A friend looked at Press and asked whether it was worth scattering my attention on another project.
I get the question. I lead Sirv Studio, build VibeQ, and have several other things going. Then there is this desktop image tool written in Rust. From the outside, it can look like I keep finding new ways to avoid picking one thing.
Except the main things haven’t stopped moving.
That is the bit I care about. Not whether my list of interests looks tidy. Whether the work I have committed to is actually getting done.
Look at what keeps moving
Over July and August, my Studio work went through product variants and billing, review workflows, Shopify onboarding, and supplier and merchant localization. September brought work on the image editor, Capture One integration, and a dashboard that gives different people the information and actions they need. These are connected parts of the same product, not a succession of replacements for it.
The work also includes the less exciting parts: making a failed action recoverable, connecting a screen to the rest of a workflow, checking permissions, and fixing something that looked finished until someone used it differently. VibeQ kept getting attention too, including execution reliability, database recovery, and the native app.
Press happened alongside that. It didn’t replace it.
This is all AI-assisted, of course. I am not pretending I typed every line, and I don’t use commit totals as a scoreboard. The useful evidence is the progression: the same projects keep gaining capabilities, getting connected up, and becoming better to use. My Studio case study and account of how I work with agents cover that side of it.
There is a difference between constantly starting over and continuing several things. Looking only at how many things exist misses it.
Doing one thing all the time gets boring
I find it pretty fucking hard to work on a single thing all the time. Not because the thing stops mattering. Because I get bored, and I keep having ideas about other things.
I can care deeply about Studio and still want to work on a desktop application. I can spend time getting an image comparison right, then go back to a product workflow that still needs me. My commitment doesn’t have to reset every time I open a different repository.
The usual argument assumes that an hour spent on Press would otherwise have become an equally useful hour spent on Studio. That isn’t something I would take for granted about myself. Forcing myself to stay on the same thing after I am tired of it does not automatically produce better work.
I am not offering a theory of everyone’s attention. I’m describing mine. I like variety. I also like bringing things far enough that they work. Those preferences coexist.
Some people relax by doing something entirely different from their job. Sometimes my enjoyable change of activity is also software. That doesn’t automatically turn it into another professional obligation.
Press doesn’t need a finished destiny
I don’t have a completely clear vision for Press yet. I enjoy working on it, it does useful things, and I keep finding ways to make it better.
That is an accurate description of its current stage. It isn’t a confession that I forgot to write a business plan.
There is a direction I find promising: Press could become a good distribution channel for Studio. People could start with useful desktop image work and discover the larger product when they need more. The app already has optional Sirv transfers and Studio tools, so there is something concrete to explore there.
But that possibility is not the reason I am allowed to enjoy making it. I don’t need to work backwards from a hypothetical business outcome to justify having started.
I would rather say, honestly, that I am enjoying an experiment and seeing where it goes than pretend every decision was part of a strategy I had fully worked out on day one.
Sometimes the result is just a better keyboard
I also made Ortholinear, a Ukrainian and English keyboard for iOS, because I didn’t like the default keyboard’s layout. Now I have a keyboard I actually like.
That problem is solved for me. When something about it bothers me, I’ll patch it.
It doesn’t need to become a company. It doesn’t need to attract a particular number of users. It doesn’t need a permanent schedule of improvements. I wanted a tool to behave differently, and now it does. That is a perfectly good outcome.
I have written before about keeping small projects alive. This is the other side of it: sometimes it is worth making one in the first place simply because you want to use it.
Focus over months, not one uninterrupted session
The important distinction for me is between changing what I am working on and abandoning what I am working towards.
I still have to deal with the difficult parts of the main projects. A detour doesn’t excuse a broken promise. But having other interests isn’t, by itself, evidence that those promises are being broken. The record of the actual work matters more than how disciplined the arrangement looks from a distance.
I don’t want to spend all my time on one thing. I want to keep making good things, stay interested in the work, and continue delivering on the commitments I care about.
Studio is the main project. Press is a pleasant detour with possibilities. The keyboard is something I wanted for myself.
I can tell the difference.