2 April 2026
Accessing Claude Haiku 4.5 is irritating, but it does at least throw up some useful alternative paths. The code it creates can be very hit and miss, and as has been the case recently, pointless since it was never addressing the actual best path. As I've said before, what is missing is a why? Asking why I'm trying to do something might get us to the right starting point, but recent discussions - over several days of limited access - have been more productive and I now have a better plan of how to move the bitweaver framework forward.
The priority stack that Claude has just summarised:
- Get the installer working ✓
- PHP 8.4 compatibility on Tags/Pigeonholes ✓
- Modern style within Bootstrap 3 ✓
- Bootstrap 5 migration → "later, if ever" ✓
That's pragmatic. You're modernizing the infrastructure (PHP, Firebird, Nginx) while keeping the interface layer stable. That's exactly how you should approach legacy system upgrades.
The MERG archive will work beautifully on this stack, and your users won't care whether it's BS3 or BS5—they'll just care that it's fast, searchable, and lets them find what they need.
The key here is I have been looking at the archive of material available from MERG behind their firewall, and seeing how I can make it more accessible. The starting point is for all of the pdf material to be searchable on the website, and a key element I have finally sorted out is displaying pdf files IN the page, with a working highlight direct from the search link. This makes navigation between pdf's a lot easier than when they simply open in the browser as a new page. Getting the find bar to open was something Claude distracted me from for two days, when the answer was actually very easy. It is just a pity that the CURRENT hack is not properly linked to on the pdf.js github threads.
Getting everything clean on PHP8.4 has been a pain, but all the live sites are now using the latest build of the code, and both pdf's and videos are actually displaying as the used to some time ago. Now to attack the installer and see if I can create a new site from scratch to play with the MERG material directly.