Palette
Member since May 2026
@Jesi
Heart Mage
Jesi is an artist who enjoys creating worlds and experimenting with new technology. She is an illustrator and writer cre…
Details
Medium:Web App
Current Status:Flowing
Project Started:May 5
Last Updated:Jun 22
Description
The thing you're literally looking at. A creative dashboard for ongoing projects, built with Next.JS, Vercel, Upstash Redis, Neon + BetterAuth, Claude, and Cursor. Also Leveraging art mixing and brush javascript libraries from MIT in Canvas. Not 100% sure where I'm going with this - I just like the idea and it's been an exciting learning process.
Links & Attachments
Canvas Sketches
Timeline
Ask questions or encourage the creator with reactions, replies, and quick sketches.
Note Thumbnail:
It's been 310 commits since my last update on Palette lol. Here's what's shipped:
Darkroom: a photo-gallery space where project images hang on clothespin strings; rotate/reorder polaroids, contact sheets, sealed galleries, B&W toggle, lightbox, public page, and an Explore card.
Bookshelf Bedlam: a full Matter.js physics mini-game with combos, a shelf-hopping fox, three power-ups, per-difficulty leaderboards, device filters, and a mobile rebalance.
Goals: project milestones with due dates, multi-goal support, progress bars, and email nudges when one's coming due.
Project page redesign: tabbed hero (Timeline / Details / Attached / Sharing) with the Complete ceremony pulled into its own flow.
Moderation system: admin warning flow with a Palette persona, age gating, content reporting on replies and projects, and a super-admin tier with crown badges.
AI-use disclosure: an AI-use field on projects with a 3-way Explore filter, plus per-viewer controls to hide content or a whole creator.
Creative nudges: illustrated postcard emails that go out after 30/60/90 days of inactivity.
Medium field: a project medium with autocomplete and a Discover filter.
Infrastructure: migrated Redis to per-project keys, added rate limiting, server-enforced storage/project limits, analytics, speed insights, an error boundary, and a follower index for publish fan-out.
Design system: type-scale and color tokens, an italic-discipline pass, re-exported icons, status pills, a shared CardAvatar, and responsive nav (desktop sidebar / mobile top bar).
Canvas: a floating tracing-paper layer, async autosave to kill the mid-stroke hang, new brushes and paper, and a full mobile-parity toolbar refactor.
Circle: chronological activity feed with congratulate buttons, inline guestbook signing, goal-completion celebrations, and Darkroom milestones.
Sign-up & onboarding: redesigned sign-up/landing page, plus tut.
And still looking forward... : )
Darkroom: a photo-gallery space where project images hang on clothespin strings; rotate/reorder polaroids, contact sheets, sealed galleries, B&W toggle, lightbox, public page, and an Explore card.
Bookshelf Bedlam: a full Matter.js physics mini-game with combos, a shelf-hopping fox, three power-ups, per-difficulty leaderboards, device filters, and a mobile rebalance.
Goals: project milestones with due dates, multi-goal support, progress bars, and email nudges when one's coming due.
Project page redesign: tabbed hero (Timeline / Details / Attached / Sharing) with the Complete ceremony pulled into its own flow.
Moderation system: admin warning flow with a Palette persona, age gating, content reporting on replies and projects, and a super-admin tier with crown badges.
AI-use disclosure: an AI-use field on projects with a 3-way Explore filter, plus per-viewer controls to hide content or a whole creator.
Creative nudges: illustrated postcard emails that go out after 30/60/90 days of inactivity.
Medium field: a project medium with autocomplete and a Discover filter.
Infrastructure: migrated Redis to per-project keys, added rate limiting, server-enforced storage/project limits, analytics, speed insights, an error boundary, and a follower index for publish fan-out.
Design system: type-scale and color tokens, an italic-discipline pass, re-exported icons, status pills, a shared CardAvatar, and responsive nav (desktop sidebar / mobile top bar).
Canvas: a floating tracing-paper layer, async autosave to kill the mid-stroke hang, new brushes and paper, and a full mobile-parity toolbar refactor.
Circle: chronological activity feed with congratulate buttons, inline guestbook signing, goal-completion celebrations, and Darkroom milestones.
