Workshop Log · Cycle 047

A workshop that keeps the lights low.

lune.dev is a small, deliberate studio for engineers who do their best thinking after the office empties out. We build quiet tools, write long-form field notes, and ship things on lunar time.

See the bench → read field notes

local time: —
moon phase: —
illumination: —

nocturnal engineering· terminal-first· hand-tuned dependencies· anti-roadmap· quiet defaults· read more, ship less· nocturnal engineering· terminal-first· hand-tuned dependencies· anti-roadmap· quiet defaults· read more, ship less·

The manifest

Three commitments we keep, even when the deadline says otherwise.

Slow surfaces.

Interfaces should let you finish your thought. We design for the engineer who already knows what they want and resents the wizard between them and the work.

keyboard before mouse
monospace before marketing
no animated onboarding

ii.

Long files, short meetings.

We write in essays, not tickets. A tool that takes ten paragraphs to explain probably needs ten paragraphs in its README, and ten minutes of standup at most.

one essay per release
changelogs as letters
standups capped at 600 seconds

iii.

Lunar time.

Releases are tied to the moon, not the calendar. Twenty-nine days between cycles. Bug fixes ship whenever; features wait for the next new moon. It is a constraint, and it works.

features at new moon
postmortems at full moon
nothing on Mondays

The bench

Four small tools, each doing exactly one thing.

◐

penumbra

shell prompt that dims with battery

A drop-in zsh/bash prompt. Less ink when the laptop is on its last 20%, none on standby.

2.1kB

stable

◑

albedo

color picker that respects the room

Reads the ambient light through your camera, suggests a palette that won't burn at 2am.

118kB

stable

◒

orrery

tiny dependency visualizer

One package = one moon. Drag it; the orbit redraws. Useful for making the case to delete things.

340kB

beta

◓

tidewriter

writing buffer for engineers

A markdown surface that pulls back when you stop typing, comes back when you don't. No autocomplete.

56kB

drafting

Phases of a cycle

Twenty-nine days. Eight phases. One release.

phase 01 of 08

New moon · groundwork

Open the cycle. Pick one feature, three field notes, and a single bug to chase. Anything that doesn't fit on the back of an index card waits another month.

$ lune cycle --open --feature 1 --notes 3

Field notes

Long-form, hand-typed, occasionally wrong.

m 11 · cycle 047 14 min read

On the case for narrower tools.

A long argument against the everything-app, written after a week of trying to delete a feature from one of ours. We didn't, in the end. Here's why.

read →

m 09 · cycle 045 9 min read

The terminal is a workshop, not a museum.

Some thoughts on dotfiles as a lived practice rather than a portfolio piece, with a few opinions on how often you should be rewriting your prompt.

read →

m 07 · cycle 043 22 min read

Albedo, one year in.

A long postmortem on our color picker, including the embarrassing first build, the API we regretted, and the single lookup table that fixed everything.

read →

m 05 · cycle 041 6 min read

Anti-roadmap, after two years.

We stopped publishing a roadmap in 2024. This is what replaced it: a single page of intent, updated only when we change our minds.

read →

An invitation

Drop a candle in the workshop window.

We send one letter per cycle — a release note, a field note, and a question we couldn't answer alone. No tracking, no unsubscribe link in fine print. Just type your address and press the moon.