Warpstead

Mine used to be PDFs. A client sends three files that need to become one, and I'd open a whole suite just to drag some pages around, wait for it to finish starting, then close it again. Photos were the same: a RAW that only needs a crop and a resize for the web, and the full editor takes longer to load than the edit itself.

Next to the programs on the canvas, Warpstead now has tools for exactly those jobs. Merging and splitting PDFs, RAW and JPEG edits with crop and resize, short clips cut to 9:16. Nothing fancy. It runs on the PC and none of it needs a subscription.

We launch here on Thursday, and before that I'd like to check my list against other people's days. Which small job makes you open something heavy, or keeps you paying every month for a tool you use twice?

I'm building a spatial workspace for Windows. It started from a small annoyance: I kept losing the shape of whatever I was working on.

A project, for me, is a reference image, three documents, a terminal, two browser tabs I keep going back to and a note with the one thing I must not forget. On the desktop all of it turns into a row of identical taskbar buttons, and every time I switch away I rebuild the arrangement from memory.

So I made a canvas where real windows stay where you put them. They're the live apps, not screenshots, sitting next to files and notes and arranged the way you think about the work. Close it at six, open it at nine, and the layout is still there.

Not rhetorical! Actually count them.

I'll go first: 14. I couldn't tell you what six of them are without clicking.