I have had a habit of building side projects just as an excuse to try a new technology.

• I tried building a linux client (from total scratch) for an app like loom. That was an excuse to build something with rust.
• Tried building a file relay server with go. Mostly to get hands on with network programming in go. Will surely get back to that someday
• Built an easy github repo downloader. But was just an excuse to get back to using rust. (The site is down right now, but will rehost it soon)

But with sooo many incomplete side projects in my arsenel, now I feel confident to actually build and ship a product from end to end one can only wonder if I can actually even ship something that is truely useful to someone! Well at least I did.

And so with my next side project I am determined to take it all the way! Build something that someone else can find and use on their own

Without me sitting and explaining "Ya that is a known bug. Just try doing it this way, it will definately work this time" 🤦🏻

So this time, it wasn't a side project, it was a side product!

Problem to solve

This is one that has been in my ideas doc for a very long time.

I wanted a simple way to transfer text/files across my devices. The whole concept of messaging myself just felt absurd. So absurd, that I renamed my own contact to Notes just so it is clear that this inbox in my messaging apps is for note taking. Which eventually, just made it even more absurd!

I always used a clipboard manager on linux. But ever since I shifted to mac, haven't installed one yet. I then thought that what I mostly need is an easy way to not just organise my clipboard, but also share these copied clips across my devices.

That sounds absurd as I write it, but trust me it makes sense, I'll explain.

So I am building ClipSync^TM. An app that syncs your clipboard across all your devices (mac/windows/linux) and is also usable on web and mobile(trying to build an installable PWA)

Product vision

I will initially pitch this, just as a simple clipboard manager that syncs across your devices.

But eventually I plan on adding support for images and documents too.

My target audience is inspired from me.I am an electron developer who has to test my app across all platforms.

The only thing that pushed me to finally start building this was when I had to log into slack for the millionth time on my windows machine only to share an error message or a config to setup the testing environment.

So I am hoping to get initial users by specifically targetting this niche of developers. The tool can obviously be used by anyone else too, but this reduces my barrier to entry (by loosely defining my customer) as a first time marketter.

Also I have a few friends, to whom I have already pitched the idea and they are waiting for version 1 (I have pushed the promised deadline for a v0 several times now 😬)

Security!!!

Security is a top priority for me here, because your clipboad, more often than not, contains sensitive information --

• passwords
• personal details like phone numbers, addresses, etc
• that message to your crush that you eventually deleted and never sent!

You wouldn't want me (or anyone else) to read these while my app is busy syncing them over to your other device.

And so every clip, from the moment it is intercepted, will be encrypted.

And whenever you will add a new device, the encryption key will be generated and stored in the device only after you enter the secret passphrase (this will not be saved in the backend, so if you loose this, everything will be lost)

For all the devs grimacing over me for explaining encryption in the most incorrect way, please spare me. I will write a separate post about that soon

Features in V0

1. Simple clipboard manager
2. Clip syncing across all added devices
3. End-to-end clip encryption
4. Adding multiple devices using passphrase
5. PWA that would be the interface on mobile

As I write this, I think I am over-shooting again, but most of this almost ready.

My goals with this

Ship something useful!!!

That is it. Every decision that I make is based on this. This is why I gave up on using any new technologies this time.

I have learnt that, while I am still figuring out how to use a language or stack, it becomes harder to quickly implement a solution for the problem at hand.

And this time, to stay motivated, I need to keep seeing some progress. So I decided to use things I am quite familiar with

Tech stack

• Firebase
• Electron
• React

I am comfortable with using all these at work. And so far I have realised that yet I have a lotttt to learn on these too.

And the firebase sdks are just a pain to work with inside electron's main process. Saving that anger for later.

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I have planned to be more active on sharing my progress and updates. This post is an official announcement to my small siloed world that this has been under the works for a while now.

mostly just for me to get comfortable with talking more about this.