Dev Log
Building What If Classics in public — branching design, writing decisions, and lessons from turning classics into decks.
Building in Public: Day 34 - Reviving an Abandoned Project Into a Game, in One Weekend
Anthropic gave Fable unlimited usage for the weekend, so I spent it dragging a project I'd abandoned five months ago into a Reigns-style game.
Building in Public: Day 33 - Regaining Momentum After a Long Pause
Why I hesitated after Day 32, and the product/UX decisions we made on February 18, 2026 to move forward with more clarity.
Building in Public: Day 32 - Three-Part Stabilization Sprint
Three consecutive sessions focused on fixing image drift, restructuring storypacks, and redeploying Jekyll with a complete pipeline.
Building in Public: Day 31 - Mem0 Memory System + Wizard of Oz Deployment
Shipped The Wizard of Oz to the website and set up a lightweight Mem0 memory workflow to keep decisions searchable across sessions.
Building in Public: Day 30 - Quality Analysis and 106 Images
Analyzed story quality issues across existing packs, then generated all art assets for The Wizard of Oz. Learned why choices need dilemmas, not preferences.
Building in Public: Day 29 - The Personality Card Reveal
Designed and built a collectible card reveal experience for story endings. Flip animations, share functionality, and bilingual support included.
Building in Public: Day 28 - Quality Fixes and a Better Pipeline
Found multiple issues in I, Robot and fixed them fast. Turned ad-hoc fixes into a cleaner workflow with validation and regeneration.
Building in Public: Day 27 - I, Robot Fully Deployed
Generated all personality cards, resolved image loading, and shipped the full I, Robot story pack to the website.
Building in Public: Day 26 - The Bug That Almost Broke Personality Cards
Finished I, Robot's visual assets and discovered a critical bug: the story generator wasn't creating personality card data. Fixed the workflow and saved future stories from the same fate.
Building in Public: Day 25 - Two-Phase Workflow: When AI Needs Structure
Asking AI to generate a complete branching story in one shot? Too ambitious. Breaking it into two phases—linear story first, then branch expansion—solved everything. Sometimes constraints unlock creativity.
Building in Public: Day 24 - Beautiful Cards With Imperfect Text
Built a collectible personality card system using AI image generation. The cards look stunning—authentic Pokemon/MTG aesthetics. But AI struggles with text. Now solving for both beauty and accuracy.
Building in Public: Day 23 - The Great Gatsby & Learning from Mistakes
Completed The Great Gatsby interactive story with 49 AI-generated scenes, fixed character consistency issues, and built a system to prevent recurring deployment mistakes. Sometimes the best lessons come from fixing what broke repeatedly.
Building in Public: Day 22 - The Quality Fix That Found Gold
Implementing the story quality fixes revealed an unexpected optimization: 75% reduction in content while improving user experience. Sometimes fixing one problem solves three.
Building in Public: Day 21 - The Retrospective That Changed Everything
20 days of building: 3 story packs, bilingual support, 16 days ahead of schedule. Then user testing revealed a critical flaw that changes everything.
Building in Public: Day 20 - The Invisible Script: Fixing What You Can't See
Debugging Astro script injection and managing session state for a cleaner user experience.
Building in Public: Day 19 - Spring Cleaning & Canvas Magic
Why I spent a day organizing files and writing a social card generator.
Building in Public: Day 18 - The Missing Button (And Other UX Sins)
Sometimes the biggest usability issues are invisible to you until someone points them out. Today: fixing code blocks, language consistency, and the most important button I almost forgot.
Building in Public: Day 17 - Solving the Token Limit Problem
Hit Claude Pro's 200k token limit repeatedly, ending sessions mid-task. Built a complete token management system with automated log maintenance, emergency protocols, and optimization strategies that doubled work capacity.
Building in Public: Day 16 - Two Classics, One Calculator, and a New AI Partner
Deployed Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein. Fixed the MBTI personality calculator to show descriptions on ending pages. Plus, I started using Google's Gemini 3 Pro alongside Claude.
Building in Public: Day 15 - When AI Generates Twins and Giants (5 Critical Prompt Engineering Fixes)
Discovered critical illustration quality issues with Pride and Prejudice story pack. Here's how I fixed multiple twins, giant characters, and improved AI image generation through iterative prompt engineering.
Building in Public: Day 14 - Creating Better Stories with AI
Found a critical flaw in AI-generated stories: only 3 endings instead of 12+. The MBTI personality feature couldn't work properly. Here's how I improved the story generator.
Building in Public: Day 13 - Optimizing Claude Code Documentation
My CLAUDE.md file was too big and slowing down AI responses. Reorganized project documentation to reduce token usage by 95%.
Building in Public: Day 12 - Fixing the Korean Experience
Korean translation was done, but the desktop layout was broken and images weren't showing up. Spent the day fixing responsive design issues.
Building in Public: Day 11 - Jekyll & Hyde Story Pack Complete
Finally got the Jekyll & Hyde interactive story working with MBTI personality tracking and multiple endings.
Building in Public: Day 10 - First Deployment to Production
Setting up GitHub repository, connecting to Vercel, and deploying What If Classics to whatifclassics.com for the first time.
Building in Public: Day 9 - Setting Up the Astro Website
Building the website to test What If Classics stories in a real browser. Setting up Astro for static site generation and running the first local test.
Building in Public: Day 8 - Story Pack Generator Development (Part 2)
Adding illustrations to interactive stories using Gemini's image generation API with reference images for consistency.
Building in Public: Day 7 - Story Pack Generator Development (Part 1)
Developing the story pack generator and ensuring quality through visualization for What If Classics.
Building in Public: Day 6 - Designing the Prototype
From concept to architecture: Designing the story pack generator and service architecture for What If Classics.
Building in Public: Day 5 - Securing Domain and Social Accounts
Domain registration and social media setup: Establishing What If Classics' online presence.
Building in Public: Day 4 - Brainstorming the Service Domain
Finding the perfect name with AI partner: Domain brainstorming and brand naming
Building in Public: Day 3 - Monetization Strategy and Market Size
Exploring revenue potential and market scale with AI partner: Validating the business model for What If Classics.
Building in Public: Day 2 - Establishing the 100-Day Challenge Plan
Planning the project with AI partner: Using Claude Code to build faster and smarter as a solo founder.
Building in Public: Day 1 - The Birth of What If Classics
From a newsletter email to an interactive story platform: How I'm using Claude Code to build What If Classics as a solo founder.
The Enduring Appeal of Classic Literature in the Digital Age
Exploring why classic novels continue to captivate readers in our fast-paced, technology-driven world.