A book for every project

My brain is normally full of ideas. I create so many to-do lists to try to remember and implement them. But generally, it is very difficult to comprehend those ideas and put them into practice. So many ideas get lost, and the majority are never implemented.

I believe that because of the way my brain is wired, I was able to create over 50 mobile applications at the beginning of the iPhone launch era. I still have the source code for many of the apps, even though they are no longer available on the market. But it is very difficult to understand from the source code what the whole idea was meant to be and why I built the apps the way I did.

When you build a house, there is normally engineering documentation that explains what is being built and how to build it. So I thought it would be great to have something similar for software projects, and that is how we created the Project Book standard.

The Project Book is the format we use so that all parties involved can understand and contribute to the project together. This helps us achieve better results because everyone understands how we built it and why.

At Glowbom, we built a simple sketch-to-software tool as an entry point. A project can start with a sketch and a discussion. Then everyone can contribute ideas, conduct research, and add more information. The Project Book standard normally contains sketches in the form of vector coordinates, as well as JSON files, Markdown files, and raster images in PNG or JPEG format.

We put everything together to preserve the project's ideas, discussions, history, and key decisions. This helps explain how the project was made and why. Humans and AI agents can easily understand this format, and we believe it helps them work more efficiently toward their goals while completing tasks for a specific project.

Humans can also read it like a regular book, without any AI agents involved. It is similar to the engineering documentation for a house. You can simply read through it to understand the project. Our system allows different AI systems and humans to discuss projects together. Those discussions can be stored in Project Books. Our system can also visualize a discussion in the form of a sketch, so it looks nice in the book.

The standard allows the project's history, changes, and discussions to be stored in the book. But the owner can decide how much of it is actually needed and clean it up as they please. The easiest way for humans to use a Project Book is through our application on the web, desktop, or mobile. It is open source, and right now the best way to get started is to look at our repository.

All the files in the Project Book belong to the user and are stored locally. The Project Book becomes part of the project and stays with the code. Ideally, when humans or AI agents return to a project after a long break, they will immediately understand where they left off, what needs to be done next, and how the project was made and why.

We hope that with the Project Book standard, we can create a sketch-to-software tool that remembers all your ideas.