Note
Personal software
As building becomes cheaper, software can become smaller, stranger, and more faithful to the life of one person.
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01
Notice
Find a recurring friction in the texture of your own day.
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02
Shape
Build the smallest tool that changes that moment.
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03
Keep
Let real use—not imagined scale—decide what it becomes.
Not every tool needs a market
Software has usually been expensive enough to demand scale. A tool needed many customers before it deserved to exist. Cheaper execution changes that equation.
A program can now be valuable because it fits one person's habits unusually well. Its smallness is not a failed attempt at becoming a company. It is the reason the fit can be precise.
Begin with a private irritation
The best personal tools often start with something too narrow to survive a pitch deck: a repeated copy-and-paste, a forgotten thread, a collection that wants a shape, a decision made the same way every week.
These frictions are easy to dismiss because they are not universal. But personal software does not need universality. It needs intimacy with the problem.
AI changes the minimum size
Artificial intelligence lowers the effort required to turn a small need into a working object. Code, interface, explanation, and iteration can happen close together, often in the hands of the person who feels the need.
The important possibility is not an infinite number of disposable apps. It is more agency: the ability to shape the digital environment instead of only accepting what large markets choose to provide.
Keep ownership close
A personal tool should remain understandable enough to repair, move, and change. Convenience without ownership can turn a private solution into another dependency.
The most interesting personal software grows like a notebook. It carries the marks of use, stays open to revision, and becomes valuable through the quiet accumulation of fit.