I write about a small tool or script on this blog every couple of months, usually right after building it, when the enthusiasm is highest and the judgment about whether it’s actually good is lowest. This is the first time I’ve gone back a year later and checked which of them I still use.
Still running
- The dead-link checker. Runs on a schedule, quietly, and has caught real broken links twice more since I wrote about it.
- The
_headerscache rules. Not something I think about, which is exactly the point of infrastructure that works. - The five-script
package.json. Still five scripts, still the right five.
Quietly abandoned
- A custom syntax highlighter I built instead of using an existing library, because I wanted to understand tokenizing. I understood tokenizing. I also switched back to the library two months later because mine didn’t handle a language I started using in code blocks, and fixing that felt like a chore rather than a weekend project.
- A draft-post reminder script that emailed me a weekly digest of unfinished drafts. I turned it off after a month because getting reminded of unfinished work I already felt bad about wasn’t motivating, it was just one more email.
What separates the two lists
Every tool that survived solved a problem I kept having, automatically, without asking me to change a habit. Every tool that died either solved a problem I only had once, or asked me to build a new habit around checking its output — and a new habit is a much bigger ask than it feels like when you’re excited about the script that needs it.