Spencer Pauly
I build useful products and the systems behind them.
Product-minded engineer. Based in Minneapolis.Projects
Ideas made real01Project
A habit calendar that lives inside my notes
I used to track habits on a whiteboard calendar, marking an X on every day I worked on a side project. When I needed the whiteboard for something else I moved to printed calendars taped to…
02Project
Building my own fantasy football draft board
Every year I go into my fantasy draft with a list of players I like, and every year that list falls apart by round three. The rankings you find online are averages. They tell you where a…
03Project
E2E tests that survive moving a button
At one point I merged what I thought was a harmless UI change. I moved a button. Dozens of E2E tests failed overnight, and none of them had found a real bug. The tests weren't catching…
04Project
Tracking my lifts without another gym app
I've been going to the gym consistently for a couple years, and the tracking part never stuck. Every lifting app wants an account, a subscription, and a tour of its features before it'll…
05Project
A tiny service that keeps my APIs warm
Serverless is great until the first person to visit your app in a while has to sit through a cold start. Nothing is broken, but the app feels slow, and slow is the impression people keep.…
06Project
Turning Notion pages into a real help center
A lot of small companies already write their documentation in Notion. It's where the team lives, so it's where the knowledge ends up. The problem is what happens when you want customers to…
07Project
The app I built for cross-country skiers
Cross-country skiing has a funny information problem. Whether a trail is worth driving to depends on conditions that change by the hour, and the people who actually know are already out on…
08Project
I rebuilt one of my first coding projects
One of the first things I ever coded was a small tool to look up my most listened to Spotify tracks. Spotify only hands you that list once a year with Wrapped, and I wanted to see it…
Writing
26 posts & countingA little more
Beyond the screenIndependent builderProducts, interfaces, and the operational details.
Cross-country skierUsually thinking about trail conditions.
Always writingLong posts and tweets belong in the same archive.