February 2026.
Let’s pick things back up. I had a tool that had turned into a monster, a name found in front of an episode of Grimm, and one lingering question: was this thing going to stay my personal toy, or was it becoming something else?
The answer came down to a very simple observation, made one evening while looking at what I’d built.
The moment I realized I was onto something
By searching, comparing, digging through what already existed, one thing jumped out at me: there really wasn’t an equivalent. No writing software that was both local, with your data kept safe and warm on your own machine, and equipped with real AI assistance. Some were online, others had no AI, or else an AI that wrote in your place, which I’d refused from the very start.
And without really meaning to, I’d built exactly that. The missing piece.
And that’s when the thought flipped. If this tool was so useful to me, for taming my three-thousand-year chaos, why wouldn’t it be useful to others? Other authors drowning in their characters, their timelines, their worlds. Why keep it to myself?
What I really cared about
The moment you decide to share a tool, a question forces itself on you: on what terms? And there, a few convictions asserted themselves all on their own.
The first: writing a book shouldn’t be an expensive thing to do. Writing is one of the rare art forms accessible to everyone; all it takes is an idea and time. I found it obscene to turn it into a luxury. So the prices would be reasonable. Period.
The second: exclude no one. People don’t all have the same preferences, and that’s perfectly fine. Some hate subscriptions and want to pay once and for all, then be left alone for life. Others prefer a small recurring amount rather than a big lump sum. So why choose? There would be both. To each their own plan.
And this logic of respect extended to the AI itself. Some people, like me, like to tinker: they’ll want to plug in their own model, their local AI, their API key, staying completely independent and in control of their data. They’ll be able to. But others really don’t want to bother with configurations: for them, the AI would simply be included, turnkey, with no settings to fuss over. Here again, both worlds, so as to exclude no one.
Respecting the user, at the end of the day, is just that: their pen, their data, their money, their choices. The rest is just detail.
And then… nothing.
There it was. I had a one-of-a-kind tool, clear values, a vision. All that was left was to go for it.
So I threw myself into… fixing bugs. Renaming menus. Moving a window three pixels to the left.
From December to February, I put the project on standby without ever admitting it, even to myself. Officially, I was “polishing.” In reality, I was going in circles. I’d add a tiny feature nobody needed. I’d change the name of a menu, then change it back the next day. I was spinning my wheels with plenty of energy, very busy doing nothing important.
The truth is, I was scared. Scared of judgment. That little voice whispering “what if it’s terrible?”, “what if nobody cares?”, “what if you make a fool of yourself?”. As long as I showed nothing, I risked nothing. Renaming a menu is comfortable. It’s painless. It gives you the illusion of moving forward without ever having to expose yourself.
Courage, that month, was clearly for other people.
What kicked me into gear
Two things finally snapped me out of my torpor, and neither one is very glorious.
The first is the opposite fear. By waiting so long, I started thinking that my ideas, the ones I’d been mulling over for months, someone else was going to end up having them too. And release them before me. The dread of getting beaten to it eventually outweighed the fear of judgment. One fear chased out the other.
The second is more down-to-earth, and I’m going to be honest because I believe there’s something to gain from it. I’m not rolling in money. In my life, I’ve made choices for more stability, even at a cost along the way. I have dreams, like everyone, projects that require means I don’t have yet. So if this tool, on top of helping authors, could also help me a little, myself, move toward those dreams… that wasn’t a shameful reason. It was a human one.
Between the fear of having my ideas stolen and the very real need to push my own forward, the scales finally tipped. It was time to stop renaming menus.
It was time to show it to the world.
Except that “showing a piece of software to the world” doesn’t happen with a snap of your fingers. There were still a few mountains left to climb. But that’s a story for the next episode.