Brian Bailey

I've yet to come across two words in product development that make me cringe more than "backlog grooming".

@K_Scanlan_ Hello! I'm forever grateful for your work and every patiently chiseled sentence within it. Do you, by chance, ever work with writers who aspire for the concision and purity of your writing and NOON? The options are few in the writing world. Wishing you all the best!

The only logical follow up to the Recordables podcast is... Adorables!

@WatchMarquee Every year starts with ticker experiments and then it's dropped after a bit. Please let that be the case this year 🙏🏼. One of the best parts of the broadcast is no ticker. It's just not the right fit for beautiful games at Wrigley.

Working on Basecamp 5 and hit a bug. Deleting one weekly meeting deleted all future ones, too. Or is it? If Fizzy has an entropy feature that cleans up inactive cards automatically, maybe Basecamp should cancel recurring meetings after 3 months to see if anyone misses them. 🙂

A lovely essay, very much in the spirit of a past project, Uncommon in Common. "I know how this is supposed to end. I'm supposed to tell you to simplify. Audit your subscriptions. Curate your devices. Own less. I'm not going to do that." terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet…

"Coding agents dramatically drop the cost of typing code into the computer, which disrupts so many of our existing personal and organizational intuitions about which trade-offs make sense." We're learning on the fly what the new trade-offs are. simonwillison.net/guides/agentic…

This from @davidcrawshaw perfectly captures where things are rapidly heading. "I implemented that entire Stripe product (as it relates to me) by typing three sentences. It solves my problem better than their product." Via @simonw crawshaw.io/blog/eight-mor…

Great post from @om "This new power should turbocharge our capabilities. And in order for that, it has to live inside the tools we already use. Smaller, focused, embedded." om.co/2026/02/06/how…

@philsinatra Possibly! Since it's not on a consistent schedule, it works a little better on YouTube, plus there is some screen sharing. You can always listen in your car via YouTube 🙂.

@bb Any chance Recordables content will be released as a podcast? I’d love availability while driving.

A new episode of Recordables is here! Beyond the technical insight, it's filled with lessons about how to approach massive projects like this and the human side of dealing with risks and unknowns. Highly recommended!

This is a great look at Fizzy, plus an interview with @jasonfried. "I was struck by the presence of a distinctive design and sense of whimsy that’s largely faded from the greater software universe." fastcompany.com/91470191/fizzy…

The big surprise in my Albums app 2025 wrap-up is that there were 49 days when I didn't use it. It lets me curate my music library as obsessively as I like and then tell my friends all about it repeatedly. That it's built by a single developer is madness! albumstheapp.com

I love a line that catches you by surprise, like this one by @FredKatz on the @nyknicks: "This seems to be the new way of the Knicks, a Ratatouille-esque belief that anyone can cook, even that unrefined, inexperienced and once-forgotten second-rounder." nytimes.com/athletic/69310…

I wonder how many conversations at work, home, and school these days include someone saying "Well, AI said it was great."

@ahmednadar Kind of you to say, Ahmed. I hope to!

@bb Wonderful post as always Brian. Please write more.

We use Shape Up when we build a new product like Fizzy, but it looks quite a bit different than cycle work on an existing product. We call it New Product Mode. Here's how it works: world.hey.com/bb/new-product…

@jasonfried Gorgeous. Love those chance encounters.

Gustave Baumann (1881 - 1971) has become one of my favorite artists. Discovered his woodblock print work by chance at a gallery in Sante Fe a couple years ago. Nice Chicago connection too. americanart.si.edu/artist/gustave…

Jeff, an 18-year veteran at 37signals, and one of the clearest explainers of technical topics I've ever known, sits down and explains the recordables pattern. The recordables pattern has been the single-most important architectural pattern we've used on both Basecamp and HEY. It's a key reason both code bases are still a joy to work on. Deep, practical insights in this one. Interesting for non-technical folks, too.

Introducing Recordables, a new @37signals video series where we go deep into technical topics. The first episode is on... recordables! Specifically, how we use delegated types in Basecamp and HEY and why the pattern is so powerful. Enjoy! dev.37signals.com/the-rails-reco…

@Billingsly69727 Glad to hear it, thanks!

@bb Love the post Brian!