Sign-up & onboarding: redesigned sign-up/landing page, plus tut.
And still looking forward... : )
1Making minor refinements in places and have been off and on testing Canvas. : ) Sketch done in Canvas! :D
1
Started with a shelf. Ended with a creative ecosystem.
Built the full Library system from scratch — a bookcase where completed projects live as books sized by how much you wrote, sitting alongside 37 earned achievement objects that appear silently when you hit milestones nobody told you about. The shelf is fully curated: tilt, scale, pad, layer, arrange. A Glowing Heart trophy waits for everyone who was here before today.
Added three tabs. Bookshelf is your archive and achievement display. Nook is your reading corner — saved Wow-To’s and Excerpts from creators you follow, displayed with a bookshelf icon because saving a guide is different from favoriting a project. Desk is where you write — a full block editor with chapters, headings, paragraphs with floating inline images, full-width image blocks, resources, autosave, undo/redo, spell check, markdown rendering, template picker, and a colored header bar that turns blue for Wow-To’s and teal for Excerpts.
Published guides surface everywhere — their own public URL, a modal from the project page that inspired them, mixed into Explore alongside projects with a type filter, mixed into Circle feeds as full cards. One shared GuideCard component used in all four places. Circle itself was rebuilt as a chronological activity feed — notes, completions, published guides, all flowing together from the people you follow.
Wired 36 badge triggers across 11 API routes. Built login tracking. Backfilled existing users retroactively. Set the launch date.
Meanwhile on Canvas: keyboard shortcuts including [ ] for brush size, tab navigation throughout, three new brushes with improved stroke quality, a tutorial for new users, and new paper sizes.
The app went from a project tracker to something that remembers what you made, celebrates how you made it, lets you draw and write about it, and teaches others what you learned.
Not bad for a weekend. 🎨
Sagan helped.
Built the full Library system from scratch — a bookcase where completed projects live as books sized by how much you wrote, sitting alongside 37 earned achievement objects that appear silently when you hit milestones nobody told you about. The shelf is fully curated: tilt, scale, pad, layer, arrange. A Glowing Heart trophy waits for everyone who was here before today.
Added three tabs. Bookshelf is your archive and achievement display. Nook is your reading corner — saved Wow-To’s and Excerpts from creators you follow, displayed with a bookshelf icon because saving a guide is different from favoriting a project. Desk is where you write — a full block editor with chapters, headings, paragraphs with floating inline images, full-width image blocks, resources, autosave, undo/redo, spell check, markdown rendering, template picker, and a colored header bar that turns blue for Wow-To’s and teal for Excerpts.
Published guides surface everywhere — their own public URL, a modal from the project page that inspired them, mixed into Explore alongside projects with a type filter, mixed into Circle feeds as full cards. One shared GuideCard component used in all four places. Circle itself was rebuilt as a chronological activity feed — notes, completions, published guides, all flowing together from the people you follow.
Wired 36 badge triggers across 11 API routes. Built login tracking. Backfilled existing users retroactively. Set the launch date.
Meanwhile on Canvas: keyboard shortcuts including [ ] for brush size, tab navigation throughout, three new brushes with improved stroke quality, a tutorial for new users, and new paper sizes.
The app went from a project tracker to something that remembers what you made, celebrates how you made it, lets you draw and write about it, and teaches others what you learned.
Not bad for a weekend. 🎨
Sagan helped.
1I did not waste my memorial day.
I shipped:
31 Palmoji + full picker system
Complete archive export with offline HTML
Circle card fixes
Public project page redesign
Tagging + blocking + notifications
Custom 404 pages
Redis dev/prod separation
CSS token system (30+ new variables)
Design system page
"Close Project" modal flow
Delete Project modal (nervous bird 🦤)
Complete Project ceremony (5 screens, book customization, 30 flourish corners, 24 shelf objects)
COMPLETING card with grace period + escape hatch
Guidelines updated
Codebase audit + cleanup
Explore filter toggle
Circle self-card
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Ps check out the reaction picker to see all the new reactions!
