The Age of Personal Apps is Here

Build apps for you, tell people about them and maybe others will like them too. Haven't I heard this before?

It was a Tuesday night. I was in the basement clearing email in Apple Mail, and I pressed e.

Nothing happened.

I pressed it again. Still nothing. My hands had spent years in Superhuman and Gmail, and they didn't care which app was in front of them. They wanted e to archive. They wanted j and k to move. They wanted to hover over a message and archive it without reaching for the mouse.

So I built it, well Codex, Claude and I built it. But you knew that.

Personal apps

Superhuman is a great product. Gmail is a great product. They both have a ton of features I'm not touching here. Split inboxes, snippets, AI drafts, read statuses, the whole thing.

I didn't want any of that.

I wanted two things.

Hover over a message and press e. Archived. No click.
j and k to move through my inbox. Hold them and glide.

That's it. That's the whole wishlist. Everything else Apple Mail does fine.

Meet MailKeys

MailKeys is a tiny Mac app that sits in your menu bar and gives Apple Mail the shortcuts I couldn't live without.

An app with one customer

A year ago I never would have built this. Not because it's hard. Because the math didn't work. A weekend of my time, maybe more, for a feature that exactly one person on earth was asking for? No chance. I'd have grumbled, reached for the mouse and moved on.

Now the math is different and so is the mentality. Build things for you, give it away and see how people respond. Sounds familiar right?

So the question isn't "is there a market for this?" anymore. The question is "do I want it?"

1,000 true fans, again

In 2008 Kevin Kelly wrote 1,000 True Fans. The idea was simple. You don't need a million customers. You need a thousand people who will buy anything you make. That's a living.

If you haven't read it, you should. The new software renaissance will drive a lot of this. The key is not to filter yourself. Just go for it. Build it, ship it, tell people about it and then see what happens.

So my challenge to you, and to myself. What's the one thing that bugs you every single day that you've just accepted? The shortcut that isn't there. The button that's two clicks too deep.

Go build it. You're the first customer.

Be well.

Introducing Runner

It was December 28th. I woke up at 6am and Cursor had been running all night. I had Claude working while I slept, writing code, pushing commits, doing things that would have taken me a full day. Just sitting there staring at the screen, coffee getting cold, and realizing life wasn't going to be the same. I got a taste of the agentic workflow and couldn't go back. Turns out I wasn't the only one. When the Christmas break ended, Charlie and Yitong, my co-founders at Agora, had similar epiphanies

How I build: Dec 2025 Edition

I treat AI as a tool and like any tool, people can use the same tools in different ways to acheive different results. I recently realized that I use AI differently than some of my colleagues so I was encouraged to share how I code. Before I talk about the tools and tactics, it's important to remember that I have a golden rule when using AI to code: Don't get AI to build something you don't understand or haven't built at least 3 times before. CRUD application? ✅ Simple Tab View Mobile App? ✅

The Messy Middle

My family is moving into a new house and we wanted to do a little bit of remodelling upstairs. Nothing big, just closing off a wall, making a closet a little bigger and swapping out a sink in the bathroom. My wife's family owns a construction business, so we are lucky to have an inside track with contractors and knowledge. My father in law is a genius, he runs his own construction business but still made time to come and measure, sketch and draw up the plans himself. My wife and I his customers

Someone needs to hear it

So, you want to write something but you are feeling like you can’t finish and post it for a really simple reason: there are 6 people in the world smarter than you on this topic, surely they should write it not you. During an interview today for Agora’s product manager, a warrior of art reminded me of this mental block and it rung so true. How many great pieces of advice, lessons, ideas and inspiration are left unsaid due to someone feeling as though they aren’t qualified enough to talk about it