Aurelius

I've been working on a new version of Aurelius for a few weeks and I've rebuilt the majority of it. While doing this, I re-evaluated some key decisions about the app.

• The app is completely free to use and will stay that way.
• There is no signup/login. All data is saved locally, in your browser. I've also added a sync feature which can be used to keep your data on multiple browsers and devices.
• I've removed export for now and I'm thinking how to implement it better.

On monetization:

• Any updates to Aurelius will be available for free. At the moment, my expenses for running the app is very small so I don't mind keeping it free to use.
• Instead of adding paid features to the app, I'm planning to build a paid publishing platform like Substack or Ghost. Users who want to publish their work can subscribe to the platform.

When I made the last post, I had just started a new job. Soon after, my job started taking up most of my time and I barely had the energy and motivation to work on Aurelius or any side project.

But for the past few weeks, I've been consistently working on Aurelius. I haven't built out all the features I wanted in v1 but it's getting there. Here are the most important updates:

• Rewrote the app in Remix and the app feels much snappier and loads fast now.
• Major UI overhaul: I did this because I'm planning a completely offline-first desktop application. Web UI will behave more like a desktop app but I like how minimal it is and how the focus is on writing. Everything else is hidden away behind menus.
• Export to markdown is back but I also added export to an image. Modern writing should include posting on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. So exporting short posts as images will play a huge role in putting our writing out there.
• Writing sessions overhaul: Writing sessions are a great way to build a writing habit. You can start a writing session with a duration or a word count goal. Aurelius can notify you when you've reached your session goal but you can choose to keep going if you want to. It will also show you a summary of your session when you end it.
• More music channels are available — lofi hip-hop, chillwave, chill synth, and post-rock. You can pick the channel you want in settings. You can also use a custom Youtube Video or Playlist link for the music player. Aurelius will play the youtube link if available and play the chosen channel as a fallback.

I'm going to launch with this and continue building some of the other features I had planned along with some new ones. I'm also planning to monetize Aurelius with some of these features. Let's see how it goes.

Since I launched Aurelius, I've been using it regularly to write. Over the past few months, I've found some problems that I want to fix and some more features that I think will make the overall writing experience better.

Originally, Aurelius was built with Next.js. I've since changed my tech stack, and decided to rewrite the app in Remix. Everything else stays the same - still using Prisma and PlanetScale.

I've been building Aurelius v1 for the past few weeks and it's really coming along well. I decided to drop a couple of features like download as markdown, and writing streaks. Apart from these two, v1 will have all other features as the beta.

Here's what is new in v1:

🎵 More channels for the music player
💡Writing Prompts
🕹️ Visual bookmarks, Youtube embeds (more platforms coming soon after launch)
🖼️ Image size options
⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts
📓 Writing Paths - Organize all your different writing: journal, newsletter, and essays (long and short). Each path you pick will have its own writing goals, and you can have as many as you want.
🐞 Bug fixes

Meet Aurelius. https://aurelius.ink

Aurelius is a beautiful, minimal writing app.

✨ Focus mode
🎯 Writing Sessions w/ target word count or time
☁️ Save your work to the cloud
🔗 Share a private link to your posts
⚡️ Writing Streaks
🎵 Music player to help focus
🥅 Daily writing goal

I've read so many times that you should solve your own problem, and this has been one of the problems that I've had for a while.

Aurelius was born out of a requirement for a writing app that suited my needs. After trying many writing apps — code editors to note taking app — none of them help with maintaining a writing habit. Some of them have a poor writing experience by doing too much stuff.

Aurelius is heavily inspired by Blurt. It had everything I needed but unfortunately it got acquired and is no longer accessible to the public. So I set out to build one for myself.

I wanted a simple writing app that has the features for building a writing habit while having an enjoyable writing experience.