Day 193 of building X Growth Engine in public. Good to be back and already hitting the ground running. This month is shaping up well. Directory launches in the pipeline and a solid lineup of coffee chats with builders on the calendar. #buildinpublic

Day 192 of building X Growth Engine in public. I'm back. A little over a week in the woods with no service. First real break since day one of this journey. Came back recharged and more clear headed than I have been in a while. #buildinpublic

Day 191 of building X Growth Engine in public. Tomorrow I head into the woods for a week with no service First real break since I started this journey 191 days ago A little over a week of silence from me. Just nature, family and some well earned rest. See you on the other side. #buildinpublic

Day 190 of building X Growth Engine in public. Stable. Improving. Moving forward. X Growth Engine is working well. Getting me introductions with new people consistently. Good improvements on the roadmap waiting for when I return from the upcoming break. #buildinpublic

Day 189 of building X Growth Engine in public. X changes all the time. Algo experiments. New debates. Different topics rising and falling. Different viewpoints pulling in every direction. That is part of why I love it. #buildinpublic

Day 188 of building X Growth Engine in public. AI building has never been easier. Better models. More capable agents. Tools for every part of the stack. The barrier to shipping something has never been lower. #buildinpublic

Day 187 of building X Growth Engine in public. Lots of people debating whether building in public is worth the risk of copycats lately. I could name a handful who have copied my landing page, taglines and methodologies. So it is a valid concern and I am not here to dismiss it. #buildinpublic

Day 186 of building X Growth Engine in public. X rolled out an interesting algo change recently. Showing you mainly people you already follow. #buildinpublic

Day 185 of building X Growth Engine in public. When I first started I wanted bigger numbers everywhere. More followers. More likes. More views. All of it. #buildinpublic

Day 184 of building X Growth Engine in public. Had a few good builder chats over the past few weeks. Something about being able to help someone work through a problem feels familiar. Goes back to the years I spent mentoring developers. That feeling of watching someone get unstuck never gets old.

Day 183 of building X Growth Engine in public. Quietly working on something that does not show results right away. A blog powered by DataForSEO insights. Real data on what people are searching for, content built to meet them there helpfully. #buildinpublic

Day 182 of building X Growth Engine in public. A big update is going out this week. It's a real milestone for the groundwork of where X Growth Engine is headed. The kind of update that does not look flashy from the outside but means a lot from the inside. #buildinpublic

Day 181 of building X Growth Engine in public. Hope you enjoyed the vibe coding series. Had a lot of fun putting that together. Back to the build. #buildinpublic

Day 180 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. State management and DX. Keeping it light today. Data flow is about making information feel alive as it moves through your app. #buildpinpublic

Day 179 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. Observability. Know when your baby is crying. You cannot fix what you cannot see. Most indie builders ship something and then fly blind until a user tells them something is broken. It's not a good feeling. #buildinpublic

Day 178 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. Async and background jobs. Your users should never wait for something that does not need to happen in front of them. #buildinpublic

Day 177 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. Caching. Making your app feel instant. The vibe here is simple. Some data does not need to be fetched fresh every single time. #buildinpublic

Day 176 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. Databases. Postgres is the vibe. If you are an intermediate builder wondering which database to use the answer is Postgres. Free, powerful and will not have you drowning in Supabase costs as you scale. #buildinpublic

Day 176 of building X Growth Engine in public. Vibe coding fundamentals. Systems design and architecture. How to feel the shape of your system. Most developers start by writing code. The good ones eventually start thinking about how the pieces fit together before writing a single line.

Day 174 of building X Growth Engine in public. Used to mentor developers for years. Later helped non technical people get comfortable building with AI. That background never left me. New mini series starting this week. Vibe coding fundamentals. #buildinpublic

Day 173 of building X Growth Engine in public. Just made my most expensive prompt ever. One request/response to Fable through openrouter's API. $13. #buildinpublic

Day 172 of building X Growth Engine in public. Default behavior is worth examining. Most of the time we do not even notice it. It's just the way we have always done things. But sometimes those defaults are exactly what is holding you back. #buildinpublic

Day 171 of building X Growth Engine in public. Last week I talked about why I choose genuine over fast. But I want to be honest about something. I get why people do it the other way. #buildinpublic

Day 170 of building X Growth Engine in public. I keep coming back to this image lately. Builders as boats between islands. All of us on separate journeys with separate destinations. No two heading exactly the same direction. #buildinpublic

Day 169 of building X Growth Engine in public. The 72 hour break taught me something I did not expect. Staying on top of everything takes more energy than you realize until you are forced to stop. Letting go for a bit was not the disaster part of me thought it would be. #buildinpublic

Day 168 of building X Growth Engine in public. Onboarding is the arguably the most important part of any product. I have fumbled it more than once. #buildinpublic

Day 167 of building X Growth Engine in public. Values series. The closer. This philosophy has done more for me than any growth hack ever could. #buildinpublic

Day 166 of building X Growth Engine in public. Values series. Why it matters anyway. The long game is the only game worth playing. #buildinpublic

Day 165 of building X Growth Engine in public. Values series. The trade off. Choosing genuine over fast comes with real costs worth acknowledging. #buildinpublic

Day 164 of building X Growth Engine in public. Values series. No AI replies. Ever. I would rather post something that falls short because I was lazy or rushed than send an automated reply pretending to be me. #buildinpublic