Merott

Lots of new faces here… Let’s introduce ourselves! 👋 I’m a software engineer and indie maker. I was a freelancer for a little over 7 years, and I also made @polarhabits.com in that time. 🐻‍❄️ Now I’m a full-time tinkerer, working on Experimental Projects @stripe.com! Say hello… Quote your intro! ☺️

I've been struggling to establish a PKM system with the tools that are already out there, so last night, I decided to start a stupidly ambitious project with Claude Code, built for *me*.

I'm surprised to come across job postings from top tech companies still mentioning university degrees in their requirements. I can (maybe) understand the appeal of university degrees for entry-level roles, but for senior-level roles? 🤷🏻♂️

Not me checking out ProductHunt on January 1st to see what habit tracking apps launched to seize the all-time high motivations on New Year's Day. Worked for @polarhabits.com twice before. Hopefully again next year!

What are some lean, bootstrapped companies building software for creators?

Let's say I reaaaally like to work at X company. No, not X. Hell no. You know what I mean… And let's say instead of interviewing with them, I offered to collaborate on a project that I'd love to work on for personal reasons, whether or not they eventually hire me full-time. Do I sound desperate?

Humble beginnings, and a full-circle moment… Sharing @therapyspace.co metrics using the latest feature I worked on at @stripe.com. profile.stripe.com/therapyspace...

It won’t be easy but we really need to come up with a new save icon.

Someone's made a habit tracker that tracks "momentum" instead of "streaks." Looks eerily similar to the @polarhabits.com system! 🐻‍❄️ I have mixed feelings about this, but overall positive! 😁

I used to love em dashes — now it looks like an AI agent wrote it.

Polar Habits hasn't been getting the love it deserves from me! 😢 I've done literally zero marketing for almost 2 years, but it brings in a trickle of new users every day, and even the occasional new subscriber (or lifetime buyer.) Would consider selling it, but I poured my heart into it…

🥹

Before AI chatbots, I didn't use to scrutinise every email I wrote. I trusted myself more.

🚀

Signing in to AWS after many many years. Going to set up SES for @therapyspace.co. If I don’t return, tell my story.

Cursor Tab auto completion sometimes reads my mind too much... Creepy! 😅

Claude in Cursor just said: "Would you like me to implement this approach? I can have it working in about 20-30 minutes and replace the current hardcoded system." Just an AI agent casually pretending to be a slow human.

I just found eagle.cool. I like.

ChatGPT offering up suggestions to keep the conversation going is more annoying than its excessive use of em dashes.

I miss the days when everything was a file on my computer synced to Dropbox. Local-first and portable, backed up and accessible on the cloud. Folder-based organisation wasn't that bad, was it? Is there a modern PKM tool that's basically files and folders under the hood?* *Obsidian overwhelms me!

Whoa! 🤯

I have a relatively low resting heart rate of 50-60. Apparently, an alarmingly low sleeping heart rate too! This is every night! 👇 🙃

Don't give your readers a stretched-out spring.

And this is why I called 2025 the year of "ultimate growth" for me… Little did I know it would happen on Father's Day! 🥰

I do NOT like where humanity is headed with AI. Delegating more and more to robots might make us more “productive”, maybe even smarter, but it’s a never-ending pursuit—a bottomless pit we’re drowning ourselves in… and for what? Yes, I sound like an old grumpy man. Whatever.

I'm noticing that so often, using AI is a waste of time! 👎 I ask a question and get a response that sounds like hallucination, I go down the rabbit hole only to verify it hallucinated. And then I have to pull myself back up the rabbit hole to square one again. Will the hallucinations ever stop? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Is it me, or is @psychologytoday.com down?

That was fun! So much time in the day! And waking up to bird songs was just incredibly relaxing. But it also made me appreciate the conveniences of carrying around a supercomputer in my pocket and its little companion on my wrist.

My wife and I are going off-grid for 3 days, starting tomorrow. No phones. No laptops. No screens. 🚫 📱 💻 📺 🚫

How do you make time? Every time I have a conversation with a therapist about therapyspace.co, my energy levels shoot through the roof! 🚀 But I struggle with finding time to work on the project! 😞 If you have a full-time job and other responsibilities, how do you find time for side projects?

Fantastic read! 💯

I mean, when you say it like that… 🤪

So, I bought nutmonster.com for no reason other than I’d eat 1kg of nuts in one sitting if left unattended with nuts within my reach. No idea what I’m gonna do with the domain… Any ideas? 😅

Is this considered a webdev crime in 2025?

It drives me insane that macOS treats clicks in the tiniest gaps between UI elements as 'outside' clicks, so this happens! 👇 Been this way forever—ironic for a company like Apple with strict accessibility guidelines on "sufficiently sized controls": developer.apple.com/design/human... Anyway… 🪫👋

I know @vercel.com and @nextjs.org get a lot of hate for their pricing, vendor lock-in, motives, paying influencers, yada yada… But I honestly don't get it. They've built an incredible platform + an open-source framework they dogfood to evolve, making our lives 100x easier… YMMV, but I love it! ❤️

The money side of my indie hacking dream: Make $0.50 a minute.

@therapyspace.co has a Coming Soon page now… I'm trying to gauge interest while also hoping to find a few therapists I can work closely with to shape the product. How would you promote this if you were me?

They should confiscate phones at concerts.

Stripe could be doing so much more to help new SaaS businesses monetise their products. Accepting payments is only one of the many challenges, even for the simplest of SaaS products, e.g access-control is table stakes that no one enjoys building—I certainly didn't with @polarhabits.com.

I’m completely drained from work. No energy left to work on side projects, but at at the same time, I really just want to open up my personal laptop and get hacking.

Someone likes *all* of Bluesky posts and replies.