I spent 5 years building a dev environment I could use from my phone. Here's what I learned.

Yrkit — Sat, 02 May 2026 14:20:15 +0000

In 2021, I broke my humerus. My arm literally split in two.
I was a developer with client projects to deliver, and I couldn't sit at a desk. Couldn't type comfortably. Couldn't do the constant file switching and context switching that my workflow demanded at the time.
So I did what any slightly stubborn developer would do: I built something.

The first problem: too many files, too many languages
Every project I had involved the same boilerplate. HTML here, CSS there, a JS file, a Python script, a bash file for deployment. Switching between them constantly, copying repeated code across projects, maintaining the same structure over and over.
With one functioning arm, that was exhausting.
I started building Yr — a markup DSL where HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python and Bash coexist in a single .yr file, separated by simple section markers:

< — HTML

— CSS

@@ — Frontend JS
&& — Backend Node.js
** — DevOps (build, serve, deploy)
!! — import other .yr files as components
No variables or loops yet. It's not a general-purpose language. But it solved my immediate problem: one file, one mental model, full stack.
I've written every client project in it since. It works in production.

The second problem: being stuck at a desk
As I kept developing, something else became clear. I wanted to code from anywhere. Not "the laptop is in the other room" anywhere — I mean from my phone, lying on the couch next to my wife, or from a hospital bed, or traveling.
In 2024 I was on the road for months. I used what I was building to keep shipping client projects the entire time. Write, run, deploy — from a phone screen.
Most dev tools assume you're sitting at a good machine. I kept running into that assumption and wanting to break it.

What I ended up building
What started as a language to reduce boilerplate became a full platform.
Yrkit is a cloud IDE with:

A browser-based code editor that works on mobile — any language, not just Yr
A drag-and-drop visual page builder (Yr-native, exports clean HTML)
CI/CD pipeline — build, serve and deploy per project from the same browser tab
Database manager
Project kanban
AI copilot — BYOK (Anthropic or OpenAI, your key, at cost, permanently)

I built every part of it because I kept reaching for an external tool and deciding to build it inside Yrkit instead.

What I learned in 5 years of building solo

Building for your own problem is sustainable. I never lost motivation because I used the thing I was building every single day. Every improvement made my own life better immediately.
Scope creep can be a feature. What started as a language became an IDE became a visual builder became a CI/CD tool. I didn't plan any of that. I followed what I actually needed.
Launching is harder than building. I spent 5 years building and about 2 weeks learning how to talk about it. Turns out explaining what you built to someone who wasn't there for the journey is a completely different skill.
"Works in production" means something. Not "works in my tests." Not "works in the demo." Works on real client projects, delivered, paid for, used. That's the bar I held myself to.

Where it is now
Early beta. Has bugs. Works in production.
I'm looking for early adopters — developers who want a portable dev environment and are willing to use something rough around the edges in exchange for locked-in pricing and direct access to the person building it.
50 spots. 50 left.
If you've ever wanted to code from anywhere without setting up a local environment on every device — I'd love to hear what you think.

App: https://app.yrkit.com
Site: https://yrkit.com
Yr on GitHub: https://github.com/yr-lang/yr
Yr docs: https://yr-lang.org/docs

— Matheus, solo dev from Brazil

DEV Community: Yrkit

I spent 5 years building a dev environment I could use from my phone. Here's what I learned.

— CSS