I record a lot of thoughts while walking. Product ideas, things I want to change, bits of an article that I would probably overthink if I sat down to write it. Over the last two months, I've kept coming back to the same question: how can I make this easier for myself?
Capture came out of that question. I wanted somewhere to put a thought without having to make it presentable first. Speak it, save it, come back to it. I use it instead of Apple Notes now, and those unfinished thoughts have become material I can actually return to and work with.
I still have work to do on the sorting. I don't want to pretend that every part of the app works perfectly, especially after the problems I've had with recent builds. But the basic act of getting a thought out of my head is useful enough that I keep doing it.
Writing was the next friction. I wanted to publish more, but sitting down specifically to write gave me a lot of room to perfect things before there was much on the page. Talking through an idea while walking is easier for me. I can let AI help edit it afterwards and read through what comes back.
Aside has made the rest of that process easier too. It helps me work with the material, write posts and articles, and create the images to go with them. It also runs Capture's X account. I still review what goes out on my personal account, but I don't have to start every piece of content from an empty editor.
There is more I want to do with this. My captures contain plenty that doesn't belong on X. Some thoughts need more time, some are private, and some are only useful to me. I'm putting filters around that process so it can find the material worth sharing without turning everything I say on a walk into a post.
Retake is the less finished part. I use it to record demos and walkthroughs, but I also caught myself spending so much time building Capture that I wasn't using Retake enough. I'd built a tool for something I wanted to do, then kept working on the other tool instead.
The next step there is a workflow I can repeat. Find something in Capture worth showing, record it, and turn it into a piece of content. I need a good example for the agent to follow, including the voiceover and the way the video moves through the app. That automatic workflow isn't in place yet.
I can also make all of this harder again. Capture worked well for me when I was building it for myself. Trying to prepare it for a broader launch brought more problems, and I spent a week or two pushing at it. For now, I want to get back to a version I enjoy using before forcing the next stage.
I like building these things. Probably enough that I need to keep checking whether I'm using them. Right now, recording a few useful Capture demos with Retake would do more for my workflow than adding another layer around either app.