's ready when delegation ends. Check Your ASSets, captain. Before you need to.
The lesson
An external dev who 'has it handled' isn't a handoff. Run the Asset Audit while they're still here — every credential in your name, every doc on your side, every plugin mapped, every login tested by you — and the day they vanish is just another Tuesday.
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