Why Building WordFloor, a Private Writing App, Takes So Long
WordFloor is being built as a private daily writing space where effort can outlive content. The writing loop works; saving, sync, export, and deletion still need to earn trust.
Building software products
How WriteDaily and WordFloor were built and what the data taught. User research, privacy-first design, migration decisions, habit mechanics, and 13 years of keeping a daily writing product running.
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What 13 Years of WriteDaily Taught Me About Writing Tools
After 13 years running a daily writing tool, the data says some surprising things about what writers actually value. The findings are reshaping how I think about writing software.
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Introducing WordFloor: Keep the Square
After 13 years of WriteDaily, I'm building something new. WordFloor is a private writing habit engine. Write. Hit your word floor. Delete the words if you want. The green...
DailyScribe — Build a Daily Writing Habit
Building a daily writing habit is hard — the blank page, the missed days, the 'I'll write twice as much tomorrow' trap. DailyScribe is built to solve that: 500 words a day,...
A Decade of WriteDaily: 250,000 Sessions and What Comes Next
WriteDaily turns ten. Over 250,000 writing sessions, a framework migration, a gamification engine, and zero lost words. Here's a look back — and forward at where the...
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WriteDaily Today: 12 Years of Daily Writing, and Where It Could Go
WriteDaily has been running for 12 years, processing over 300,000 writing sessions. This post reflects on the arc, the technology shifts along the way, and the directions I'm...
Agentic Coding and Writing Tools — A Direction Worth Watching
Agentic coding — AI that autonomously plans and executes development tasks — is reshaping how software gets built. What could that mean for a writing tool like WriteDaily?...
AI-Assisted Writing Feedback: Concepts Worth Exploring
I've been prototyping AI powered writing feedback that runs locally — no cloud APIs, no data leaving the server. Here's what the prototype does, what it gets right, and why I'm...
Writing Tools and AI: What Excites Me About the Intersection
Six months after my initial exploration of LLMs for writing analytics, I've been experimenting with local models and privacy preserving approaches. Here's what I'm learning —...
What LLMs Could Mean for Writing Analytics — Exploring the Possibilities
Large language models are changing how we think about text analysis. WriteDaily has used LIWC for sentiment analysis since 2013 — but what if an LLM could offer deeper, more...
WriteDaily Security Review: How We Handle Your Writing Data in 2022
A commissioned security review of WriteDaily's infrastructure, data handling, and privacy practices. Here's what the audit found, what we fixed, and where we're heading on the...
WriteDaily Gamification Goes Live: Badges, Streaks, and What Users Are Earning
The WriteDaily gamification engine is live. Users are earning badges for writing milestones, streak achievements, and focus metrics. Here's how the declarative condition system...
WriteDaily Now Runs on Laravel: The Migration Ships
After 18 months of parallel development, WriteDaily has switched to the Laravel stack. Zero downtime, zero data loss, and the first major architecture upgrade since the 2013...
WriteDaily Migration Update: Test Coverage Complete, Approaching Production Switch
The WriteDaily Laravel migration has reached a significant milestone: full test coverage on the core writing loop and sentiment analysis pipeline. Here's the testing strategy,...
WriteDaily Development Update: Framework Migration Progress and the Pace of Side Projects
The WriteDaily Laravel migration has been running alongside the production codebase for eight months. Here's an honest look at where it stands — what's complete, what's in...
