Maker Journal August 2026

August was probably one of the first months in 2026 when I actually felt a bit more relaxed.

After my mega freelance project made it through the big July event without major issues, I went on a solo trip to recharge. Coming back from that, I finally had a pretty chill August.

Well, except I got hit by influenza for a week, followed by another week of the after-effects. So health-wise, August wasn't exactly great.

But product-wise, I did a lot of cleanup.

I have been building too many things over the past year or two, and many of them are just sitting there. Even if they don't have users, they still take up mental space and require maintenance.

So August became the month when I finally made some decisions.

VisionGPT

I decided to keep VisionGPT.

I removed the payment gate and the email authentication requirement, so now users can just install and use the extension without going through all that.

I also upgraded it to support the latest ChatGPT models.

The main reason I decided to keep it is pretty simple: it's just a Chrome extension. There isn't much backend infrastructure to maintain, so maintenance costs are pretty low.

Markdown Web

Markdown Web is another Chrome extension I decided to keep.

Again, the reason is simple — Chrome extensions are relatively easy for me to maintain.

I also built a proper landing page for it because I'm going to let Markdown Web become its own standalone product instead of keeping it under ClipSend.

We'll see where it goes.

ClipSend

ClipSend is also a Chrome extension, but unlike VisionGPT and Markdown Web, it needs a backend service.

That means more things to maintain.

So I decided to remove the extension from the Chrome Web Store and clean up the landing page. I'm basically putting this product on hold for now.

RebuildHQ

This one took me quite a while to decide.

After many discussions with AI about my product portfolio, RebuildHQ was always one of those products that AI thinks should be relatively easy to monetize.

But honestly, I still doubt it.

In the end, I decided to close it down.

Instead of just killing the site, I built a proper product-closing page. At least it gives the product a proper ending.

MD2Page

I really love the latest MD2Page landing page.

Unfortunately, loving the landing page doesn't mean the product is working.

It never really got the traction I hoped for, so I decided to shut it down as well.

Same as RebuildHQ, I built a product closing page for it and called it a day.

HookFeed

HookFeed is a little different because I still really like the product idea.

But I'm not sure how it fits into the current AI and agent era anymore.

Instead of completely killing it, I used ChatGPT Sites to build a concept page and parked the idea there.

Maybe I'll revisit it one day with a different angle.

WebhookHQ

WebhookHQ is actually a product I finished building but never released.

Again, with the current agent era, all the Clawbot-style tools, Hermes and agents being able to handle so much by themselves, I'm starting to doubt whether we still need another dedicated webhook service.

So instead of launching it, I put a pause announcement on the landing page.

Same as HookFeed, I'm not completely killing the idea. Maybe there will be a reason to revisit it later.

BarPeek

Among all the new products I've built recently, this is the one I spent the most time cleaning up and preparing.

It started as CodexBar Mobile and later became BarPeek.

The idea is pretty simple: it's a native mobile companion app that lets you read your AI usage data from CodexBar running on your Mac.

A few indirect competitors already do something similar, so I'm not expecting this to become a huge product.

For me, BarPeek is also an experiment.

I'm using it to test and improve my AI Native Studio workflow—from idea and product development to App Store preparation, a landing page, and launch.

So even if the product stays small, I can still learn a lot by building and launching it.

A Great Cleanup and Restart

So yeah, that's pretty much my August.

Not a month where I launched a lot of things. In fact, I probably closed more products than I built.

But I think I needed this.

Sometimes building something new is easy. Deciding what not to continue building is much harder.

After all the cleanup, my product list feels much lighter, and I can finally put more attention into the few things I actually want to move forward with.

I would call August a great cleanup and restart.

Now let's see what I can actually launch in September.