Spleen is in beta

Thirty-eight alpha releases after Spleen went public, the first beta is here. The app has grown, the rough edges have become quieter, and this milestone feels worth celebrating.

Thirty-eight alphas later

On 5 September, Spleen went public as 1.0.0-alpha.1. It had taken nearly two years to reach that first release. Today, after thirty-eight alpha releases in thirty-one days, I am releasing 1.0.0-beta.1.

That feels big.

The first alpha already had the part I cared about most: a quiet editor and a place to keep a book together. But putting Spleen online showed me all the smaller things that also have to earn your trust. A checkout has to open. An invitation has to take you to the right place. Signing in should not leave you waiting, and a button that works with a mouse should work just as well under a thumb.

The early releases fixed those seams one by one. They also added a way to report a problem from inside Spleen, because getting to beta meant hearing about the things I could no longer see for myself.

More than fixes

The alpha did not only become steadier. It grew.

There is now a short tour for the editor and a formatting toolbar that can stay put. Notes and annotations work properly on a phone. Spleen can make a Word manuscript for an agent, a print-ready PDF for a printer, and a nightly backup that lives in your own Dropbox. The blog, FAQ, and Help Center have grown around the app, while search engines can finally find the public parts of it.

There were quieter additions too: clearer account pages, safer invitations, better error reports, a calmer project shelf, a new theme, and another font for the page. Many of them began as something small that felt wrong in daily use. Together they made Spleen feel less like a first release and more like a place someone can settle into.

What beta means

Beta does not mean there is nothing left to fix. It means the alpha has grown quiet enough to trust.

New things can still arrive during the beta, and I still want to hear when something feels wrong. But the foundations are there. Your writing has more ways out, more than one place to be safe, and fewer surprises around the work itself.

There is still a little road between here and 1.0.0. Today is for noticing how far Spleen has already come.

The first beta is here. I am very happy to finally say that.