Two Months of Spayse
A month of ups and downs, new tools, and lessons about momentum and shipping.
Month two is done. This one was very different from the first.
Where it started
The first month was pure acceleration. New features every day, momentum building on itself, the kind of energy where you sit down at 9 AM and look up and it's midnight. I expected month two to feel the same.
It didn't.
The honest part
The first few days were strong. Then the pace dropped off a cliff. Updates went from daily to every few days, then to barely anything for a week or two. The kind of slowdown where you start questioning everything.
I won't sugarcoat it, there were moments where I thought about just stopping. Not because the product was bad, but because the momentum was gone and I didn't know how to get it back. When you're building something in public and the updates slow down, it feels like you're failing. Like everyone's watching you lose steam.
But here's what I figured out: not every day will feel productive. Not every week will ship features. That's just how building works. The trick isn't staying motivated, it's showing up anyway. You don't need to feel good to write code. You just need to write code.
I got myself together, pushed through the dip, and by the last two weeks of the month, I was shipping harder than ever. 174 commits, 12 merged PRs. The best updates of the project came out of the hardest stretch.
What got built
This month was about turning Spayse from a diagramming tool into a real workspace.
Spayse Notebooks
This one was spontaneous. I didn't plan it, it just felt right and I went with it.
Built a full notebook mode with paginated pages, freehand drawing, a collapsible sidebar, a redesigned toolbar, PDF export, and a dedicated route.
It might be my favorite update so far. Sometimes the best features are the ones you didn't plan.
Spayse Diagrams
This was always the core vision — making Spayse a real diagramming tool, not just a canvas.
Built a 3-way sync engine that keeps code, block cards, and the visual canvas in lockstep. Shipped two new diagram types this month. Sequence diagrams came first — lifelines, activation bars, messages, combined fragments, autonumbering, the whole thing. Then ER diagrams with Crow's Foot connectors, a parser, a compiler, and a tabbed block editor. More diagram types coming next.
Canvas Tools
Added a bunch of new canvas interactions:
- Eraser, click to remove objects with a visual trail
- Highlight tool, translucent strokes that blend into committed nodes
- Pen tool, smooth freehand drawing with pressure support
- Laser pointer, temporary strokes that fade out
- Lasso selection, draw a box to select multiple objects and edges
- New shapes: heart, crossed-circle, directional arrows
Lessons from month two
Motivation comes and goes. Discipline stays. You don't need to feel like building. You just need to build.
- Don't measure progress by daily output. Some weeks are about thinking, not shipping. That's fine.
- Going public early was the right call. Even when it feels like nobody's watching, the accountability helps.
- Don't compare month two to month one. Every month is different. The work compounds even when the output doesn't show it daily.
- Ship what excites you. Notebooks were unplanned but ended up being the best update. Follow the energy.
What's next
Month three. More diagrams, better AI, and a product that's starting to feel like something people would actually pay for. The foundation is solid now. Time to build on it.
Still a long way to go.