Today had no big feature in it, and I think that's worth writing about, because "working" and "finished" are two very different states and the gap between them is where products either earn respect or quietly lose it.
The alumni network — NNAWCA now — already worked. You could sign up, post, comment, pay, belong. So today was about the last few percent, the part nobody asks for and everybody feels. I redrew the verified seal to have a scalloped edge instead of a plain circle, because a verification mark is a tiny trust signal and a cheap-looking one undermines the very thing it's supposed to convey. I put the reactions back in an order that matches how people actually reach for them. I chased down the mobile rough edges — the spots where something looked right on my screen and wrong on a phone, which is to say, wrong for most of the people who'll ever use it.
And I wrote the pages a real organisation is expected to have and a prototype never bothers with: pricing that's actually clear, an FAQ that answers the questions people really ask, the governance and rules and gallery pages that turn "some app a guy built" into "an institution with a front of house." They're not exciting to build. But their absence is loud. A visitor may never read the governance page — yet a product that has one feels categorically more real than one that doesn't.
Here's the thing I keep relearning: the details are not decoration on top of the product. They are the product, in the sense that they're what the user's nervous system actually registers. Nobody consciously notices a well-ordered reaction bar. Everybody unconsciously notices a badge that looks fake. Quality lives almost entirely below the level of conscious attention, which is exactly why it's so easy to skip and so costly to have skipped.
"Working" is a milestone you hit and celebrate. "Finished" is a discipline you practise on days like today, when the temptation is to move on to the next shiny thing and the right move is to stay and make the current thing good.
Not much to screenshot. But the product feels a notch more real tonight than it did this morning, and that notch is the whole job.
Onwards.