lukebyear

agent-safehouse (https://agent-safehouse.dev) was my answer to this.

I was using Docker containers for sandboxing but it was annoying at times, not so much for the performance hit (which wasn’t noticeable running in OrbStack) but various little papercuts like no shared clipboard, node_modules pulling in Linux binaries or macOS binaries depending on whether I ran npm install from inside the sandbox or my own shell, etc.

With agent-safehouse, I get the isolation I want (more customizable than with Docker) without needing a VM or container.

I’ve landed on the same approach, in WorkFlowy. I’ll tag lines #todo for tasks, or a project-specific hashtag, so it’s really easy to see everything I’ve written about a subject. Only two months in but it’s great and very low-friction. Using RocketBook to merge in handwritten notes I make in the mornings and evenings sometimes.

I had one preordered, but I cancelled my order once I got a Rocketbook. I usually phone-scan everything from the previous day the following morning. Their handwriting transcription is 98% accurate for my handwriting and the process of checking for and fixing errors helps remind me of what I’d just written. Then it all goes into either a text file or, more recently, WorkFlowy. I even can handwrite Markdown and use hashtags for searching later. Best of both worlds for me.

For years I took notes both with pen/paper and digitally, and either cross-referenced things or scanned pages into a master digital document like you describe. For me, the game-changer has been getting a RocketBook. It’s handwriting recognition is about 98% accurate for me, so it only takes a few minutes for me to scan some pages, drag the emailed text file into VS Code, join lines into paragraphs, and check for typos. Gives me a chance to review what I wrote too. Then it goes from there into a plain text file (or more recently, WorkFlowy) which is my preferred system. I started with the free PDFs that RocketBook makes available, but finally bought one mostly because I wanted to pay for their server resources. :-)

You can do this by setting up a filter that matches all messages that don’t contain something like “thisrandomstringwillneveroccurinthewild”. You can have the filter forward the message AND day “never send to spam”.

I built Strum Machine (https://strummachine.com) which is a music practice tool aimed at players of bluegrass, old-time, folk, etc (the music sub-culture I grew up in). I started working on it only after having failed to find an existing product like it and wanting one to be available for my music students. Development began in Jan 2016, launch was May 2016. Built with the Meteor Javascript platform as a mobile-friendly website; native apps still in (very slow) development. About 300 paying users, mostly through word of mouth; it's been hard to figure out how to do marketing otherwise. Just cracked 1k MRR. Minimal ongoing costs and maintenance, although I still have a looong list of improvement-related TODOs. It's been an extremely rewarding project to be working on, and the extra income has been a very nice bonus as well. :-)