Planner — Overview & Home

The story of this project runs in a clean arc. In May 2026 I talked to twelve potential users before writing a line of product code — deliberately. The interviews surfaced a key insight: the real pain wasn't being *unorganized*, it was being *scattered*. People had tried weekly planning tools but quit because they were too heavy. That finding, plus the rule "ignore compliments, watch behavior," gave me enough confidence to decide to build. By the end of May the repo, infra, and CI were in place. [Plan notes.md]

June 2026 was a heads-down sprint through the core feature set. I shipped auth (Google + Apple sign-in), the compile pipeline v1 (sources → cited pages, end-to-end), and a usable editor and reader baseline. Payments were on the June plan but slipped — and that slip turned out to matter. The end-of-June demo produced the single most clarifying piece of feedback in the project: *"I'd use it the moment payments work."* That one sentence reset all of July. [Plan notes.md]

July 2026 is therefore the month everything ships. The directive going in was explicit: no new features, no side quests — payments → landing → beta, in one straight line. The milestone chain runs Jul 5 (scope & date locked) → Jul 12 (payments + landing done) → Jul 19 (onboarding & verification stable) → Jul 26 (private beta, ten friends) → Jul 31 (public beta open). As of today, Jul 8, there are D-22 days left. [Plan notes.md]

The planner is organized into four levels of granularity, all cross-linked:

• Planner Overview — Dashboard — the home screen. It holds the current-focus statement, a stats snapshot, the July calendar with all appointments and milestones, this week's kanban board, and today's mini-schedule. It is the entry point for every planning session.
• Monthly pages — May 2026, June 2026, and July 2026 — each carry numbered goals, a milestone timeline, a full calendar, progress stats, a breakdown of that month's weeks, and (for closed months) results and a retrospective reflection.
• Weekly pages — Week Jun 29–Jul 5, 2026 and Week Jul 6–12, 2026 — each carry a kanban board of tasks by status, a day-by-day timetable, priorities, and progress stats. Finished weeks also carry a retro note. Unfinished tasks roll forward rather than being deleted.
• Today — Tuesday, Jul 8, 2026 — a single page for the current day, with a time-block schedule, a top-3 priorities checklist, and a focus note.

This layered structure means I can zoom out to the monthly arc when I need perspective, or zoom into a single day when I need execution focus, and every level links to the others. [Plan notes.md]

The two most recent weeks illustrate the transition from direction-setting to execution.

Week Jun 29–Jul 5, 2026 was a planning week, not a coding week — and that was deliberate. The week goal was to lock everything needed to *start building without second-guessing*. Three decisions were completed: MVP scope and beta date locked (Jul 31), Stripe chosen as the payment provider for direct integration, and the email-verification bug diagnosed. What didn't happen: meaningful progress on payment integration (only started) and the landing page (not touched at all). In the retro, the honest read is that barely any code shipped — but the decisions made were the prerequisite for everything that follows. [Plan notes.md]

Week Jul 6–12, 2026 is the current week, and it has one non-negotiable: finish payment integration, success cases *and* failure cases. Landing hero copy is the close second. The internal deadline logic is tight — if payments aren't done by Thursday, the Jul 31 beta date wobbles. Two tasks are already done (email-verification bug fixed, roadmap locked). Payment integration and hero copy rewrite are in progress. Blog post draft, beta invite email, and the gym-3× goal are queued. [Plan notes.md]

Today — Tuesday, Jul 8, 2026 is the most important day of the current week. The morning (09:00–12:00) is blocked for a single objective: one successful Stripe test-mode charge, end-to-end. The afternoon (13:00–15:00) is for the landing hero copy first draft. After a dentist appointment at 3 pm, the evening block (16:00–18:00) covers payment failure cases — card declined and duplicate charge. Dinner with Jisoo at 7 pm doubles as a copy review session. [Plan notes.md]

The focus note for today puts the stakes clearly: payments are the biggest risk this week. Success cases need to be closed by Wednesday evening and failure cases by Thursday at the latest. Getting failure cases done today is the stretch goal — it buys a safety margin for the rest of the week and keeps the beta date stable. [Plan notes.md]

The planner doubles as a decision log. Decisions are recorded where they were made and linked forward so future weeks inherit their rationale — not just the outcome. [Plan notes.md]

Each closed month and week carries a retrospective note. The pattern across all three periods points in the same direction. [Plan notes.md]

May: Ask *"how do you solve this today?"* instead of *"would you buy?"* — that's where the real behavior shows. Ignore compliments, watch behavior.

June: Three features shipped is real progress. But payments slipping — and the demo feedback it produced — means the June build month essentially handed July a single, inescapable mandate.

Week Jun 29–Jul 5: A week with almost no code shipped can still be a good week if the decisions it produced were the right ones. Locking scope, date, and payment provider was the work.

The running lesson across all three: the constraint is the strategy. Narrowing ruthlessly — one problem, one provider, one launch date, one line — has been the move at every stage. [Plan notes.md]

All personal and project appointments are tracked in the planner alongside technical milestones. [Plan notes.md]

• Today — Tuesday, Jul 8, 2026 — current day time-block & priorities
• Week Jul 6–12, 2026 — current week: payments & landing
• Week Jun 29–Jul 5, 2026 — last week: direction-setting retro
• July 2026 — current month: MVP beta launch prep
• June 2026 — last month: core build (auth, pipeline, editor)
• May 2026 — two months ago: validation & project setup
• Planner Overview — Dashboard — live dashboard snapshot
• Plan notes.md — source index for the full brain-dump