What we left out this week
Two decisions, both about leaving things out. The plan screen now opens on the answer (what's coming and roughly when) with the controls a step back, so you reach for it and put it down instead of studying it. And distribution: we built the small tool that drafts a post when a guide ships, then chose not to automate posting to a company page with two followers, because the missing piece is an audience, not machinery. The same discipline we sell homeowners: fix the part that's failing, not the part that's old.
Two decisions this week, both about leaving things out.
The first was the plan screen. You open appkeep with a question: what’s coming, what will it cost, what do I deal with first. The screen’s job is to answer that before it shows you anything else. The first version put the table and the controls up front, and the answer was in there, but you had to assemble it yourself. Now the plan opens on the answer: the wave of costs across the years ahead, what’s coming and roughly when, with the working detail one step in rather than in your face. We wrote it down as a rule so it stops slipping. The surface answers, then gets out of the way. Something you reach for and put back down, not something that asks to be studied.
The smaller fixes underneath were the same idea. Recalculating a mandate now sharpens the one you have instead of stacking a second copy beside it. And the app’s screens had been shipping with their styling half-missing; we collapsed them onto one shared set of parts and added a check that fails the build if it happens again.
The second decision was distribution, and it was a decision not to build. We have a LinkedIn company page with two followers. The obvious move is to automate posting to it, maybe move the newsletter onto a bigger platform. We built the small piece, a tool that drafts the post when a guide ships, and stopped there. Automating posts to a page nobody follows yet is automating delivery to an empty room. The missing piece isn’t the machinery; it’s the audience, and no script supplies that.
Which is what we tell homeowners. A boiler doesn’t need replacing because it turned twelve; it needs replacing when it’s worn. Fix the part that’s failing, not the part that’s old. This week the advice was ours to take.
Opens to homeowners end of June.