What I'm Doing Now

My current workflow starts with managing a backlog of ideas in Linear. I've accumulated these over time when inspiration strikes or when I think "Hey wouldn't it be cool if X did Y" or "I wonder if this exists." These ideas have been living in various spreadsheets, docs, and notes files across multiple platforms, and I'm consolidating them in Linear.

I categorize each idea into one of: Project, Project Expansion, Tool, or Experiment. From there, I prioritize them based on a mix of impact, effort, and personal interest. Each week, I select a few items from the backlog to focus on and dive deeper into scoping them out.

I conduct high-level research to validate the idea, understand the problem space, and identify current solutions. I typically turn to ChatGPT as a sparring partner here. As part of this scoping, I generate a PRD (Product Requirements Document) to outline the problem, target audience, goals, and success metrics. If the idea is monetizable, I also do a quick market analysis to understand the business model and tradeoffs.

Once I have a solid understanding, I move into creating a project plan in Linear. I start by breaking down the project into Epics and Issues, grouping the epics into milestones and identifying critical dependencies. I like Linear's ability to visualize blocking and blocked issues—it helps me manage the flow of work. I also use Fibonacci story points to estimate effort and complexity at the issue level, which helps me prioritize and plan sprints and cycles more effectively.

I start with Codex for architectural decisions since I find it better at high-level design and thinking through tradeoffs. Once I have a solid architecture planned out, I move into development following Test-Driven Development (TDD) principles. I write tests first to define expected behavior and outcomes. This approach helps me clarify requirements, catch edge cases early, and ensure code quality. I typically use Codex at this stage to scope out test requirements and ensure completeness.

At this stage, I switch to Claude Code as my AI pair programmer to help with code generation and refactoring. Throughout development, I continuously integrate and deploy changes using GitHub Actions. This allows me to review and give feedback quickly and iterate on the product. I also make use of automated testing tools such as Jest and Playwright to automate the testing process.