Small tools, big taste

Taste is not a mood board. Taste is what you refuse when the constraint is tight.

Small tools force that refusal. A 400-byte script, a one-screen app, a CLI with three flags — there is nowhere to hide a confused idea.

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Constraints as editors

When you only have one primary action, you must name it. When you only have one metric, you must defend it. When the UI is a terminal, copy has to carry the product.

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Large surfaces invite feature soup. Small surfaces invite judgment.

Building a practice

• Ship a tiny tool every quarter that solves one of your own pains.
• Delete half the settings before launch.
• Write the README before the code. If the README is long, the tool is wrong.

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Big platforms can still have taste — but they rarely develop it without people who trained on small ones.

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Start smaller than feels serious. Serious is what happens after taste shows up.