shlife

Problem

Creative people accumulate projects everywhere — abandoned repos, random Notion pages, half-finished ideas on a hard drive. There’s no good way to revisit them, and even less of a way to share the journey (not just the polished final product).

Most portfolio tools optimize for the outcome: the live site, the case study, the deliverable. They implicitly say: only share when it’s done. That pressure quietly kills a lot of interesting work.

Process

I wanted a tool that felt like browsing a physical shelf — tactile, browsable, a little playful. The bookshelf metaphor isn’t just visual candy; it changes how you relate to your work. Books on a shelf are allowed to be unfinished. You can have a half-read book without shame.

Building it pushed me into Three.js territory for the 3D shelf rendering, which was new to me. I made peace with shipping “wet paint” — putting up the project while it was visibly unfinished — because that’s exactly the philosophy the tool is supposed to embody.

Solution

A project organizer with:

Visual bookshelf view — browse projects like books on a shelf
Filter options — sort by priority, deadline, last opened, or custom tags
Table view — customizable columns for a spreadsheet-style overview
Interactive pop-ups — hover a book to see project details without leaving the shelf
Philosophy baked in — designed to make sharing work-in-progress feel comfortable, not scary

“I still obsess over every pixel, every frame, every detail — but this is me getting comfortable with the wet paint.”

Problem

Process

Solution

Links