5 Down, 17 to Go: My March Product Madness
I'm challenging myself to ship 22 MVPs this March—one every weekday—fueled by my love for TTRPGs, design systems, and rapid prototyping. While I do allow myself to work on some of them for multiple days, at least two a week I am trying to start and finish in just one day.
Week 1 delivered five diverse projects, from solo RPG tools to WordPress plugins and game assets, proving quick iterations beat perfectionism. Each taught me a bit more about user needs, tech constraints, and the joy of shipping fast.
Solo Surveyor (Monday)
This free browser tool empowers solo TTRPG players to map adventures locally, with no accounts needed.
Key value: Custom images, position tracking, icons, grid tweaks, and exports keep sessions seamless across devices, with light/dark modes for any playstyle.
Learnings: Feedback loops (like Reddit's r/Solo_Roleplaying, BlueSky, and Mastodon) drove UI polish earlier than expected; local storage ensures privacy, but caching limits pushed me to refine imports early.
https://solo-surveyor.monkeyslunch.com
Cursor Designer (Tuesday)
Open-source .cursorrules template that enforces UX/UI/a11y best practices in Cursor AI outputs, turning sloppy AI code into accessible designs. It scales from lean prompts to full design-ops, perfect for font-end heavy stacks with inline errors and microcopy.
Value provided: Saves devs (and me) hours debugging AI hallucinations; pairs with any frontend for consistent, WCAG-friendly results.
Learnings: Globs and examples in rules make AI "honest". As I tested on forms, it boosted usability 3x without slowing generation.
https://github.com/spencergoldade/cursor-designer
AskeeDS (Wednesday)
AskeeDS is an alpha ASCII design system for TUIs and text games, like old-fashioned text adventure games. Uses YAML components rendered via Python CLI. Includes 56 elements like menus, HUDs, themes (dark/light/high-contrast), and adapters for Rich/Textual. Which sounds impressive except it's not hard to design with ASCII.
Hopeful value: Designers can author intuitively; devs integrate via a RenderOutput, and it adapts to terminal sizes for retro-modern games. I'll be continuing to test this myself.
Learnings: It's okay to start over. I did a Proof of Concept of this and started over twice over the last couple of weeks as I learned more. I gave up on my own component model and realized YAML typing caught errors early, validating designer-led workflows.
https://github.com/spencergoldade/AskeeDS
No Regime For Me (Thursday)
A WordPress plugin that displays anti-fascism quotes in the admin dashboard, reminding creators of our shared stakes. Submitted for directory review on WordPress' official plugin site, but available via GitHub for now.
Value: Reminds us all that we have to push back and that doing so can start small and easy.
Learnings? Making a WordPress plugin is way not as hard as I originally thought. I mean, I did use the "Hello Dolly" original as a guide, but still.
https://github.com/spencergoldade/No-Regime-For-Me
The Alchemist's Mistake (Friday)
2-page D&D 5e PDF: Flavorful potion effects for dusty flasks or wizard mugs, blending roleplay with random rolls.
Adds immersive surprises to campaigns. page 1 for flavor, page 2 for mechanics. Ideal for quick GMs with players who smash and grab everything.
https://site.dmsguild.com/product/559492/The-Alchemists-Mistake?affiliate_id=1666930
On to next week!
This built some momentum and I hope next week bears some good fruit as well.
