Overview
The Ship Monthly challenge is a goal I set for myself in 2026: create something meaningful every month and get it out of the backlog. The name is cleaner than the execution. Some months contain several builds, and some planned projects are deferred or dropped. The honest measure is that I ship a personal project most months.
The challenge is not about producing twelve demos. A project has to solve a problem, teach me something I care about, or create something another person can use.
Projects So Far
The work has ranged across brewing analytics, career data, coaching, open-source insurance, marketing, personal knowledge, family history, and quantified-self reporting.
January produced BrewCodex. February was my personal site. March produced SpikeForge, followed by the OpenLife Platform in April, Melopa in May, and the iFoundry site in June. July included a rebuilt family cookbook, a personal second brain, a biographer agent, and the Personal Annual Report.
The Shipping Test
The cadence is useful because my default instinct is to build a system for solving a whole class of problems. That can produce useful foundations. It can also leave the product itself unfinished.
The harder test is simple:
Did anything I built get in front of a real user?
Not designed, scaffolded, or described in a repository. Used. For some projects I am the user. For others, someone needs to visit the site, try the tool, read the report, or give feedback that changes the next version.
Read the Challenge Story
I wrote about the purpose, the projects, what AI changed, and the pattern I have to watch in Ship Monthly Challenge.