vs-pod did not begin as a product idea. It began as a mess I was tired of walking through every morning.
Notes in one place. Experiments in another. Local scripts I could never find twice. A feeling that my own work was hosted everywhere except where I was.
What I wanted
A workshop. Not a dashboard. Not a second brain. Not a productivity religion.
I wanted a small set of objects I understood, and a surface quiet enough that I could leave it open.
If a personal tool needs a tutorial, it is already too large.
The difficult part
Every feature made it feel more like software I would eventually abandon.
The temptation is to model everything: projects, tasks, logs, bookmarks, the weather. That is how you build a museum of your own intentions.
I cut until the remaining objects were things I touched in a real week.
Decisions that mattered
Local-first where it mattered. No streaks. No points. A name that is mine, not a category.
note
experiment
sessionThat list is still shorter than most onboarding screens.
What exists today
A working environment I still open. Some of it is ugly. Some of it is unfinished. It is mine, which is the point.
The writing around it is part of the product. If I cannot explain a decision, it probably should not be in the system.
Related
- Designing a developer operating system
Not a platform pitch. Notes on what it means to design the environment you work in, instead of renting someone else’s.
- Building my own chess analyzer
What I learned by refusing a dashboard of engine numbers and building a quieter instrument for studying my own games.
- Lessons from building products
A short list of things I keep relearning by shipping work that has to live with me afterwards.