ELI

Devlog

• Introducing Lite Mode
  July 21, 2026 by Special_Cog#Lite Mode, #UX, #UI, #Design, #Philsophy

  WIP: Lite Mode A while ago, I wrote a post explaining why I refused to build a mobile app for ELI. I defended the desktop experience-the need for screen real estate, dual-monitor setups, and precise m... Continue reading
• Gamifying the Manuscript (Writing Sprints and Lipograms in Godot)
  July 20, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tutorial, #Writing Methods, #Gamifications, #Text Editor, #Author Mode, #Godot Engine

  Blank pages are intimidating. Sometimes, the hardest part of writing is simply letting yourself write badly. We get caught editing our first sentence over and over instead of pushing forward. When des... Continue reading
• Local-First Model Adapters (Implementing Groq, NVIDIA, and Ollama in Godot)
  July 19, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #AI, #Ollaama, #Groq, #Godot, #Architecture

  Integrating large language models into a desktop application without making it a bloated, cloud-dependent SaaS requires a clean, local-first abstraction layer. For ELI, I wanted to support both local... Continue reading
• No File Size Limits (The Benefit of Local Storage)
  July 18, 2026 by Special_Cog#DevLog, #FantasyCartography, #Wonderdraft, #Worldbuilding, #TTRPTG, #AntiSaaS

  There is a very specific frustration that every Game Master who uses a cloud-based worldbuilder has experienced. You spend three hours in Photoshop (or Wonderdraft) crafting a gorgeous, 8K resolution... Continue reading
• ELI vs The Industry Standard (articy:draft)
  July 17, 2026 by Special_Cog#ArticyDraft, #GameDev, #Worldbuilding, #AntiSaaS, #TTRPG, #SoloDev

  When I talk about ELI being a structured, offline-first database rather than just a folder of text files, there is one piece of software that always gets brought up by power users: articy:draft . I wa... Continue reading
• Rebuilding a Keyboard-First Freeform Board in Godot
  July 16, 2026 by Special_Cog#Freeform Board, #Godot Engine, #Software Engineering, #User Interace, #Brainstorming, #UI, #UX

  When I set out to build the Freeform Board feature for ELI, I wanted a tool that felt as fast and fluid as dedicated desktop brainstorming boards. You double-click to write, drag notes onto each other... Continue reading
• Exporting Without a Server (The Architecture of Single-File HTML Worlds)
  July 15, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #HTML Exporter, #Data Privacy, #Software Engineering, #Data Ownership

  One of the hardest problems in campaign management is sharing your world with players. If you use a cloud-based wiki, you are locked into a subscription. If you use a local-first desktop app like ELI,... Continue reading
• The Power of Spatially Unconstrained Brainstorming (The Freeform Board)
  July 14, 2026 by Special_Cog#Game Design, #Freeform Board, #Mindmap, #User Interface, #Tool, #Mind Map

  In an earlier log, I argued that infinite canvases are terrible for long-term lore. I explained that when a tool relies on spatial coordinates to show connections, the computer does not actually under... Continue reading
• ELI Update - 2026.07.13
  July 13, 2026 by Special_Cog#Release Notes, #Freeform Board, #HTML Export, #Godot Engine, #Solo Dev

  This update introduces a freeform visual brainstorming surface and a zero-server interactive HTML publication engine. I spent the last few weeks designing and coding a spatial layout tool for connecti... Continue reading
• Streamlined Multiplayer
  July 12, 2026 by Special_Cog#Postmrtem, #Multiplayer, #Solo Dev, #Self-Hosted, #Tailscale, #Pocketbase, #TTRPG, #Game Master

  ELI's multiplayer setup was built correctly before it was tested correctly. The architecture - PocketBase for the server, Tailscale for the encrypted tunnel, and an invite code that bundles the connec... Continue reading
• Author Mode+
  July 11, 2026 by Special_Cog#Writing Community, #NaNoWriMo, #Worldbuilding, #Fantasy Author, #Solo Dev, #Author Tools, #Tech Discussion, #Aurhor, #Wiriting

