Building-in-public

I tore a hamstring in the best condition I have ever been in, because being well prepared is what made it feel reasonable to sprint without a ramp. I have been doing the same thing to Battleground: going at full pace in a domain one step sideways from the one I know.

Madcap Comics Battleground started as a marketing channel for a comic shop, and I have not thought about the comics in weeks. The stated purpose did real work, just not the work it claimed: it got the game past my own internal gatekeeping, and then stopped mattering.

Status Trace exists because of AI, and it's why I feel less connected to it than to anything else I've built. What I miss isn't in the code. It's the doing: the difference between making a thing exist and authoring its structure well enough that it reads as an extension of how I think.

I built a status page product because I didn't want to keep paying for one. That's true, but it isn't quite honest. Introducing Status Trace, and the experiment of putting a product on sidewrks.

I used to think the interesting question about AI and building was about other people. Then I noticed the line between technical and non-technical builders had quietly moved through my own work.