These principles come from reading 79 posts on the fly.io blog, 2023–2026. Every “Do” is a real quote; every “Don’t” is a made-up counterexample.
Principles
Lead With the Point
Open on a flat claim or a scene, not a preamble. The first sentence should be one a reader could argue with.
“Public cloud billing is terrifying.”
Accident Forgiveness · Aug 2024
Plain Words, Earned Claims
Say what it does & what it costs. Across 79 posts there’s not one “excited to announce”, “cutting-edge”, “world-class” or “blazing”. If a claim needs an adjective, it needs a number instead.
“We just lowered the prices on NVIDIA L40s GPUs to $1.25 per hour.”
We’re Cutting L40S Prices In Half · Aug 2024
Concrete & Clever
Tell the story, then land on specifics: timestamps, commands, numbers, code. Clever openings are welcome as long as they arrive somewhere real.
“On September 1, 2024, at 3:30PM EST, a new Fly Machine came up…”
Corrosion · Oct 2025
Own It When You’re Wrong
Say “we were wrong” in those words, with the specifics, & say what changes. No euphemisms like “evolving our strategy”.
“We were wrong about Javascript edge functions, and I think we were wrong about GPUs.”
We Were Wrong About GPUs · Feb 2025
Say When You’re Selling
Readers know a company blog sells things. Name the pitch out loud, then make the argument on its merits.
“Obviously, I’m trying to sell you something here. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
Code And Let Live · Jan 2026
Fair to Competitors, Then Blunt
Give other tools real credit, then give a clear verdict. No sneering at “legacy clouds”.
“Consul is fantastic software. Don’t build a global routing system on it.”
Corrosion · Oct 2025
Funny, Scaled to the Stakes
Humor & the occasional swear are house style in bylined posts; the blog’s own rules tell writers to swear. When customers were actually hurt, drop the jokes & say why.
“Had this been an impactful attack, we would not be this flippant about it.”
Kurt Got Got · Oct 2025
A Person Wrote This
Write in first person under a real byline: “we” for the company, “I” for the author. Use contractions (77 of 79 posts do). In tutorials, bring the reader along.
“Let’s implement an API token together.”
Macaroons Escalated Quickly · Jan 2024
Tone by Context
The voice stays the same; the volume changes with the job.
- Launches
- Show it working first (a terminal transcript, a screenshot), then argue for it.“Obviously, I’m trying to sell you something here. But that doesn’t make me wrong.” — Code And Let Live
- Deep Dives
- Story-driven & specific. Real timestamps, real code, opinions about both.“Consul is fantastic software. Don’t build a global routing system on it.” — Corrosion
- Bad News & Incidents
- Ownership first, reassurance in plain words, humor only in proportion to the harm.“If you’re using Fly GPU Machines, don’t freak out; we’re not getting rid of them.” — We Were Wrong About GPUs
- Pricing
- The number first, then a candid reason for it.“Charging you for stuff you didn’t want is bad business.” — Accident Forgiveness
- Docs & Product UI
- Same plain words, none of the jokes or swearing. Instructions in second person, verbs first, & errors that say how to fix them.
Product Names
Product names are proper nouns. Spell them the same way every time.
- Fly.io
- The company & platform. Capital F, lowercase io, with the dot. Bare “Fly” for the brand is rare; avoid it.
- Fly Machines
- The VM product. Capital M when it means the product (“a Fly Machine”, “Machines”); lowercase only for generic VMs. Never “Fly machine”.
- Sprites
- Persistent Linux computers for agents. Capitalized in prose (“a Sprite”); lowercase only in commands like
sprite create. - Managed Postgres
- “Fly Managed Postgres” in product copy, “Managed Postgres” on second reference. “MPG” is fine in technical posts once it’s introduced.
flyctl- The CLI’s name, always lowercase. The command you type is
fly, so writefly deploy, notflyctl deploy.
Mechanics
- Headlines use Title Case (28 of the 30 most recent posts): “Code And Let Live”, “We Were Wrong About GPUs”. Pick one rule for small words & stick to it.
- Contractions everywhere: it’s, we’re, don’t. Writing without them reads like a press release.
- Asides go in sidenotes, not footnotes. Use them for the joke, the caveat, or the confession.
- Colons do the pivoting: “Here’s what happened:”. Em dashes are fine, sparingly.
- Exclamation marks belong in tutorials, not in essays, pricing or bad news.
- Emoji are rare, & never in headlines or incident posts.
- Numbers are numerals, with a space before the unit: 8 regions, 100 GB, 500 ms.
- Quotes & ellipses are typographic: “curly quotes”, & a real ellipsis (…).
- Commands & code go in Fragment Mono:
fly deploy,fly.toml. - Errors say how to fix it. “Your token expired. Run
fly auth loginto get a new one.”