  ELI has had a writing mode since early in development. The idea was simple: same database, different view. Flip from the GM encyclopedia layout to a Scrivener-style binder, and write your chapters dir... Continue reading

  
• Solo RPG Integration (Ironsworn, Character Sheets, and Progress Tracks in the Play Tab)
  July 10, 2026 by Special_Cog#Solo RPG, #Ironsworn, #Note Taking, #Worldbuilding, #Writing

  When I set out to build ELI, it was meant to be a worldbuilding notebook. But a notebook is where you prepare a world, and if you play solo journaling RPGs, the notebook is also where the game happens... Continue reading
• A Longevity-Friendly Modding and Pack Format (Unexecutable .eli-pack Packages)
  July 09, 2026 by Special_Cog#Culture, #UGC, #Modding, #Packs, #Security, #Offline First

  One of the harder problems in niche software is that the people who need it most are the ones who have to build everything from scratch. You buy a worldbuilding tool, open it up, and face a blank data... Continue reading
• Parsing Adventure PDFs into Relational Databases (No Python Regex Required)
  July 08, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #PDF, #PDFium, #TTRPG, #PDF Ingestion, #Database

  Getting tabletop adventure books out of standard PDF formats and into a usable relational database is a massive friction point. Most developers try to solve this with custom, brittle Python scripts or... Continue reading
• I Use Obsidian. I Built ELI. Here Is How They Now Talk to Each Other.
  July 07, 2026 by Special_Cog#Obsidian, #Worldbuilding, #Writing Tools, #TTRPGS, #Solo Dev, #PKM, #Onboarding

  A lot of writers and worldbuilders live in two places at once. They have an Obsidian vault for daily notes, research dumps, and scattered lore fragments, and then they have ELI for the structured, rel... Continue reading
• Postmortem: Release 2026-06-22
  July 06, 2026 by Special_Cog#Postmertem, #Multiplayer, #UI Design, #PDF Viewer, #Automated Testing, #Tailscale, #PocketBase, #Asset Management

  This update was driven entirely by testing friction. The underlying systems I built for local-first multiplayer and document editing were architecturally sound, but their implementation details fell a... Continue reading
• ELI Update - 2026.07.05
  July 05, 2026 by Special_Cog#Releases, #Solo RPG, #Obsidian, #Content Packs, #Obsidian Importer, #macOS, #Self-Hosted

  This update expands ELI from a structured campaign notebook into an interactive tool for running and playing games. I spent the last few weeks building an offline-first solo play space, streamlining t... Continue reading
• Why Infinite Canvases Are Terrible for Lore (The Case for Structured Database Views)
  July 04, 2026 by Special_Cog#Game Design, #UI/UX, #Infinite Canvas, #Database, #Worldbuilding, #Data Architecture

  There is a massive trend in productivity software right now: the Infinite Canvas (Miro, Obsidian Canvas, Milanote) and pure Markdown folders (Obsidian, AnyType). These tools give you a limitless white... Continue reading
• Local-First PO Localization Migration (Scaling up Translations)
  July 03, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #Localization, #Translation, #PO Files, #Godot

  In standard Godot projects, translations are typically managed using large comma-separated values (CSV) files that compile into .translation files. While CSVs are easy to start with, they quickly beco... Continue reading
• The Snapshot System (Version Control for Novelists)
  July 02, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tutorial, #Writing, #Version Control, #NaNoWriMo, #Organization, #Databse

  If you are a software engineer, you use Git. Before you make a massive, risky change to your code, you commit your current work. If the new code breaks everything, you simply revert to the previous co... Continue reading

  
• Flat Files vs. Relational Databases (Why 10,000 JSON Files is a Bad Idea)
  July 01, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #SQLite, #Software Architecture, #Data Ownership, #Performance, #Solo Dev

  When building a local-first application, the most fundamental architectural choice a developer makes is how to save data to the hard drive. Currently, the indie development trend is to save everything... Continue reading
• Word Count Tracking Without Cloud Analytics
  June 30, 2026 by Special_Cog#Game Design, #Writing, #NaNoWriMo, #Privacy, #Word Count

