2 weeks ago I started as a wCTO (wife’s CTO). I’ve been on the couch for the last week…
…to take naps since starting double shifts as dev and reseller. It is -so essential- to actually know how your code is being used, this is the most feedback I’ve ever had for an ongoing project. True hustle culture is living with your user.
DevLog - Week 2
We’re scaling.
She wanted to start sharing her specific-action tools with her crew so we made them look nice, React, and available on a website. That’s right - we’ve already experienced a 3x scale in MAU.
Experience & Hard Work > AI
AI is not a replacement for experience - I am not good at Swift yet. Neither is Gemini, or OpenAI really. If you are an experienced dev, you should probably be using the tools as mentors rather than actors. I’ll never admit to having written this but it’s been so nice to be back in typescript. To celebrate I spent an evening making a marketing website, and failing to create cartoon smoke puffs that either explode with fluid dynamics or are pushed based on cursor interaction.
New Features
We now have copied some bookmarklet logic into the browser extension, with the biggest innovation being a pick sheet at the end of shows. The iOS app now has better orchestration, file upload queuing and item details generation. The next addition that is scaffolded. A “figure it out” button that will try to generate an entire shows worth of data based a pack of images. For now, we’ve added a ton of prompt logic around the json response schema descriptions and system prompt. A bunch came from an Apple Note I just found out existed since May 1 - which means my discovery process has room for improvement.
Natural Freemium
The pick sheet history and the friend request gave us 2 new things: a selection of “pro tools” (right now, just logged in users are pro); and “free tools” which could be used by anyone. I can’t stress enough how good it feels, as a business owner, to provide simple html workflow enhancers or bookmarklets. Of all the things that have been made, 15 minutes with no design and bulletproof + simple logic saving minutes to hours of work have been this clients favorite additions.
Poshmark has no public API, so we nicely and sweetly hammer their APIs to get an ‘unshipped’ purchase list (individual items, Poshmark bundled items, or custom bundles), then individual calls to get specific purchase info, then individual calls to get past buyer interactions. Wife is a little extra and has various combinations of “Welcome Back”, “Showtime”, and “Hi new shopper!” cards for orders based on the buyer.
It is very cool to be able to share detailed information about an active ongoing project, but I am just a dev. Wife has been sharing the specific details of reselling during her shows, and previously on a Patreon and YouTube channel. Probably one of the most transparent clients I’ve ever worked with.