The best tools disappear. You stop thinking about the tool and start thinking about what you’re making.
Software that gets out of the way
Most software has feature creep built into its business model. More features justify the subscription. The ideal from a product perspective is engagement, which means the tool stays visible.
The ideal from a user perspective is the opposite.
Analog examples
A good pencil. A decent knife. A notebook with paper that doesn’t bleed through.
None of these are optimized. None of them have roadmaps. They just work, reliably, until they don’t.
The hard part
Building small, focused tools requires discipline. The temptation is to add the thing that 20% of users want, then the thing that another 10% want, until you have a thing that does everything adequately and nothing well.
Saying no is harder than saying yes. This is true for tools and for writing.
This site is a small tool. The goal is for it to stay that way.