Staying in My Lane: How You Get Help (and When You Don’t)

Ever sent us a screenshot of your inverter app or a graph from Home Assistant and wondered why we replied with “Can you file a bug report in Powston instead?” — this post is for you.

Let me explain why that matters, and what I can and can’t help with.

Why We Can’t Debug Your Graph Screenshot

Other systems — inverter apps, dashboards, automations — only show a piece of the puzzle. They don’t tell us:
    •    What Powston actually asked your system to do
    •    What prices were at the time
    •    If there were export limits, SOC caps, or manual overrides
    •    What your site-specific rules looked like under the hood

That’s like showing your mechanic a photo of the dashboard after you’ve already pulled the engine apart.

What does help? Filing a bug report from inside Powston. When you tap “Report a Problem” in the app, it sends:
    •    Full telemetry from that time
    •    Pricing, forecasts, decisions, rule evaluations
    •    Any tuning or override information

That’s the only way we can see what really happened and fix it — in our system, on our terms.

Magic Mode vs Hacker Mode: Choose Your Adventure

Here’s how Powston works for two different kinds of users:

Magic Mode

Let us drive. The system tunes itself based on:
    •    Your usage patterns
    •    Market prices
    •    Forecasts
    •    What’s worked well across the fleet

You get:
    •    Set-and-forget automation
    •    Continuous tuning
    •    Full support (as long as it’s my code)

Heads-up: If it says “PowstonAutoTuned” in rules name, and you had your own rule there… it might’ve been overwritten. If you’re tweaking code manually, keep a copy — the system doesn’t merge, it resets.

Hacker Mode

You write the rules. You get full control — and full responsibility.

If your logic says import if price > 5c and it doesn't wait for 2c… well, that’s your rule. We can give you data, forecasts, and advice, but we can’t debug code we didn’t write or tune.

And if you find reading our auto-tuned rules confusing? That’s fair — we feel the same when we look at yours. It’s a two-way street.

TL;DR

So if you’re on Magic Mode, report problems from inside the app. That’s where we live, and it’s where we can help you best.

If you’re on Hacker Mode, enjoy the power — but remember, with great power comes great support boundaries.

Thanks for staying in your lane so we can stay in mine — and keep the wheels turning for everyone.