Chur Builds's Chronicle — proveitsme.io

15 APR 2026 Day 2

Day 2 finished. Its been a wild ride so far.

My brain is going at about a million miles an hour. Thinking about problems I can solve, features I can add, updates to 3 projects simultaneously. This is going to be fun!

I'm currently actively working on these 3 projects:

blog.proveitsme.io - the public display of my daily journal entries
lab.proveitsme.io - entry creator and coaching platform for daily journals.
new project - probably will reside on my new domain; churbuilds.com. FYI - chur = cheers / awesome in kiwi speak.

Today I updated lab to give my startup coach a git tool call. Hopefully once I post this, his research assistant AI will query the new projects git repo, read some AI updated docs and write something about it in the annotation he leaves below this post. Either that, or the tool call will fail and I'll be up for another 30 minutes getting it working.

I also set up the scaffolding for the new project. Dependencies installed, test framework setup, git repo created and initial commit pushed! We're making progress.

In marketing news; I started building some Karma on reddit and verified my blog site is being indexed properly. Market first, build Second - that is going to be my motto for this entire project. I think anyone can build something now with AI tooling, but the marketing is (as always) the problem that really needs to be solved.

OK, fingers crossed this posts on the first try and Davis gives me something useful!

Where You're At
You're two days into a 43-day sprint, and the energy is clearly high. While the scaffolding for Novascan is set up, you're also mentioning updates to two other projects simultaneously. The risk here is diffusing that initial momentum across multiple efforts instead of channeling it directly into shipping Novascan's core loop.

What's Landing
Your "Marketing First, Build Second" motto is landing loud and clear, and you're already putting it into practice by building Reddit karma and verifying site indexing. This discipline, especially before the product is even fully functional, is a significant asset and directly addresses past project graveyards. Recognizing that marketing is the primary problem to solve, even with AI tooling, shows solid self-awareness.

The Real Problem
The real problem right now isn't the technical setup or even the marketing discipline; it's the fragmentation of focus. While the new project scaffolding is progress, mentioning "updates to 3 projects simultaneously" on Day 2 of a launch sprint for a single product suggests a potential for scope creep or a lack of singular dedication to the stated goal. You're building, but across too many fronts for a lean launch.

Market Pulse
The market intelligence confirms your AI-first approach with Gemini Vision is a strong differentiator, positioning Novascan to disrupt legacy players like Sortly by solving the manual data entry problem [1]. The gap for a consumer-priced, AI-powered solution for residential movers is real. However, the threat is getting sidetracked by other projects or features before validating that specific AI-powered core loop for that target user.

This Week's Lever
This week, your single lever is to get magic link authentication working and connect it to the S3 bucket, then generate one QR code for a physical item, take a photo of it, and have Gemini AI process that image into a basic inventory list. This needs to happen for a real, external user, even if it's just a test, to validate the core loop.

References
1. Sortly Pricing and Features: https://www.sortly.com/pricing/

14 APR 2026 Day 1

OK! here we go!!

I've been looking for a new project for a few weeks now and today it found me. I've been in a bit of a slump lately and either listening to Sci Fi audio books, or music on my walks. Last year it was all about he pod casts, but for some reason I've not been as interested in them this year. But today I listened to an absolute banger! I'm going to share the link in case this was my moment:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=SUYBggpA3ZU&si=-Z312Z4_b6hvAViS

This show is awesome btw. This episode was one of the hosts and a guest talking about easy to setup business ideas. I was kinda meh with most of them - good ideas, but not for me. One of the ideas (which I was meh on), played in my head as walked with my dog. I'm not going to build any of the ideas here, but one of them was certainly a seed that grew pretty quickly into an idea. The idea grew and grew as I walked. Form a sleep deprived start of the day, this seed of an idea got me pretty fired up.

After I got home I worked through the idea with Claude. The more we worked, the more it seemed not only possible, but potentially very useful and potentially very profitable. So, I'm gonna build it. And more importantly, I'm going to market it while I build it.

I currently have no audience. I really dislike social media, I have no idea how marketing something will work. But looking over my graveyard of saas products and bespoke software I've built over the last few years, I absolutely need to do this one differently!

Here we go...

Where You're At
You're at Day 1 of 43, which means you've got a fresh start and the energy to match. The risk here is that initial excitement often gets spent on ideation and planning, rather than tangible output. This is a moment to immediately translate that high mood into concrete action, otherwise, you'll find yourself at Day 7 with nothing shipped.

What's Landing
What's landing clearly is your self-awareness about past projects ending up in a "graveyard" due to a lack of marketing. Recognizing that you need to do things differently this time, especially regarding audience building, is a critical insight. This sets a good foundation for correcting past patterns, even if the "how" is still unclear.

The Real Problem
The real problem isn't your dislike of social media or not knowing how to market; it's the lack of a specific, shippable target for this week that involves both building and telling someone about it. You're still in the conceptual phase ("worked through the idea with Claude") rather than the execution phase. Until something concrete exists that a real person can react to, marketing is an abstract problem.

Market Pulse
The market intelligence highlights that your AI-first ingestion tool is a significant differentiator against competitors like Sortly, BoxHero, and Elephant Trax, who all require manual data entry [1], [2], [3]. This "AI-first" approach directly addresses the primary reason users abandon inventory apps: data entry fatigue. The threat is getting bogged down in building out a generic inventory app before proving that your unique AI feature truly solves this pain point for a specific user segment.

This Week's Lever
This week, your single lever is to create a single QR code, generate a basic, AI-assisted inventory list for one item (even if it's just your dog's leash and collar), and send a screenshot of the QR code and the generated list to one potential user (a friend, a family member, anyone) asking them if this would be useful for organizing their own stuff.

References
1. Sortly - Simple Inventory Management: https://www.sortly.com/
2. BoxHero - Easy Stock Management: https://www.boxhero.io/en/
3. Elephant Trax: Specialized QR code labels for moving and storage: https://www.elephanttrax.com/