iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 22/09/2026

Hardcover has been hit hard by bots over the last 2 months, including distributed hits from residential IPs around the world. It's been a game of whack-a-mole all week. New CloudFlare rules stop them, then a few hours later they get by them. Upgraded to CF Business yesterday, so we'll see 🤞

Chart of total pageviews on hardcover over the last 5 years. Goes from 1m to 2m in august and 2m to 4m in September.

Pageviews per hour over the last week with sudden jumps.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 19/09/2026

Fascinating stat for Hardcover. We recently hit 100k confirmed email users (160k unconfirmed). With 31k active in the last month. Curious to see how that changes w/the new email confirm first (vs 3 days). New CF bot restrictions have raised the unconfirmed email users from 55%→98% (!).

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 16/09/2026

Hardcover's TypeSense Search index was down this morning. It's available through the API, and powers a bunch of features on the site with rotating keys and a proxy in front of it for auth. Finally hit the limit on what 3x16GB cluster can handle. Let's see how long 3x32GB will last. 🤞

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 10/09/2026

Hadn't checked on my old site minafi.com in a while. Got an email from Google Analytics (it was started in 2017 - it was a different time), and looks like the bots have found it. Unless sure 5,800 people from Singapore are really into minimalism, mindfulness and financial independence.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 09/09/2026

General question for anyone who uses any LLMs to program: How often (if at all) do you run out of tokens? If so, how often and with what service + plan? If you don’t, do you know why you don’t?

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 08/09/2026

You know the Discussions prototype for Hardcover has been created by a developer by counting the rings in the nested information architecture. 😂

Screenshot of hardcover app on mobile on the book page with tabs for high level book info (reviews, book info, discussions), sub nav for discussions, mentions, mod and buddy read, and another nav for all, discussions and mentions.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 04/09/2026

Been moving more "cleanup" Hardcover tasks to a local Mac Mini: - Implement GH issue - Fix/create bugs for BugSnag errs - PR Review - Audit PR Review (iterates on PR review weekly so it improves) - Verify all PR's have a Project status (assign if not) - Summarize most common help/support requests

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Reposted by Adam Fortuna

jenn schiffer 😎 @jennschiffer.com · 03/09/2026

if there are people at 1password making the racists afraid to be openly racist at work, a genuine thank you. no one is paid enough to do that work but it’s not to be taken for granted, also sorry you work with scumbags and your ceo is a colossal baby with no swag

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 30/08/2026

Excited to hit 1,000 paid supporters on Hardcover today! 🥳 Building anything in the book space requires a _lot_ of patience. It's taken just over 5 years to get to this point – and we're still far from able to pay full salaries for us working on it (~1.5-2 full-time). Very exciting milestone 📈

Revenue per month spiking above 5k for August 2026.

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UtahJS @utahjs.com · 19/08/2026

Adam Fortuna (Hardcover founder) is making D3.js click: core mental models plus AI prompt templates to go from "I get it" to a working dashboard. #UtahJS, Sept 18 @ 11:05 AM. ti.to/utahjs/2026

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 24/08/2026

Lately I've been jumping around between a bunch of Conductor PRs. I'm curious how others have handled this. What's helped me is creating Chrome Tab Groups that match the name of name of the Conductor workspace, with colors depending if I'm waiting on an agent to build, CI to run, or agent review.

Chrome tabs with titles like "3732 - Journal" with different colors indicating status and PR number.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 20/08/2026

Super excited about the API updates launched today on Hardcover: docs.hardcover.app/api/getting-... Just a few updates including: - Custom Rate Tiers (per user) - Personal Access Tokens with token-specific permissions, and expiration - (beta) OAuth support for client & server based apps!

docs.hardcover.app

Getting Started with the API

Get started with the Hardcover GraphQL API.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 13/08/2026

Hardcover has had a "quick registration, confirm their email address later" approach since we started. Now with 600+ new people everyday, our most common support request (by a lot) is incorrect email addresses. 😭 I think it might be time to require email confirmation to join.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 11/08/2026

The Hardcover team has been using a super-basic GitHub + Claude integration with the ability to work on issues, create PRs and conduct code reviews. (coding & PR review are Claude skills in the repo). Working on V2 of this system now with a timeline, multiple agents, and cost estimates.

Issue #3609 timeline. Starts with my assigning it to @jules-hardcover. Then it's worked on by another bot, a PR is opened, another bot reviews it.

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 06/08/2026

We're getting ready to launch Vibes later month on Hardcover! 🥳 They're available now in preview to supporters. I sat down yesterday with Adam to chat about how Vibes work behind the scenes and what's next for them. Warning: we say "vector" a lot. hardcover.app/live/65

#65 – Vibes - Hardcover Live

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 03/08/2026

A Mac Studio with 1.5 TB of memory? At current rates that would probably cost more than a car, but it could enable running some massive local models. 🤔 www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

static.klipy.com

Shut Up And Take My Money!