  Every November, hundreds of thousands of writers participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. To achieve this, you have to track your daily wo... Continue reading
• Zero Telemetry: Why I Have No Idea How You Use My App
  June 29, 2026 by Special_Cog#Culture, #Privacy, #Telementry, #Solo Dev, #Anti-SaaS, #Data Security

  If you open the settings menu of almost any productivity app today, you will find a toggle labeled "Share anonymous usage data to help us improve the app." It is usually turned on by default. This is... Continue reading
• Handling Database Schema Migrations as a Solo Dev
  June 28, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #SQLite, #Database, #Migrations, #Solo Dev, #Architecture

  When you build a cloud-based web app, updating the database schema is an orchestrated event. You schedule maintenance, spin down the servers, run an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) migration script ac... Continue reading
• The Dual-Shard Sync Architecture (Handling Offline Conflicts)
  June 27, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #Sync, #Multiplayer, #Offline First, #CRDT, #Architecture

  Multiplayer sync is one of the hardest problem in computer science. If two people are editing a Google Doc at the same time, the server uses complex algorithms (Operational Transformation or CRDTs) to... Continue reading
• Game Design: Managing Complex Family Trees (Agnostic Relational Graphs)
  June 26, 2026 by Special_Cog#Game Design, #Worldbuilding, #Lore, #Genealogy, #Database, #Fantasy, #Relationships

  If you write Fantasy or Sci-Fi, family trees are rarely simple. Most genealogy software and worldbuilding apps assume a strict biological hierarchy: a mother and a father produce a child, forming a cl... Continue reading
• Stop Paying for "Dark Mode"
  June 25, 2026 by Special_Cog#UI/UX, #Dark Mode, #Accessibility, #Design

  There is a deeply anti-consumer trend in the productivity software industry that needs to be called out: locking basic UI accessibility features behind premium subscriptions. The most egregious exampl... Continue reading
• Curing Wiki Rot with Backlinks and Unlinked Mentions
  June 24, 2026 by Special_Cog#WIki, #PKM, #Backlinks, #Worldbuilding, #Lore

  If you have ever tried to maintain a massive worldbuilding wiki on a tool like Notion or a private MediaWiki server, you have probably experienced "Wiki Rot." Wiki Rot happens when you write a beautif... Continue reading
• Postmortem: Release 2026-06-15
  June 23, 2026 by Special_Cog#Postmorem, #Solo Dev, #Playtesting, #Godot, #Sync, #Bug Fixes

  I can test ELI by myself all day. I am one person, on one machine, with one account, who knows exactly which buttons not to press. That is the worst possible QA environment, and the last update proved... Continue reading

  
• Update - 2026.06.22
  June 22, 2026 by Special_Cog#Update, #Worldbuilding, #TTRPG, #Writing Tools, #Godot, #Solo Dev

  This is the biggest update I have shipped since launch. The last build was a solid single-player notebook. This one turns ELI into something you can actually run a table on - with a live collaborative... Continue reading
• Replacing Elasticsearch with SQLite (Custom FTS Engine)
  June 21, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #SQLite, #Search, #Godot Engine, #Performance

  If you have a worldbuilding wiki with 5,000 entities and 500,000 words of lore, the "Search" function is the most critical feature in the application. If you type "Dragon" into the search bar, the app... Continue reading
• Game Design: Building a Custom Calendar System
  June 20, 2026 by Special_Cog#Game Design, #Worldbuilding, #Timelines, #Calendars, #TTRPG

  If you try to write a program that calculates exactly how many days have passed between March 1, 1900, and March 1, 2024, you have to account for leap years, the exact duration of February, and timezo... Continue reading
• Open Data vs. Proprietary Lock-in
  June 19, 2026 by Special_Cog#Culture, #Data Ownership, #Markdown, #SQLite, #Anti-SaaS