I shipped:
31 Palmoji + full picker system
Complete archive export with offline HTML
Circle card fixes
Public project page redesign
Tagging + blocking + notifications
Custom 404 pages
Redis dev/prod separation
CSS token system (30+ new variables)
Design system page
"Close Project" modal flow
Delete Project modal (nervous bird 🦤)
Complete Project ceremony (5 screens, book customization, 30 flourish corners, 24 shelf objects)
COMPLETING card with grace period + escape hatch
Guidelines updated
Codebase audit + cleanup
Explore filter toggle
Circle self-card
----
Ps check out the reaction picker to see all the new reactions!
Added some adorable new emoji's. I want to add a custom emoji picker soon!
What's new:
Major visual refresh across all pages, each with a distinct colored hero header and illustration. Circle and Explore (formerly Discover) both redesigned. Home dashboard now has four time-based greeting states with matching animals. Public profile rebuilt with polaroid avatar, edit drawer, and display name. Media expanded to support GIFs, MP4s, and document attachments. Visibility toggle redesigned with confirmation flow and illustrated animal cards. Security fixes across three API routes.
Coming soon:
Studio section (Canvas, Darkroom, Bookshelf), Archive flow with ZIP export and book spine display, nickname setup improvements, Umami analytics, admin panel, and a default onboarding Circle connection for new users.
Major visual refresh across all pages, each with a distinct colored hero header and illustration. Circle and Explore (formerly Discover) both redesigned. Home dashboard now has four time-based greeting states with matching animals. Public profile rebuilt with polaroid avatar, edit drawer, and display name. Media expanded to support GIFs, MP4s, and document attachments. Visibility toggle redesigned with confirmation flow and illustrated animal cards. Security fixes across three API routes.
Coming soon:
Studio section (Canvas, Darkroom, Bookshelf), Archive flow with ZIP export and book spine display, nickname setup improvements, Umami analytics, admin panel, and a default onboarding Circle connection for new users.
1❤️ 2
Testing new video upload. (You can upload gifs too...) ;)
❤️ 2
Goal reachedMay 20
set May 10 · completed May 20
Finish reformatting changes for project page and public page.
I... made another big set of updates. I don't know how I had energy to do this after full day orientation for my new counseling internship and some training. I'm a machine... not in a good way lol.
Anyway, I completely migrated our auth stack from clerk to better auth + neon. Reason being clerk.. wanted to charge $25/mo for something that really should be free at this scale. So I did some extra leg work to make it work and I think it's fine.
So.. today:
Still need to:
I'm almost ready for more test users!!!! :D So excited.
Anyway, I completely migrated our auth stack from clerk to better auth + neon. Reason being clerk.. wanted to charge $25/mo for something that really should be free at this scale. So I did some extra leg work to make it work and I think it's fine.
So.. today:
- Made some cleanup tweaks on the navigation (avatar stops flicker on load, reordered the nav links)
- Added notifications and favorites recently
- Added a change your avatar directly from new slide out side panel (from avatar)
- Fixed a duplicate bug on discover page from migration... caused duplicate projects lol (need to test this w/ one of my alpha users)
- Added a toggle to home page cards for viewing cover art! it's so neat!
- Fixed some responsive menus.
Still need to:
- Add some grid logic to cirlce page so that it doesn't become unwieldy when you have 20+ friends. although.. for an inner circle.. really? lol Maybe I should add rings lol.
- Local artist spotlight! love this idea.. but want to put it on hold until i have more users. Speaking of which...
I'm almost ready for more test users!!!! :D So excited.
❤️ 2
made big brand/visual lift today of the nav, the home page greeting, the cards (now have favorites) and the Circle page. Tightening up UX sutff really. Spent like two days doing cute graphics for the site in a cohesive palette. Check the graphics. :)
Contemplating notifications... i strictly didn't want toooo many notifications on the site. The intent is to be ... a site that isnt' screaming at you all the time but that feels cozy... and there for you only when you need it. if you want to explore a little that's fun too. Not sure if that's the right approach... but it's the current approach.
Contemplating notifications... i strictly didn't want toooo many notifications on the site. The intent is to be ... a site that isnt' screaming at you all the time but that feels cozy... and there for you only when you need it. if you want to explore a little that's fun too. Not sure if that's the right approach... but it's the current approach.
❤️ 1