Alt: Shut Up And Take My Money! gif

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 03/08/2026

The idea of a shared book database in the atmosphere is really exciting and could outlive any single project working in the book space. Worth getting involved in if you're creating anything in the book space.

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 02/08/2026

Hardcover hit 7k weekly active users this week - a new high! Some API improvements we made last month sped up the site a bunch, along with a number of server tweaks and site optimizations. The site has been faster with less downtime as a result. Only 1 slow response time incident in 3 weeks!

Active users a week graph starting at 0 in 2022 and up to 7k now in 2026.

Uptimerobot screenshot of a graph with a bunch of downtimes and spikes, but leveling out to fewer downtime and faster load speed in the past month.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/08/2026

After meeting with a bunch of arborist, I finally felt safe (for the trees) to cut some roots in our basement. Each one I talked said "I've never seen something like this before". That's ~9 times people we work with have said that. The joys of owning an old house. 😅 Bucky for scale.

50lb Black dog on the grass with roots about 4x the size for the dog.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/08/2026

New blog post & personal updates on what I've been up to outside of work lately. A bit of a personal journal entry, but also a concept that's been helpful for me recently. The Personal Reset adamfortuna.com/reset

adamfortuna.com

The Personal Reset

How to use a personal reset to mix up your schedule and realign your goals.

Brittany Ellich @brittanyellich.com · 27/07/2026

Reposted by Adam Fortuna

Back to the Claude mines

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 28/07/2026

Great article about how fragile masculinity and the manosphere have impacted politics. Going from almost having the first woman president to this is, well, sad. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Screenshot of article with text:

What kind of program has this internet-brain-rotted masculinity brought us? A public-health official who neglects fatal outbreaks of preventable diseases because he seems to believe that only the strong should survive. A Department of Defense, renamed the Department of War, that launches a needless war of choice in the Middle East. A government that props up the fossil-fuel industry (manly) while deliberately suppressing green alternatives (girly), leading to a catastrophic rise in energy prices when that war doesn’t go as planned. A president who imposed tariffs to bring back “manly jobs,” but only drove up inflation instead.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 24/07/2026

It’s Pioneer Day today, Utah’s campy holiday that’s a combination of Independence Day and Columbus Day. For non-LDS folks like myself, it’s also called Pie and Beer Day. Picked up 4 mini pies to celebrate. 🥧

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 21/07/2026

Hit a point yesterday where Hardcover's Sidekiq jobs were at 2.6m and growing. 📈 😱 They're now back at 0. What we did: 👉 Increase Kubernetes workers from 2 → 8 (they're CPU bound, so OK) 👉 Rewrite a jobs to use a Coalescing Queue design patter for counters, and cache columns 1/3

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 18/07/2026

Hardcover's public API since day 1 has had no limits on the number of top-level queries to in GraphQL. That meant some people might send over 1000 mutations or 10,000 searches - towards a 60/s rate limit. Lowered this to 60 top-level requests/min over any number of requests and feels a lot safer 😅

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 09/07/2026

Started listening to The Count of Monte Cristo, which has been on my list for a while. I loved the movie and the anime (Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo) from the same source. Watching France in the World Cup today too, and now I have an accidental theme. 🇫🇷 hardcover.app/books/the-co...

The Count of Monte Cristo - Hardcover

After fourteen years of wrongful imprisonment, merchant sailor Edmond Dantès escapes his grim island fortress. With the promises of youth erased and his betrothed now married to someone else, Dantès l...

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 08/07/2026

My talk for UtahJS was accepted! This is the first one I've given in the age of AI, and it's completely changing how I'm creating and teaching topics. What someone needs to "know" to create something using LLMs is so completely different than it was even a year ago.

Partial screenshot with title "Teaching Example: D3.js Axis". with an axis shown and a <svg viewbox example with draggable handles under some of the numbers.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 07/07/2026

Happy Reckless Ben Part 3 day for all who celebrate.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 04/07/2026

Reading @elevateutahpac.bsky.social s email about things to love about America and its spot on 👌

Email screenshot with text:

So here are a few reasons I still believe in this country, even when it is testing me personally.

Hot dogs exist
People are still welcoming to strangers, despite what our government seems determined to prove.
Air conditioning
The World Cup (even though we’re the first host to bomb a country that’s participating in it while it’s happening)
Hollywood still has it. Going to see a movie in a theater remains one of the best things in the world.
Tex-Mex. Read this Japanese fan’s take on being in America for the World Cup (bottomless chips and salsa slap)
Going to Target
Portion sizes
A road trip or driving coast to coast, seeing the vastness of our country
However far apart our politics get, most people still want roughly the same things for their kids
There are still people trying to make it better despite everything
The list could be much longer, and honestly, I would love to hear what is keeping you hopeful right now.

