In progress
> Reckon
A design decision log
PROBLEM
Designers do enormous amounts of invisible work. The options weighed, the rationales tested against constraints, the tradeoffs accepted. Most of it lives in heads, Slack threads, or Figma comments that get archived. By the time it needs to be defended in a stakeholder meeting or written up for a portfolio, it has already been reconstructed from fragments.
Notes apps treat each entry as flat content. Figma plugins focus on artifacts, not reasoning. Notion templates demand a setup tax most designers won't pay. None of them surface patterns across decisions, and none of them speak the language of designers.
APPROACH
Reckon is a small, opinionated answer to that gap. A web app where designers capture the thinking behind their work, not just the outcome.
Fast to capture, slow to lock in, easy to look back on.
The model is two-state by design.
Sketches are exploratory and captured quickly, under a minute. Decisions are Sketches that have been locked in, marked with a ceremonial wax-seal micro-interaction that makes commitment feel deliberate rather than administrative. The distinction matters. Most notes tools flatten thinking into a single stream. Reckon insists on the difference between what was considered and what was chosen.
THE RECKONING
Once a stretch of decisions has been logged, an AI feature called The Reckoning synthesizes them into observational prose. Patterns across the week or month, suitable for a retro, a case study, or a stakeholder conversation.
Observational, not Socratic.
The choice to make it observational rather than Socratic was intentional. Most AI features default to asking questions, since it feels intelligent and non-committal. The Reckoning takes a position: it tells the designer what it sees, and never asks questions back. A design tool that peers over the shoulder is not the goal.
BUILDING IT
Reckon is being built solo, designed in Figma, and developed with Claude Code. It is deliberately paced by session rather than calendar week.
The public repo and the live architecture map are part of the deliverable. The product is one artifact; the process of building it with AI as a collaborator is another, and both are on display on purpose.
WHERE IT IS NOW
Active build. Foundations are complete and frozen: design system in Figma and code, deployed smoke screen, hardened supply chain. Currently mid-way through the capture flow.
The full case study will follow once v1.0 ships.