“Becoming” — Six-Month Update
I’m writing this between a busy day and a delightful dinner. Brief by necessity, dense by design. The following is a summary from the (new) development blog.
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From idea to backbone
Since March, the spine has held: a humane foundation (content) plus a separate app called “Becoming” that you can live with.
Also: “Becoming” is a placeholder name; a better name will come later, and it’s not too important for the MVP.
We split those cleanly early on—content as plain text/JSON/PDF for people and LLMs; app as a web-first React build with a mobile path.
The four primitives that stuck
April locked our vocabulary and it never left: Flows, Journals, Circles, Patterns. That one decision made later work cheaper and clearer. See more explanations here.
Local-first as a principled constraint
For the MVP, all state stays on the device. It makes iteration fast and privacy sane. We surveyed storage options in August to keep doors open, but we’re not switching yet.
Tooling up; pulling out reusable bits
June was compound interest: stronger tests, a mock-data generator, and an extracted time-logic library (“time is a range, not a point”).
Docs for different audiences
In October we formalized comms: user docs, product notes, and engineering, each with its own home, and moved from Notion to git + Sphinx so we can write publicly without dumping raw notes.
For example: https://docs.q10elabs.thaumogen.net/ (send me a message to request access to the product and engineering sites).
Also, “Q10e Labs” is just a working label to keep this separate from my other ventures.
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People & patterns
As of October, two people may join on the technology side, and another 2–3 are interested in developing Patterns (routine templates).
That mixes well with the platform direction surfaced in September: same blocks, different journeys; segment-specific branding can come later.
A personal nudge became a product nudge
Caring for my aging mom made the utility painfully obvious. That prompted a new user persona — Older Adults & Caregivers — and a design pass focused on dignity, pacing, and shared visibility.
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What it is, in one breath
Paced invitations instead of infinite to-dos; assisted journaling that builds a living story; a curated library of dignified action—extendable by mentors, clinicians, and communities. It’s a scaffold for attention, not a dashboard of guilt. Start with Introducing the app if you want the narrative version.
Near horizon
- Land the MVP across two concrete scenarios while staying local-first.
- Keep hardening contributor on-ramps and build ergonomics.
- Keep docs layered so users, partners, and engineers get the right slice, not the firehose.