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 04/07/2026

First time ever grilling ribs today! Calcifer, our new Ninja FlexFlame grill, has a very useful app. Able to see the temperate of the grill and the meat, and have some custom timers. Doing one rack as maple bourbon, one as Carolina bbq. Let’s see how it goes. 🤞

Screenshot of ninja iPhone app set to 250 degrees f, with pork ribs set to 203, currently at 116.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 02/07/2026

Wow, Fable absolutely eats up credits. I've never before hit the limit in the last year using Claude Code.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/07/2026

I picked up work on Hardcover Groups today, which are a combination of Meetup Events, Facebook Groups and Reddit Subreddits. Fable 5 picked the perfect day to come back. Now to see how much use I can get before it's taken away again.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/07/2026

Published and emailed out (to 88k people 😱) this months Hardcover Report for July 2026! Biggest updates: - Similar Books - Filter Lists - Reading Journal / Calendar Updates - API Planning hardcover.app/blog/hardcov... Would've gone out earlier, but I thought June had 31 days. 😅

Hardcover Report for July 2026 - Hardcover Blog

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/07/2026

Working on something on Hardcover that I’ve wanted for a while: Filter Lists. Think BlueSky’s moderation lists and labels, but for books and authors. Add to your own block list, create a public, private or following only list, or subscribe to someone’s else’s. Choose to hide or label them. 👀

Screenshot of Hardcover with books highlighted red with a label to indicate a filter list. Ability to hide/show them anyways.

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Jason Cohen @asmartbear.com · 01/07/2026

ICYMI: Fresh new article dropped: A high-impact feature, defined concretely: Either (1) regularly used by at least 51% of customers, or (2) named in the top three reasons at least 15% of customers chose or stayed with you. High bar, but the only thing that matters.

longform.asmartbear.com

Lost confidence

RICE and other confidence-based frameworks are mostly noise. Here’s how to make decisions without pretending to know the unknowable.

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Reposted by Adam Fortuna

Outspoken™️ @out5p0ken.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

On March 26, 2026, during a debate on violence against women in Germany’s Bundestag, left-wing MP Kathrin Gebel was repeatedly interrupted by AfD MP Martin Reichardt. She responded: “Mr. Reichardt, the clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings, and you’re still more sensitive. That’s quite an achievement.”

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 24/06/2026

The free little library on my block knows me too well.

Designing data intwnsive applications book in my hand

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 22/06/2026

One of my favorite AI hallucinations is how if you ask some models to generate a version of the Mona Lisa (ex: "Mona Lisa in Van Gogh's Starry Night style"), the person genreated might have two heads. ...because so much of the training data is people taking selfies with The Mona Lisa. 🖼️

Framed generated image of "Mona Lisa in Van Gogh style", with two mona lisa heads and stary night style sky.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 19/06/2026

Made it home safe yesterday after 12 days on the road, 10 states (6 new to both of us!), 9 different beds, and zero car or dog problems 🥳 Listened to a lot of What Went Wrong (movie podcast) and Eva zu Beck's new book The Wilder Way on the road. hardcover.app/books/the-wi...

Adam's Review of The Wilder Way by Eva zu Beck - Hardcover

Read Adam's review of The Wilder Way by Eva zu Beck on Hardcover

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 10/06/2026

One guess where I’m at.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 04/06/2026

I've been rebuilding the Hardcover Editor to use Plate.js ( platejs.org ) and it's been really neat! As part of this, we're also adding references to other entities in the system (books, authors, users, lists, etc). Lists can be Private or Follows only, which means they need to show up differently.

Review with links to other entities (book, list, etc) with one of them not shown.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 02/06/2026

Updated Hardcover's network diagram for the new Rust Search Proxy. About 20% of our API traffic passes through it. If I knew how Rust worked I'd be very excited about this. Claude Code built it and it seems to work super well, despite looking alien to me. 😅 Only 1 API req/s hits the main app. 📚

Chart showing requests per second for API queries (42 req/s), mutations (1/s) and search (10/s).

Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 01/06/2026

Yesterday I went down the rabbit hole that is the Bricks and Minifigs theft controversy. It's WILD, and unexpectedly brings things back to corrupt Utah law enforcement and the LDS Chuch (American Fork). I never thought I'd be so invested in justice for Lego theft. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wscQ...

youtube.com

I tracked down the thief who stole $200,000 of LEGO

YouTube video by Reckless Ben

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 26/05/2026

We're getting close to a major milestone for @hardcover.app - 100k users! 👏 Launched: 2021 2022: 200 2023: 1,300 2024: 5,000 2025: 23,000 2026: 59,500 On pace to hit over 200,000 by 2027. 🫨 We're already starting to shift focus from acquisition to focusing on retention & engagement.

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Adam Fortuna @adamfortuna.com · 25/05/2026

Finally got Conductor working for Hardcover! 11 services are in a shared docker-compose file, with 4 more in a conductor one that starts up on new ports per workspace. Much easier to test multiple things locally & merge. Next step: switch the test database per worktree to avoid conflicts.

Screenshot of the Conductor app with 4 active workspaces showing one per issue. Showing 4 ports per workspace.