  The SaaS industry relies on a business model called "Vendor Lock-In." The goal of a SaaS productivity app is to make it incredibly easy for you to import your data, and incredibly difficult for you to... Continue reading
• The JSON-Driven Onboarding Tour
  June 18, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tutorial, #Godot, #JSON, #UI/UX, #Onboarding

  If you drop a new user into a massive, blank relational database, they will uninstall your application within 60 seconds. You have to teach them how to use it. The traditional way to do this in softwa... Continue reading
• ELI Release 2026-06-15
  June 17, 2026 by Special_Cog#TTRTPG, #Worldbuilding, #DMTools, #OfflineFirst, #Godot

  I just pushed a new release for ELI. The last few days have been focused heavily on onboarding, session synchronization, and stabilizing the foundation. Here is exactly what changed. Interactive Walkt... Continue reading
• Built for Power Users, Not Casuals
  June 16, 2026 by Special_Cog#UI/UX, #Power Users, #Desktop App

  There is a golden rule in Silicon Valley UI design: "Make it so simple your grandmother could use it." Apps are designed with massive, thumb-friendly buttons, endless white space, and deeply hidden se... Continue reading
• Why Godot is a Terrible (But Perfect) Choice for Desktop Apps
  June 15, 2026 by Special_Cog#Tech Discussion, #Godot Engine, #Electron, #Performance, #Desktop App

  If you are a software developer building a desktop application today, the industry tells you to use Electron, Tauri, or React Native. Notion, Obsidian, Discord, and Slack are all essentially Chromium... Continue reading
• Why SaaS Subscriptions Are a Scam for Writers
  June 14, 2026 by Special_Cog#Pricing, #Writing Community, #Data Ownership

  If you are a writer, your creative timeline is measured in years, not months. It takes an average of two to three years to outline, draft, and edit a novel. If you are a Game Master, a D&D campaign ca... Continue reading
• First Launch Post-Mortem & Roadmap Update
  June 13, 2026 by Special_Cog#DevLog, #GameDev, #GodotEngine

  The first launch of ELI is out in the wild. As a solo developer, getting real user feedback is invaluable, but it also means seeing exactly where your architectural blind spots are. I want to give a t... Continue reading
• ELI vs The TTRPG Worldbuilders
  June 12, 2026 by Special_Cog#Worldbuilding, #TTRPG, #GameMaster, #DnD, #WorldAnvil, #LocalFist, #SoloDev

  (World Anvil, Kanka, Campfire, and Fantasia Archive) In the previous logs, we covered how ELI compares to Manuscripts (Scrivener) and PKMs (Obsidian). Today, we are looking at the final bucket: Dedica... Continue reading
• ELI vs The PKM Giants
  June 11, 2026 by Special_Cog#PKM, #Obsidian, #Notion, #Worldbuilding, #TTRPG, #LocalFirst, #SoloDev

  (Obsidian, Notion, AnyType, and OneNote) In the last log, I explained how ELI compares to the first bucket of the worldbuilding market: traditional "manuscript" tools like Scrivener and Google Docs. T... Continue reading
• ELI vs The "Manuscript" Giants
  June 10, 2026 by Special_Cog#Worldbuilding, #TTRPG, #OfflineFirst, #GodotEngine, #WritingCommunity

  (Scrivener, Google Docs, and Word) I get asked fairly often how ELI compares to traditional writing software. Instead of a standard feature matrix, I want to explain why I built ELI the way I did, wha... Continue reading
• Why Was AI (LLMs) Used?
  June 09, 2026 by Special_Cog#AI, #LLM, #But Why Though?

  I want to state, that I do get the hate around AI and LLMs. My full-time work is already impacted with forced usage of LLMS and the industry that I work in (finance) is one of the highest areas for be... Continue reading
• ​ELI is Live - Closed Beta Now Open
  June 09, 2026 by Special_Cog

  After way too long staring at tools that weren't quite right, ELI is finally at a point where other people can use it. This is a closed beta - restricted access, early access, rough edges and all. If... Continue reading