Issue №277 Lat 37°N · Lon 127°E Filed at --:--

Software for the Moonstruck

lunatic.dev is a one-engineer studio writing tools that flicker on the rim of useful and unhinged. Built between full moons, shipped when nobody is looking.

00 tools released
0000 commits this orbit
0 cats supervising
◐ Currently waxing gibbous ★ Mercury is fine, you're fine ◑ Tides peak at 03:14 UTC ☾ Built without standups ◐ Last deploy: 7 minutes after midnight ★ Coffee count: 4 ◑ Currently waxing gibbous ★ Mercury is fine, you're fine ◐ Tides peak at 03:14 UTC ☾ Built without standups ◑ Last deploy: 7 minutes after midnight ★ Coffee count: 4
01

Manifesto, of sorts.

i.

Ship in the dark.

The best version of a thing is the one that escaped before it could be reasoned with. We ship between 23:00 and 04:00, where good ideas refuse to be polite.

ii.

Useful, then strange.

Every tool earns its weirdness. We start with a real problem, then add the parts that make engineers tilt their heads.

iii.

One operator. No moon walks.

This studio is a desk, a kettle, and a window facing west. There are no roadmaps shaped like spreadsheets, only ones drawn in margins.

iv.

Documentation is a love letter.

If a README is dry, the tool is dry. We write docs the way astronomers wrote logs in 1881 — by hand, in slanted cursive, with feeling.

02

Eight phases of building strange software.

Phase 01 / 08

New Moon

A blank repo, a folder named ./hush, and the kind of conviction that only shows up at 02:30. We name nothing, commit nothing. The idea has to survive its own first hour.

  • Write the README before any code.
  • Pick a name that sounds wrong out loud.
  • Decide what this tool refuses to do.
03

Field notes from the workshop.

FN-001 ◐ orbiting

oblique/

A CLI that gives you a single, weird suggestion when you're stuck on a bug.

It opens a card from a deck of seventy-eight cryptic prompts ("work at the wrong scale", "do nothing for a turn") borrowed from Eno & Schmidt and translated for terminals.

Rust · TUI · 312 lines read field note ↗
FN-002 ○ stable

moontide

A static site generator that respects the lunar calendar.

Posts publish only when the moon is in a phase you chose. Drafts wait, patiently, in ./penumbra. The build log is a haiku.

Go · ~2k LoC · 14 deps read field note ↗
FN-003 ◕ testing

insomniac.fm

A radio for the 03:00 hour, generated nightly.

An RSS feed of recorded long-form rambles, paired with a generated drone track in B-flat minor. Each episode is exactly 47 minutes and ends mid-sentence.

TS · Web Audio · ffmpeg read field note ↗
FN-004 ☾ archived

almanac.cli

A weekly forecast in your terminal, written by hand.

Receives a curated set of links, footnotes, and a single illustration as ANSI art every Sunday at 21:00 KST. No tracking. No ?utm_. No newsletter UI.

Bash · ANSI · 1 person read field note ↗
FN-005 ◐ orbiting

libpenumbra

A library for designing soft shadows that look like they belong outside.

Computes a believable umbra/penumbra falloff from sun + moon position for any latitude. Used in two animations and one wedding invitation.

C · WASM · MIT read field note ↗
FN-006 ◔ drafting

tideboard

A kanban that decays.

Cards left untouched for nine days drift toward an outer column called The Sea. There is no recovery. There is also no shame. Only the sea.

04

The lunatic's almanac.

right now, in the studio

Listening to a tape labeled "for thinking", drinking the second pot.

refreshes when you scroll past
tape №047

Pacific Ocean Blue / Dennis Wilson

side B, played twice
desk weather

17°C, the kind of overcast that flatters monitors. Window open one fist.

unverified, vibes-based
currently leaning on
  • Rust1.83.0
  • Helix editornightly
  • tmux + a thinkpad2008
  • a mug shaped like a moonchipped
today's overheard line
"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to."
— Carl Sandburg, allegedly
last shell line
$ git commit -m "fix: stop howling at unrelated bugs"_
07:43, this morning
05

Send a transmission.

Letters arrive faster than email. Email arrives faster than DMs. DMs arrive when the moon is right.

  • post letters@lunatic.dev
  • work commission a small, weird tool
  • noise @lunaticdev — read mostly on Sundays
  • code github.com/lunatic-dev