Day 205: It's ready! (pt. 2)

Day 157: I write a post called “It’s ready!” and talk about how I’m going to start sharing Browserflow with people

Day 158 - Day 199: I share it with no one and keep on hacking

Day 200: I onboard my friend Shiva

Day 205: I think it’s actually ready

Since starting to work on Browserflow on day 142, there’s always been a bug or missing feature that felt like a launch blocker. Replaying clicks didn’t work on some sites. Performance was unbearably slow. Browserflow would crash or hang.

For the past few days, I’ve scrolled through the ~30 outstanding issues I have on GitHub and none of them feel like dealbreakers. Some of them would certainly be nice (e.g. automatic rate limiting when scraping, autocomplete suggestions when typing variable names), but they’re not going to make or break the experience.

So it’s ready. I’m going to submit the latest build to the Chrome Web Store and once it’s approved, I’ll onboard one or two more people and use their feedback to guide my development process.

This also means that my work will start shifting from core product functionality to marketing / onboarding, which I find harder to get excited about. This transition already feels a bit rough: The great fire that was driving my nonstop hours of coding have dwindled to a wee little flame, and my energy level feels quite low. (This might also be allergies because I had a mysterious headache for a big chunk of today — hard to tell.)

Unlike all my other products, my plan is to set up video calls to onboard people and help them get set up on Browserflow. This will also be a nice way to connect with friends I haven’t talked to in a while as well as meet new people so that’ll be fun!