Fixes · Diagnostics

Diagnostics for Strapi builds that aren't behaving.

Most Strapi problems aren't Strapi problems. They're implementation choices that were reasonable at ten content types and stop being reasonable at four hundred: a population strategy nobody revisited, a content model designed by backend engineers, a query that got slower every month until someone noticed.

These pages are what I check, in what order, when something's wrong. Each one takes a single symptom, works through the likely causes from most to least common, and tells you how to confirm which one you've got before you change anything.

Performance

Where nearly every 'Strapi is slow' ticket ends up.

Why is your Strapi API slow? The five things it usually is, how to tell them apart, and why the first step is proving it's the API at all. Response time grows with schemaPayloads full of unread fieldsFine at launch, slower every month live· 11 min reviewed Sep 2026· Strapi 5 What to use instead of populate=deep Why the plugin removes the safeguards you want, and what explicit population looks like at scale. populate=deep in productionQuery cost changes with schemaNobody owns population live· 8 min reviewed Sep 2026· Strapi 5

Content architecture

Decisions made at ten content types that stop working at four hundred.

Content model mistakes that surface later Relations that should have been components, components that should have been JSON, and the ones you can still change. Editors working around the schemaRelations for single-use dataMigrations nobody wants to run live· 10 min reviewed Sep 2026· Strapi 5

Before you launch

The fortnight before go-live, in the order failures actually happen.

Launch readiness for a headless build What to check in the fortnight before go-live, in the order that failures actually happen. Two weeks outNo load test yetPreview works on one machine live· 9 min reviewed Sep 2026· Strapi 5

These are living pages, reviewed and updated rather than dated and abandoned. If something here is wrong or out of date for your version, tell me.

S/01

Performance & Architecture Rescue

Need this diagnosed on your own project rather than in the abstract? That's S/01 — Performance & Architecture Rescue.

See the service