Codehawk

Since open sourcing codehawk-cli, it has

• Gained stars from a dozen people
• Positively influenced job interviews for myself and a close friend by
• Helped me grow my open source library publishing skillset
• Gained some OS contributions!

In particular I have enjoyed learning the value of well-disciplined documentation and strong controls around releases.

Also, using GitHub's built-in CI and releases system has shown me what awesome modern tooling looks like for library projects.

After a while of trying to convince some clients they should pay for my SaaS version of codehawk, I decided that it was going to require some challenging conversations that I didn't want to have at the time.

Instead, I decided to open source it! https://github.com/sgb-io/codehawk-cli

I took all the feedback/learnings from my pilot customers and released a new iteration that

• Dropped the requirement for an invite code
• Moved to the new "Risk Factor" metric, which combines complexity with test coverage and inter-dependencies between files
• Added full subscription support for new users
• Exposed the tool to the internet via the marketing site!

New marketing site to match all the learnings from the first alpha phase of Codehawk and serve as an entry point for beta customers.

It uses Gatsby which enabled me to write it using the technology I want to use (React) plus proper server-side rendering support, which is essential for SEO reasons going forwards.

After building the prototype and alpha version of the product, I presented it to 2 teams I had worked with previously, with the aim of asking them to participate in an open-ended pilot scheme. They said yes!

This gave me a super important feedback loop from a real team on the frontlines of software development (without the bias of me being in it) to inform my beta version.

Building on top of my Christmas prototype, I had arrived at the MVP, super-alpha Codehawk. I had put together a working product! It consisted of:

• Core Codehawk CLI tool that could analyse virtually any JavaScript project
• A serverless (nodejs express) API that accepted outputs from the CLI tool and implemented Orgs, Projects and authentication
• A "Dashboard" UI that displayed the outputs for users

Baby steps!

Shortly after the Christmas period, a time when I'm pulled away from regular life, I found a moment of inspiration and determination that there was a useful product that could exist and I could build it.

In 24 hours I had a working prototype of the core tool. Less than 4 months later, working on it as a side project alongside my day job, I had something that was ready for general consumption.

Originally conceived as another CI tool with a friend that would differ from competitors in a few ways. Back then it primarily remained at the idea stage, as we struggled to decide exactly what and how.

I started building a prototype (after buying a domain of course) but the inspiration fizzled out as I could not picture an end result I was happy with working towards. But I knew there was something in it.

It was not until almost 2 years later that the idea came back to life, with a completely new vision.