Stay on top of Spyrate’s latest features, growth strategies, and behind-the-scenes developments.
Spent time improving the landing page by adding an interactive UI element. Happy with the progress but unsure about the feature list placement. Debating whether to follow Laravel Cloud’s design or adapt it more uniquely.
Davy de Vries
Captain 🏴☠️
Had low energy and no motivation to work on onboarding today, so I focused on small but necessary fixes. Added a loading spinner and disabled states for the next button. Improved OpenAI’s company industry prompt to make onboarding smoother. Looking to refine the landing page next.
Davy de VriesRefactored the onboarding flow into three mini-steps, making it clearer and more structured. Need to add validation checks to prevent skipping steps. Also set up a dedicated workspace at my parents' place for better focus during spare time.
Davy de VriesWorked on onboarding and Laravel guest layout for authentication flows. Happy with the layout but not convinced about the onboarding steps, which may be too difficult for users. Had a valuable discussion with my boss on pricing and monitor intervals.
Davy de VriesCompleted the detail activity UI with a clean, accordion-style interface. Updated the landing page hero image to reflect the product's simplicity. Improved job execution by chaining tasks efficiently. Discussed onboarding improvements to streamline monitor creation for B2B users.
Davy de VriesSpent minimal time on Spyrate today but switched the database from MySQL to PostgreSQL in preparation for deploying to Laravel Cloud. Also tweeted a bit. Had to focus on my 9-5 job and Escape Hotel business. Hoping to finalize the monitor header UI tomorrow.
Davy de VriesStruggled with how to handle the analysis pricing model—whether to allow multiple analyses per monitor. Decided against it for now to avoid complexity but questioned fairness for users. Implemented analysis types with a flexible model structure, though progress felt slow.
Davy de VriesSpent the day improving AI accuracy after OpenAI’s screenshot analysis proved unreliable. Tested Amazon Textract, Amazon Rekognition, and Google Vision—ultimately choosing Google Vision for better parsed text. Implemented it before AI analysis, leading to solid results but requiring case-specific prompts.
Davy de VriesSpent the entire day working on AI price analysis. The flow works well, but testing revealed disappointing results. Price extraction is fine, but plan names are hallucinating. Also had to revert AWS Lambda image processing to PNG as OpenAI didn’t support WebP.
Davy de VriesSpent limited time preparing for the AI analysis job and refactoring some files. Got sidetracked by Ahrefs analysis for another business, leading to a quick fix that consumed the evening. Happy it’s resolved but disappointed about the time lost for Spyrate.
Davy de VriesDiscovered that my worker used half of my monthly Vercel usage overnight, making it unsustainable for production. Spent the entire day moving the job to AWS Lambda, S3, and Bunny for low-cost image serving. Frustrating but necessary. Tomorrow, I need to fix AI analysis before working on the monitor activity detail UI.
Davy de VriesCompleted Stripe billing tasks, refined the block page, and made significant progress on the monitor detail view. Worked on sub-components like the monitor activity feed and started designing the monitor activity detail view, though still unsure of the final approach.
Davy de VriesWorked on billing jobs and logic, adding a block page for non-subscribers trying to add monitors. Fixed Stripe rate limits using Laravel’s ShouldBeUniqueUntilProcessing. Received UI feedback on the timeline (formerly activity feed) and will process it next.
Davy de VriesSpent the day troubleshooting Stripe webhook issues and Docker setup. Worked on improving monitor management by adding dropdowns and modals for editing and deleting. Frustrating day overall with lack of social media activity.
Davy de VriesSpent the day refactoring and restructuring code while improving the layout. Worked on tooltips, the activity feed, and screen captures. Also got in touch with someone from a different sector who introduced new use cases for Spyrate, sparking new ideas.
Davy de VriesDiscovered the Twitter follow link, brainstormed a potential upsell feature, and quickly changed the layout, which already feels much better. Also improved the screenshot endpoint while losing time on tiny details. Need to think more about the upsell implementation.
Davy de VriesMigrated from SQLite to MySQL/MariaDB, which required changes to foreign keys and almost every migration. Cleaned up some code. Considering revamping the UI for more screen space but unsure if it will delay progress. Minimal marketing efforts, Google Search Console still underwhelming, and no waiting list sign-ups yet.
Davy de VriesWorked on data modelling for monitor activity and related sub-models. Resolved migration issues and established a solid database structure for future features. Started designing the activity feed, still a work in progress. Looking forward to continuing with the feed next.
Davy de VriesMade small SEO fixes like adding missing keywords and a canonical tag. Discovered a spam email subscription issue and fixed automatic signups. Disappointed about not working on the product or tweeting, but adjustments are in place for better control moving forward.
Davy de VriesFixed JSON-LD structured data for better SEO, implemented favicons, and submitted the Stripe approval application. Now shifting focus back to product development, starting with the monitor activity feed. Evaluating marketing strategies for pricing intelligence and competitor price tracking.
Davy de VriesFinished the blog UI and renamed it back to 'Blog' for better SEO and clarity. Added structured data to blog posts to improve indexing and organic traffic. Organized content with categories for flexibility. Next up: resubmitting Stripe details for approval.
Davy de VriesFocused on SEO improvements by creating a sitemap and fixing robots.txt. Started preparing content for the pricing intelligence blog while refining its UI. Found Next.js MDX docs and Lee Robinson’s repo helpful. Limited time today, so no progress on the product.
Davy de VriesI built the Spyrate landing page, starting with AI-generated UI, but it didn’t work out. Switching to Tailwind UI made all the difference. Focused on competitor price tracking, pricing intelligence, and instant alerts. Now it’s simple, clear, and ready to build on.
Davy de Vries