← Side Quests

Personal Project2024Product / Writing Tool

Rome wasn't built in a day. This was.

I had a clear idea of what 750words.com got wrong. One afternoon, one conversation with Claude, and $8 for a domain later — dailywriter.me was live and I've used it every day since.

dailywriter.me in action The original brief — the whole product in one message Iteration loop — refining the timer mechanic

Problem

I've been writing stream of consciousness since 2017. It's the best thinking habit I have. But 750words.com, the site closest to what I wanted, cost money and looked like it hadn't been touched since 2009. I didn't want to pay for something I didn't like looking at.

What I actually wanted: dark background, typewriter font, a timer that forces you to keep going. Stop typing and everything resets. No saving, no archive, just the act of writing.

Solution

One prompt. The second image above is the actual brief I wrote. The whole product in one message. Clear constraints, clear mechanic, clear aesthetic. That's content design thinking applied to product thinking.

Iterated on the timer mechanic, refined the reset behavior, and landed on something I use daily. Found a domain for $8, deployed it, sent it to people I trust. The feedback was good across the board.

"The best tools are the ones you build because nothing else was quite right."

Result

1 day
Idea to live product
$8
Total cost to ship
Daily
Used by the maker

Try it yourself

dailywriter.me

Or hire the guy who built it.