tiny useful one-offs - a valentine's card maker and a storyboard tool

Date : 11-02-2025

not every project is a whole engine or a compiler, some are just tiny useful things you make in an afternoon because someone needs them or you had a small itch. around valentines i built a little valentine's card maker, a simple web app where you put together a card and share it. dumb, sweet, seasonal, done. and later i made Storyboarder, a straightforward storyboard maker for planning out scenes and sequences

i actually think theres a lot of value in these little single-purpose tools. theres a temptation as you get more skilled to make everything ambitious and complicated, but sometimes the best thing you can build is a small tool that does exactly one job well and gets out of the way. the valentine's card maker isnt going to change the world but it was a genuinely nice thing to hand people, and a storyboard tool is exactly the kind of unglamorous utility that actually helps when youre planning a game or a comic

i keep a soft spot for these because they keep me honest about scope. after grinding for months on tales of orbis, knocking out a clean little card maker in an afternoon is refreshing, and it ships, and someone uses it. that ratio of effort to "an actual person found this useful" is really high with small tools. finish small things often and the big things feel less scary