It started with frustration.
I had eight browser tabs open: Notion for notes, Trello for the board, Jira for tickets, a spreadsheet for purchase orders, another spreadsheet for subscriptions, Google Calendar for scheduling, and a random Slack channel where half the decisions were buried. Every project I worked on felt like archaeology — constantly digging through different apps to find the thing I needed five minutes ago.
I built Monospace because I was tired of the context-switching tax.
The First Version
The first version was embarrassingly simple. A Kanban board with a notes panel next to it. That's it. I used it for a weekend project and it worked well enough that I kept adding to it.
Then I added to-do lists. Then a chat system so you could discuss items directly inside a project without switching to Discord or Slack. Then someone asked "can it do purchase orders?" and I thought — why not?
That's the thing about tools you build for yourself: the feature ideas never stop, because you're the one feeling the pain of every missing thing.
Ideas Kept Flowing
Over a few months, the roadmap exploded:
- Kanban boards with full drag-and-drop, priorities, assignees, and labels
- To-do lists with notes and assignments
- Project notes — a lightweight editor per project, no Notion needed
- Chat embedded in every project so the conversation lives next to the work
- Ticket system for bug tracking and support requests
- Purchase order management — submit, approve, track. No more spreadsheets
- Workout tracker because I was logging gym sessions in a note file like a caveman
- Subscription manager to track recurring costs before they silently drain your card
- Bookmark sync via browser extension — your bookmarks live inside your workspace
- Status monitors for watching services and flagging outages
Each one replaced a tab. Each one was built because I or someone close to me had a real need for it.
Launching Publicly
Launching felt scary. It always does. The product wasn't perfect — it still isn't — but it was genuinely useful, and I'd been using it daily for months. That's the filter I applied: if I'd pay for this myself, other people will too.
The early response was better than I expected. People signed up, started using it, sent feedback. Some of it was bug reports (fair). Some of it was feature requests (expected). Some of it was "this is exactly what I've been looking for" (those messages kept me going at 1am).
The mission crystallised pretty quickly: simplify how individuals and small businesses organise their work and life. Not another enterprise tool bloated with features nobody uses. Something clean, fast, and opinionated — one workspace that handles everything, without the overhead of stitching together six different apps.
What 2025 Taught Me
A few honest lessons from building this in public:
Ship early and often. The version I was proud of in March was embarrassing by September. That's good. It means you're learning.
Listen to users, but don't let them design the product. Feature requests are signals, not specifications. The job is to understand the underlying need and solve it well, not to build exactly what someone describes.
Pricing is a product decision. Getting our pricing plans right took multiple iterations. Too cheap signals lack of value. Too complex creates friction. Simple tiers that match how people actually work are worth the effort to figure out.
The changelog is your relationship. Every time I updated the changelog with something real, signups ticked up. People want to see momentum. They want to feel like they're betting on something that's moving.
Infrastructure matters more than you think. I built on Convex for the backend and it was the right call. Real-time sync out of the box, no server management, schema-validated data. That let me focus on features instead of ops.
The State of Things Now
As of the end of 2025, Monospace has:
- Multiple plan tiers from free to Max, covering individuals and growing teams
- Organisation support so teams can share projects and manage members
- Role-based permissions with full granularity
- Bot/API access for integrations and automation
- A browser extension in beta for bookmark sync (full release early 2026)
- Active users across dozens of workspaces
It's not just a side project anymore. It's a product with real users, real feedback loops, and a real roadmap.
What's Coming in 2026
The plan for this year is ambitious but grounded:
Browser extension (full release, Q1) — The bookmark sync extension is in beta. The full version will do more: capture pages, clip content directly into notes, surface relevant items from your workspace while you browse.
Discord bot — Manage your Monospace projects from Discord. Create cards, update tasks, get notifications. For teams that live in Discord, this removes a layer of friction.
Expanded organisations — Better team management, org-wide settings, audit logs, and more granular billing controls for teams and businesses.
More AI features — Smart summaries, writing assistance, automated categorisation. AI that augments how you work rather than replacing it with something generic.
Performance — Real-time sync at scale. More users means more pressure on the backend, and I want the experience to stay snappy as we grow.
The goal for 2026 is simple: become the workspace that people actually stay in. Not a tool they use because they have to, but one they reach for because it's genuinely the best place to work.
If you've been using Monospace — thank you. Every piece of feedback, every bug report, every "this feature would be amazing" message has shaped what this is becoming. You're not just users; you're co-designers.
Here's to building more in 2026. 🚀
— Cam