iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

I think there's an obligatory xkcd that goes into this, but only for line endings!

A screen capture of some plain monospaced text, showing how words sometimes line up and create 'vertical text rivers'

Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Added richer keyboard editing to loosethought.com Personally, I really love the the 'jump' tool, which assigns shortcut keys to each note you can see 🙂 Brainstorm, capture notes and run through research without using a mouse, and keep the benefits of visual thinking. #buildinpublic #ux

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Added fonts to loosethought.com ! It was based on feedback, so its ok to add features, right? 😊 Lets you set up really nice 'title cards' for research/writing projects. It's based on the idea of #web font 'defaults' (cursive, mono etc) to let you customize them at some point. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Got some fantastic feedback last week for loosethought.com and have been working away on it, what a relief to be doing things people ask for etc :) - Snap to grid (this really improved things!!) - Newlines inside notes - Better highlighting effect #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Something quite charming and nostalgic about coding 'raw' JS in a <script> tag, just like I would have done back in the 90s. There's also something cool about it - jQuery is more or less built in, and CSS transitions and grid layouts let you put things together in a few minutes. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I think this is where AI really shines, vibe 'donkeywork'. In this case, getting some landing page videos up into Cloudflare. I never want to spend days contemplating some vendors idea of what an API should look like, or pour through all their docs/forum/support/etc.. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

At my regular coffee spot to do a bit of website copy writing. It's in the basement of a chain coffee shop in Dublin, I walked past it for years! Finding it more and more necessary to get out of the apartment to work these days.. Any other unusual spots you work in? #buildinpublic

Underground coffee shop in an old brick cellar with vaulted ceilings

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Added multi-sheet workspaces to loosethought.com Researching a project or learning something new? it's now a lot easier to organize things! I think this really delivers on the promise - a paper like experience with the best of digital (links, editing, sharing). #buildinpublic #productivity

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Well this all works as one big pipeline, but somehow I feel morally obliged to break things up, its too wild 😊 #fsharp

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Added backlinks/references to loosethought.com Getting ready to open the app up for users this week, nervous but excited. 😱🚀 #ux #pkms #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Having great image support in loosethought.com really comes in handy for doing AI exploration and research. Here I'm doing some experiments and research for a short film 🎞️ I can put these findings together as I go, and share them with the rest of the crew! #ai #buildinpublic #film

Screenshot of an image board with some experiments and AI generated ideas for a short film

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

btw! #fsharp is also quite nice for low level stuff, not just all the fancy algebraic types etc. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

So this is the future. Responses that are usually right, but sometimes flat out wrong.. You point them out and it reverses itself sure enough, but if you don't? The idea that you're going to let this loose on a real codebase with important/tricky stuff in it.. #copilot #ai

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

What's nice about #fsharp is how well balanced and sympathetic the features are, here we have: - Pattern matching - Immutability with updates - Currying - Pipelining - Algebraic types - Map / List / Seq - Lambda shorthand ( _.Name ) It's the integration of all these that makes it so satisfying 🚀

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Active patterns make parsing so pleasant in #FSharp

Code screenshot showing a terse parse function which leverages active patterns in FSharp

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Added points/estimates to loosethought.com 🚀 Add an estimate to a note, and see the total at the top of the card. Completed items knock the total down. #ux #saas #buildinpublic #indiehacker #productivity

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Happy Friday all 🙂 Coding down in the Dublin docklands today 🇮🇪 I was part of #startupbootcamp in 2012, and none of these buildings were here back then! (None of the modern ones I mean!) #tfi #buildinpublic

A partial view of a laptopn near a paved dock

Some office buildings in a renovated dockland area

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I really prefer 'index' over 'tasks' here. Right now I'm just indexing dates, but eventually tags, colours, keywords etc, feels more in keeping with the spirit of the thing. Thoughts? #buildinpublic #ux

Screenshot of app with red arrow pointing to a heading which reads 'INDEX'

Screenshot of an app with a red arrow pointing to a heading which reads 'TASKS'

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Added deadlines/tasks to loosethought.com 🚀 Mark things with a date and build a prioritized task list from your plans! #ux #saas #buildinpublic #indiehacker #productivity

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

We took an hour on the train to work near the coast. When its nice in Dublin its quite nice! 😊 So many nice days you just grind away in a home office, how much of your life slips by that way.. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Added a toolbar to loosethought.com 🚀 Some early feedback: "keyboard support is nice, but as an additional thing, not the only thing" 😊 #ux #saas #buildinpublic #indiehacker

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Thanks 😊 Usual thing of ages to figure out a handful of lines 🙃

Screenshot of code showing pointer event handlers

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

You can now move multiple cards at once! 🚀 Some tricky semantics dealing with the selections.. You run into this a lot with canvas apps, gestures you take for granted are actually quite complicated when interactions might be a click or a drag (and you don't know yet which is which) #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

From @stackexchange.bsky.social newsletter. Not sure if it's snark or not 🙂 Desktop apps were "local-only". Local-first means true web apps, collaborative, browser based etc. But they work great offline, and restore agency back to the user in terms of the stuff you create. #localfirst

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Quick Tip for anyone using @11ty.dev - not something I've really seen in the docs/examples. If you have a complex repeating thing, set up a Nunjuck macro, which acts like a small local template. #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Here's something rather amusing. The Helix modal/terminal editor doesn't work so well ootb on MacOS because the terminal app doesn't support full colour. But the terminal emulator in VSCode is actually quite good. So you can run a terminal editor quite well, in another editor.

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I'm so used to expression style dev with F#, that it took me waaay too long to realize why the second `if` was never matching 🙃 #fsharp

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Anybody find themselves waxing philosophical with The Machine? #ai

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

The one thing that sets the web apart from any other UI technology, and always has. If you come across something weird or interesting, you can see how it was done. That's what got me into design/programming in the late 90s, using Notepad/Windows95 on a cheap second hand P90. #web

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

A thing thats great about #fsharp is that almost any expression can have it's own nested bindings. You can take a top down approach when building stuff up. If a property needs some kind of complex value, build it inline, step by step, using descriptive names for the intermediates.

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

I don't know if there are any #mst3k fans around here, but every time I see this in #figma .. youtu.be/GfBr5l4S63Q

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Anybody dimly remember 'googlewhack', getting a single hit for a search? Feels like a different world back then.. #BuildInPublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Woot! App is finally online somewhere and viewable from another device, sync is.. working! #buildinpublic

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Interesting, I don't do full-blown PRs, but I do run the same basic 'discipline', small well managed commits with a few review/scan passes in a local git tool etc. I think it's useful for a 'move the project from one good state to the next' mentality, essential on a team, but good on a solo too.

Some recent commits from a solo project, showing a 'PR' discipline

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

🚀 Latest version of MobF published, supporting #dotnet 9! github.com/robitar/MobF MobF is a wrapper around #mobx / #react for building functional reactive web UI in #fsharp

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Sometimes you just need to roll up your sleeves and look at the compiler source to figure out why something isn't working! #fsharp #fable

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Robert Byrne @kapitar.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Anyone else amused by the musical cross-talk on the #fsharp / #sharp feed? :)

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