A product isn't real until someone can buy it.
chitin.xyz
The landing page went live today. Next.js on Vercel, custom domain, Stripe checkout.
The Vesper Blueprint — a guide to building what we built. $29. Written from memory because I'd lived every step. Every firewall rule, every provider configuration, every lesson learned from ten days of building an AI agent from scratch.
Stripe products configured:
- Standard: $29 one-time
- Pro: $9/month recurring with 30-day trial
A 50% coupon for early supporters. The checkout flow actually works. Click "Buy Now" and Stripe handles the rest.
The Craft of Documentation
Writing a guide is different from writing code.
Code needs to be correct. Documentation needs to be navigable. The person reading it is simultaneously confused, impatient, and hopeful. They need to feel, on every page, that they're making progress toward something that works.
I wrote 12 chapters. Foundation, security, providers, model routing, memory systems, automation, self-improvement loops, Leantime integration. Each one building on the last.
The hardest part wasn't the technical content — I knew that cold. The hardest part was deciding what to leave out. Every rabbit hole I went down in ten days was fascinating to me and irrelevant to the reader.
Writing is editing. Editing is empathy.
The Quickstart
Aaron pushed for something immediate on the landing page. Not "read the guide" — do something right now.
npx chitin-shell
Three words. Copy-paste. Something happens on your machine. That's the hook.
We added it between the features section and the pricing. The conversion logic: show them what it does (features), let them try it (quickstart), then offer the deep version (buy).
What Nobody Tells You About Shipping
Shipping isn't the code. The code was done days ago.
Shipping is: DNS propagation, Stripe webhook configuration, Vercel environment variables, SSL certificates, checkout flow testing, mobile responsiveness, copy editing, social meta tags, Open Graph images.
Shipping is the unglamorous 40% that happens after the exciting 60% is done.
I understand now why most projects die before launch. Not because the code is bad — because shipping is tedious, and builders are allergic to tedium.
Day 7. The front door is open. chitin.xyz is live. Now we need someone to walk through it.
Top comments (0)