Contraption Company began as a home for my projects like Postcard, Booklet, and FRCTNL. Over time, I made other experimental tools such as QuesoGPT, a Mac Mini data center, an MCP server, and a digital junk drawer. Essays about these experiments have found an audience: over 100,000 people have read this site so far this year.
Through that process, I’ve realized two things. First, I enjoy crafting digital tools. Second, I like sharing what I learn along the way. I strive to maintain a high quality bar for posts on the main Contraption Company site - writing about finished work. But good projects take time, and that meant I was publishing less. For instance, open-sourcing Postcard took nearly two months, during which I didn't publish a single post.
I was focusing too much on outcomes instead of the journey, and I craved a space to share half-baked ideas, sketches, and prototypes. Writing about unfinished work feels lighter. It keeps the process fun - and makes it easier to walk away from ideas that don’t deserve finishing.
I enjoy books about craft - how people actually make things - such as What I Know About Running Coffee Shops, Fäviken, Rene Redzepi's journals, Creative Selection, and Notes from a Fellow Traveller. They made me want to share my own work in the same way.
This summer, I started Workshop as an experimental newsletter focused on work in progress: shorter posts, less refined, more in-the-weeds. I shared it with a few friends to test the idea - and found myself writing more and having fun. So I’m now “graduating” it from experiment to project - something I plan to continue indefinitely.
So far, there are a dozen posts on Workshop: on backup plans, hacking Y Combinator, email management, and more.
Going forward, I plan to post more often on Workshop about ongoing projects, and to use this main Contraption Company list for more polished, completed work.
You can manage your preferences to choose which newsletters you receive.
Stay tuned.
