This week I evolved my buildspace idea from ‘communitas’ to ‘attunitas’, it’s now a platform to help you stay in touch with long-distance friends. Here it is - try it out!
You will first be asked to enter your email to authenticate without any explanation. Many of the pages are barebones for now, bear with me!
Tools I used
Vercel - to host the app
Next.js + Prisma - full stack framework
Supabase - free cloud PostgreSQL database
NextAuth - user authentication
SendGrid - email provider for authentication + sending email campaigns
Context
This week in buildspace we were encouraged to grow our users and report our numbers. We were given a framework to guide us during the next few weeks:
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**create > launch > measure > learn**
So far this year with 52 Weeks I’ve been doing the create, launch, and learn steps, but not much of the measuring. The measuring element feels very ‘goal oriented’, which has not been my focus. My focus has been pure play and exploration.
I feel resistance to applying ‘growth mindset’ to my creative output at the moment, but I do think buildspace is exposing me to great tools and inspiring builders, creators, speakers each week. I’m going to see the program to the end of the 6 weeks, then I plan to try making things that feel more like art and fun than a job. Maybe those two will merge at some point down the road, but I’m not there yet.
Process
Earlier this week I got stuck on a bug in my communitas app. I discovered that Vercel has a 10 second API call timeout for free tier users, and my call to OpenAI was timing out often, as half the time it took 15-20 seconds. Without the AI generated summary of inputs the app wasn’t useful or interesting. The workarounds I found suggested using streaming and Vercel Edge functions to pipe the generated text from OpenAI in real-time to the browser.
After a lot of trial and error (and many ‘aha!’ moments in my frontend<>backend understanding) I had the streaming working locally.
Unfortunately, after much effort, it still didn’t work in production, and I continued to get the timeout error half the time.
I couldn’t really show it to people if it didn’t work. I could have spent more time debugging and testing, but at this point I’d had enough, so I decided to change tack and evolve my idea in a new direction that wouldn’t rely on an AI summary (and would give me an opportunity to learn new things).
So I re-used a lot of the bones of the app and created a new, similar app. Instead of creating topics and gathering thoughts, you add friends and then receive a series of customized emails that help you stay connected with them.
The two main things I added are:
email authentication with ‘magic link’ using NextAuth + SendGrid
an automated email campaign in SendGrid that triggers via an API call with custom fields from your friends
Both were brand new concepts and code for me.
So try it out and send me some email feedback after you’ve tried it. Currently the emails are generic, but I hope to add custom emails based on the friends and information about them that you enter.
Learnings
I think buildspace’s program and the frameworks are great: fun, simple, motivating, and the community is supportive. However, I don’t think I’m quite ready for ‘the hustle’. I very deliberately chose to leave San Francisco and a tech job to slow down, at least for a while, and it feels premature and at odds with my new lifestyle to be chasing ‘users’ and ‘growth’ so soon
In aiming for growth above all else, I feel I’m a bit further away from the playfulness and whimsy that makes 52 Weeks feel authentic
I’m nonetheless still very much enjoying the process and fleshing out further what I want, what motivates me, and what doesn’t. I notice getting stuck on something before a deadline is stressful (no surprise) and I felt the urge to quit and give up a lot this week
I do try to hold the principal of finishing what I commit to, and I’d like to finish the buildspace 6 weeks. It’ll be the first time in 52 Weeks where I stick with an idea for that long, and I’m still curious how it will evolve
Next steps
Suck it up and stick with buildspace for 3 more weeks
Improve the website branding + styling
Flesh out the automated email campaigns with more emails
Bring in personalized emails using a user’s friends and AI generated text
Get a few people to sign up and get feedback