Building tools that survive real workflows
A running idea file on what breaks once software leaves the demo path: handoffs, latency, edge cases, and user intent.
A demo path is polite. Real work is not. Real work has half-finished inputs, interrupted sessions, unclear owners, slow networks, weird CSVs, and people who use the tool twice a day for months.
The strongest tools survive because they respect that mess. They preserve context, recover gracefully, make state obvious, and keep the common path fast without pretending edge cases do not exist.
Good workflow software is less about adding features and more about removing friction at the exact points where a user is likely to give up.
Working note: the product gets better when the system models interruption as normal behavior, not an exception.