Archive

Earlier work, kept with what it taught us.

Mount Lebanon, New York, Lossing and Barritt, from Charles Nordhoff, 1875

Intuitive Software

Build and own the tools you need.

Nearly there; the waitlist is open. intuitive.software

The problem

Small teams rent a subscription for each piece of software they use, and none of it is quite what they need. What they could make themselves is hard to host and harder to share.

The approach

A workspace on your own Cloudflare account, assembled from modules: Links, Forms, Waitlist, Surveys, Contacts, Inventory and Workflows, all sharing the same people, permissions and look. What is missing, the coding agent you already use builds inside the same rules, so it matches the rest.

What we learned

Foogl and Formweh showed that one small Worker on your own account covers much of what small teams rent. What they lacked was a shared shell: the same people, sign-in and look across everything.

Mount Lebanon, New York Lossing and Barritt, from Charles Nordhoff, 1875.

Mont-Saint-Michel, Clarkson Stanfield and Alfred Freebairn, 1836

Shio

The cross-platform terminal for the agent era.

Exploring; a device pass and a TestFlight away. shio.sh

The problem

SSH clients on the phone are either ten years old or a subscription with somebody's cloud in the middle. Reaching your own machines should not need either.

The approach

A native SSH client for iPhone, iPad and Mac that finds your machines through Tailscale, keeps sessions alive across the day, and treats agents running on those machines as first-class.

What we learned

Nobody just chats with a local model; they want to reach the machine it runs on. The Mac reconnect state machine and trusting a new host key were harder than the terminal.

Mont-Saint-Michel Clarkson Stanfield and Alfred Freebairn, 1836.

Hortus Botanicus, Leiden, Willem van Swanenburg, 1610

Medivalent

Find the equivalent of your medicines in other countries.

Exploring; it works, and it is not medical advice. medivalent.com

The problem

Your medicine has a different name in every country. Finding the equivalent abroad means a pharmacist, luck, or a forum thread.

The approach

Match by substance rather than brand: the national medicine registers of five countries joined on WHO INN names, with brand-collision detection, so a brand from home resolves to what the pharmacy abroad stocks.

What we learned

The data exists; the join is the product. Government registers disagree on everything but the substance, and the same brand can mean a different drug in another country. The caveat is part of the design.

Hortus Botanicus, Leiden Willem van Swanenburg, 1610.

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, Thomas, 1859

Infer

A cross-platform AI browser powered by local models.

Exploring: the one we most want to pursue right now. infer.fyi

The problem

Browsers that are intelligent and simply work across platforms are rare. The ones that exist send what you read to someone else's server, or tie you to one vendor's model.

The approach

A browser with the model inside it. Local models first, your own key when you need a bigger one, and a library of pages, files and notes that stays on your machine and can be searched and asked without leaving the window.

What we learned

The first version was a research tool, not a browser: a library you could question. The browser was the part that was missing; the library stays. Local embeddings and on-device search were enough for a personal library, and cheaper than every hosted alternative.

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris Thomas, 1859.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, The Illustrated London News, 1859

Stem

Document your rabbit holes and discover new ones.

Exploring; most of it is built. stem.md

The problem

Rabbit holes leave no trail. The links, notes and half-thoughts of a week of curiosity end up in twelve tabs and a screenshot.

The approach

Stems: document a rabbit hole as you go, from the browser, the phone or the web, and follow the trails other people left when their curiosity went the same way.

What we learned

It is about ninety percent built and it stalled on conviction, not bandwidth. The open question is whether people want to publish their curiosity, and that is a question to ask before finishing.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky The Illustrated London News, 1859.

A pasture, 1931

Pasture

An iOS app for Ollama that became Shio.

Became Shio.

Evolved into Shio. pasture.sh

The problem

Local models ran on the Mac, but the phone had no honest way to talk to them.

The approach

A chat client for iPhone and Mac that talks to Ollama on your own machine, nothing in between: no account, no relay, no cloud.

What we learned

Chatting with a local model is not the product; reaching the machine is. As everything, Ollama included, moved to agents, the question changed, and the answer became Shio.

A pasture 1931.

Rialto Bridge, Venice, Giovanni Battista Brustolon, 1763

Foogl

A link shortener you host yourself, on your own domain.

Became part of Intuitive Software.

Evolved into Intuitive Software, as its Links module. foo.gl

The problem

Link shorteners are either someone else's service with your links in their database, or a self-host project that costs a weekend of setup.

The approach

One click deploys it to your own Cloudflare account, on your own domain, with no build step. Links, clicks, expiry, targeting rules, a UTM builder, CSV export, an API if you want one. Nothing else.

What we learned

We benchmarked it against a thirty-seven-feature competitor and kept fourteen. Every feature not built is a screen nobody has to learn.

Rialto Bridge, Venice Giovanni Battista Brustolon, 1763.

General Post Office, London, George Cooke, 1833

Formweh

Forms, waitlists, and surveys made easy to self-host.

Became part of Intuitive Software.

Evolved into Intuitive Software, as its Forms module. formweh.com

The problem

Every form tool wants a subscription and keeps a copy of your submissions. A waitlist should not need an account with somebody else.

The approach

Forms, waitlists and surveys as one small Worker you deploy to your own Cloudflare account. Submissions land in your own database and your own inbox, and the embed is a line of HTML.

What we learned

A form is mostly an inbox. The product is the part that stays out of the way.

General Post Office, London George Cooke, 1833.