Sometimes, I write about ColdFusion.
ColdFusion has been a huge part of my career, so I occasionally write about the parts that interest me, confuse me, annoy me, or save me from yelling into the void. These articles cover real-world development, practical implementation notes, platform features, and the occasional hard-earned lesson from building things with CFML.
Code Monkey Chronicles
August 7, 2026
Running Adobe ColdFusion on ARM: An Adventure in Unsupported Territory
I tried to move Adobe ColdFusion to AWS Graviton. ColdFusion worked. The connector didnât. Then CommandBox made the whole problem disappear.
ColdFusion AI 101 Series
June 22, 2026
AI 101 for ColdFusion Developers: Before We Write the First Line of Code
A practical, jargon-light introduction to what LLMs are, what they are not, and how ColdFusion developers can start using AI without mistaking the robot for the application.
June 24, 2026
ColdFusion AI Hello World: Making the Robot Say Something Useful
A hands-on first step into ColdFusion AI, using ChatModel() to send a prompt, get a response, and understand where simple stateless AI calls fit before things get complicated.
June 26, 2026
Giving Your ColdFusion AI a Memory: Sessions, Preferences, Windows, and the Joy of Not Becoming a Gossip Appliance
How to move beyond stateless AI calls by giving your ColdFusion assistant short-term memory, user-specific context, and preferences without accidentally turning it into a cross-user gossip appliance.
June 28, 2026
Giving Your ColdFusion AI Tools: Letting the Robot Use Your CFCs Without Handing It a Flamethrower
Letting your AI assistant call real ColdFusion application logic through carefully constrained CFC tools, while keeping validation, authorization, and production safety exactly where they belong: in your code.
June 30, 2026
Adding MCP to ColdFusion AI: Giving the Robot a Passport
MCP lets your ColdFusion AI assistant connect to external tools, prompts, and resources through a standard protocol, without pretending the robot should be trusted with every system it can reach.
July 2, 2026
Adding RAG to ColdFusion AI: Giving the Robot an Open-Book Test
RAG lets your ColdFusion AI assistant answer from your own documents instead of guessing, while still respecting permissions, freshness, source quality, and the basic rule that the robot only reads what ColdFusion allows.
July 6, 2026
Adding Guardrails to ColdFusion AI: Keeping the Robot Out of Trouble
How to validate, block, redact, and safely fail AI inputs and outputs before your helpful assistant becomes a compliance incident with a loading spinner.
JULY 8, 2026
ColdFusion AI Cheat Sheet
A quick reference for the core ColdFusion AI concepts, when to use them, and what to watch for.
Building a Slack-Backed Support Chat in ColdFusion
Part 1
Why I Let My Users Talk to Slack Instead of Building an Admin Console
Stop building admin consoles your support team will never use. Hereâs how Slack became the UI for our ColdFusion support chat instead.
PART 2
Why I Used Server-Sent Events Instead of WebSockets
Think every realtime app needs WebSockets? Mine didnât. Hereâs why Server-Sent Events were the simpler, more reliable choice for ColdFusion.
PART 3
Designing the Conversation Data Model
A good chat starts with a great data model. Design conversations, messages, and Slack threads that wonât haunt Future You in production.
PART 4
Getting Slack Ready Before You Write Any Code
Before writing a single line of CFML, get Slack configured the right way. Bots, permissions, threads, secrets, and the setup tutorials usually skip.
PART 5
Posting ColdFusion Messages into Slack Threads
Build a reusable Slack integration in ColdFusion. Post messages, create threads, store thread IDs, and lay the foundation for production-ready chat.
PART 6
Receiving Slack Events and Verifying Requests
Securely receive Slack events in ColdFusion by verifying signatures, rejecting replay attacks, handling duplicate deliveries, and queueing webhooks for reliable processing.
PART 7
Turning Slack Events into Customer Conversations
Slack received the reply. Your customer did not. Part 7 turns queued Slack events into support messages, maps threads and users, prevents duplicates, and pushes replies live to the customerâs browser.
PART 8
Building for Failure
Production will fail. Part 8 shows how queues, idempotency, retries, dead-letter tables, logging, and recovery keep a ColdFusion Slack integration working when the real world gets involved.
PART 9
The Complete Reference Implementation
A complete, production-ready Slack support chat for ColdFusion. Download the reference implementation, add your Slack credentials, run the SQL, and have a working Page-to-Slack system in minutes.
In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
Four Things Adobe Could Do Tomorrow That Would Make ColdFusion Stronger
Adobe has done a commendable job modernizing ColdFusion. The next challenge isnât the language... itâs growing the community around it.
AI Is a Pencil. Learn How to Hold It.
AI didnât invent incompetence. It just gave incompetence a faster keyboard. Letâs talk about why AI makes people cringe, and why theyâre only half right.
Why âWelcome to the Modern World.â Might Be the Most Unhelpful Thing You Can Say to a Developer
So you were just welcomed to âthe modern world.â Before you smile and nod, letâs unpack why âitâs oldâ isnât an engineering argument, and how to respond without flipping a desk.