What I've been building

A new project idea took shape, a sandbox for practising bets on Polymarket prediction markets with fake money, settled against real outcomes.

• You can now open interactive mocks of the five key screens in a browser, so the idea can be clicked through before any code.
• The mocks now reflow to fit a phone screen, so the idea reads on mobile and not only on a wide desktop.

Most of the work went into habits, with a handful of weekly-review fixes.

• You can now mark a habit done on a day it isn’t scheduled, from Today or the habit’s page, so a make-up counts.
• A make-up fills in the day you missed so it shows in the habit’s history, while an extra one is logged as a bonus.
• Any off-schedule mark can be undone with one tap, in case you picked the wrong habit.
• Fixed the weekly review listing chores on the wrong weeks, a placeholder ‘Every N weeks’ label, and a bounce home after committing a plan.

The pieces worth showing were all interactive, built to be understood by clicking around rather than by reading.

• GlamCam, a new makeup mirror for kids, tracks your face through the camera so painted-on makeup stays put as you move and turn.
• An interactive explainer argues for composable software architecture, with simulations you can drive to see how batching and busy teams pile work into queues.
• A separate tool lets you compare two team structures side by side and watch where work sits waiting under each one.

The work was two web-based guides that teach a way of building software from swappable parts, explained by clicking rather than reading.

• One guide introduces the idea for a general audience, from executives to engineers, with a playground for swapping a part out to see what happens.
• The other tailors the same ideas to one organisation’s real setup, with animated infographics and a board you click to plan retiring an old system.
• Separately, a review of the development workflow was written up, flagging gaps to close in its automated safety checks.

A grab-bag day of standalone experiments and product research.

• You can now try a face-tracked virtual makeup mirror in the browser, so a child can play with makeup live without installing anything.
• You can now click through design mocks of a skills-based hiring tool, so partners can see both sides of it before anything is built.
• A ranked list of twenty software business ideas for a solo founder was written up, each with evidence of real demand.

A new experiments section on the site opens with a demo that senses hand movements using sound.

• You can now try a browser page that reads push, pull and wave gestures from sound bouncing off your hand, so no camera is needed.
• Fixed the demo detecting nothing on iPhones and several Android phones, where the microphone was granted but delivered silence.

Habits now build encouragement around what you’ve done, instead of dwelling on a missed day.

• Each habit shows a running total of times you’ve done it, so progress builds up instead of resetting after a missed day.
• You can now see each habit’s history as a grid on its detail page, so you can spot patterns and stretches at a glance.
• When you fall behind on a habit, it now suggests one small step to restart, both in the app and by text message.
• When you log a habit after missing it a while, you get a small celebration that never mentions the gap, so coming back feels good.

The leftover to-do files each project kept before the shared backlog tool existed are now gone, and everything that referenced them points at the tool.

Each project’s list of outstanding fixes and improvements moved into a single tracking tool, so it is one consistent place to look.

The storymap board now gives each card a short code you can quote when you talk about it, instead of its full ten-character id.

The story-mapping tool I built for my own projects now has its own spot on the portfolio.

• You can now find Storymap among the projects on the homepage, so the tool sits alongside the rest of the work.
• Its card opens a short page explaining what Storymap is, with a link to try it live at storymap.dylanmagorhampel.com.

The story map’s grid got a little tidier.

• A column now doubles in width once a slice holds two cards, not three, so those cards have more room to read.
• Fixed the drag handle and menu icons on the map’s headers, which could sit above centre in rows of uneven height.

Most of the work went into the map editor.

• If you edit a map you can’t save, you can now discard those edits in one click instead of reloading the whole page.
• Fixed handles and menus too small to tap, unreliable task drops between two activities, and an error when editing a card just after closing it.