THE WORKSHOP JOURNAL

One entry a day from the studio in Austin: what we made, what we got wrong, and who helped.

  • Wednesday's sheet, Pease Park at the 24th Street bridge, mid-play on a phone, with the new title block drawn after the Sanborn maps.

    Wednesday, November 4, 2026

    A creek with a name, a loupe, and a plug that fills a Kindle

    The daily puzzle is called Creek and lives at releaf.site/creek, bigger on the phone, with a reading glass, a compass and the Central Library on Sunday's sheet; a Kindle plugged into the little Linux machine fills itself with the gamebook; Tachline and Candy Crawl clear their gates.

  • Left, Creek solved, drawn after the plan on the right: L. J. Pilie's Plan of the City of Austin, 1839, where Shoal Creek is the city's western edge.

    Tuesday, November 3, 2026

    Two puzzles that were not fun, and a creek that was

    A daily puzzle found its form on the third try; it is a stretch of Shoal Creek a day, drawn after the 1839 plan of Austin, and it is free on the site; Tachline builds for iPad and Apple TV; the mini gets its patches.

  • The same seed, the same rings: Floating Ink in a browser on the left, on an iPhone on the right.

    Monday, November 2, 2026

    Ink on water, in any browser

    Floating Ink now runs on releaf.site, a line-for-line port of the dish that saves prints; the Bestiary's cover gets a spine and a quieter stamp; a daily folding puzzle gets its engine; Tachline reaches for the iPad and the living room.

  • Left, the cover of Wood's Insects at Home, 1872, from the Internet Archive. Right, the Bestiary's shut cover after yesterday's redraw.

    Sunday, November 1, 2026

    A cover that has to stand beside a real book

    The Mechanical Bestiary's shut cover is redrawn against an 1872 publisher's binding, with cloth from a real scan and gilt that catches the hinge; Candy Crawl begins its winter coat as a gingerbread village.

  • The leaf insect rising as the emulated fold opens, 0 to 180 degrees in fifteen-degree steps, with the shut book at zero.

    Saturday, October 31, 2026

    Rehearsing a pop-up on a phone that folds

    The Mechanical Bestiary's Android version is shot on an emulated folding phone at every hinge angle, so we can watch the paper rise frame by frame; a page about who makes all this goes up in six languages; the gamebook reaches 169.

  • Hearth on a phone that opens like a book: the tiled stove on one half, the family and who last tended the fire on the other.

    Friday, October 30, 2026

    A fire that keeps your time

    Hearth comes off the shelf: a stove of blue and white tiles whose fire follows your pulse, now on a watch, a phone that folds, and a Mac; the gamebook reaches 166 pages with a timed list that breaks at the thirty-first minute.

  • The plates now in the book: Audubon's grackles on a live oak, Bentley's frost, Michaux's live oak, Thomé's fig and maize, Swainson's parakeet, Vilmorin's kale and tomato.

    Thursday, October 29, 2026

    Pictures that belong to everyone

    Eight chapters of the gamebook get plates from old books and one photograph, every one in the public domain and named for its maker; the site learns to introduce itself to the machines that read it; and the other sites in the family say who built them.

  • Tachline on an emulated Android phone, tipped and held: the board stays put through a quick tilt and turns only after three seconds held sideways.

    Wednesday, October 28, 2026

    A stranger reads the book

    A reader who knew none of our notes read the gamebook as a stranger and told us where it was fun and where it only looked finished; Tachline on Android learns to wait before it turns; and Waypoint reaches a watch with a bezel.

  • The new Android icons for Tachline, Lighthouse and Thaw, each under three of the shapes a phone may cut it to.

    Tuesday, October 27, 2026

    The icons we never looked at

    The home page sheds a payment script and about seventy stylesheets, and the Android versions of our apps meet a real phone, which shows us the one screen we never checked.

  • The ReLeaf home page on a phone, after yesterday's work: the same page, about a sixth of the weight.

    Monday, October 26, 2026

    The slowest thing was a sentence

    The home page gets six times lighter, each page of this site lives at one address instead of four, Thaw's fifth build goes out without its Messages drawer, and the book learns to bring you back changed.

  • Thaw build 4 on an iPhone Duo opened flat: the note on one leaf, the cover choice and Freeze it on the other, both above the keys.

    Sunday, October 25, 2026

    Above the keys

    Thaw's fourth build goes to testers with the write screen above the keyboard on every iPhone and the iPhone Duo, and a second look at the Bestiary's paper leaves me a choice.

  • The cover of The Leaf With One Side, lettered over Gordon Leggett's photograph of Portland Head Light.

    Saturday, October 24, 2026

    Three sentences we had wrong

    Thaw and Lighthouse get pages of their own, three of our public sentences turn out to be wrong, and the book grows to sixty-seven chapters you can read.

  • Highland Light on Cape Cod through six of the twelve conversions we tried, from a plain threshold to the two we kept.

    Friday, October 23, 2026

    One photograph, twelve ways

    The book reaches thirty-six chapters and stops dead-ending, the Playdate plates get the dithering the Playdate crowd uses, and a drawn-plate experiment fails on purpose.

  • Tachline on the iPhone Duo, half open on a table: the track above, the instrument panel below.

    Thursday, October 22, 2026

    Two doors open, and a book begins

    Thaw and Lighthouse open to testers on TestFlight, Tachline reaches a Playdate near you, and a gamebook starts appearing on this site one section at a time.

  • The cicada rebuilt from one plate: Edward Donovan, Insects of China (1838), plate 15, rising off a Merian flyleaf.

    Wednesday, October 21, 2026

    Plates, a crank and a new name

    The Bestiary's insects move onto real engravings from old natural-history books, two games reach a Playdate, and Redline becomes Tachline.

  • Thaw: a note half thawed, frost ferns at the edges, meltwater beads along the clearing.

    Tuesday, October 20, 2026

    A note under the frost

    Thaw freezes a short note under frost, and the person you send it to warms it open with a thumb. And a day of finishing instead of starting.

  • Lighthouse on the Watch: a brass compass bezel, the beam on the first ship, a flag at true north.

    Monday, October 19, 2026

    The beam follows your feet

    Lighthouse on the Watch: the compass is the beam, so you play it by turning around. Dandelion waits, because the wrist could not hear a breath.

  • A snowflake cut from a wedge of twelve layers, unfolded on the Duo.

    Sunday, October 18, 2026

    One cut, six arms

    One Cut's first snowflake: fold the paper, cut once with a finger, open the phone, and it unfolds.

  • The jetty at low tide, seventeen residents and twelve things to move.

    Saturday, October 17, 2026

    A jetty cut from old plates

    The Tide Pool's creatures are now cut from 19th-century engravings, and the library becomes all animals.

  • Redline's first circuit on an open Duo, the outer ring measured against the screen.

    Friday, October 16, 2026

    A report we needed

    A tester finds Floating Ink slowing down after many drops, which we'd never have found ourselves.

  • A Floating Ink dish: ink rings on water.

    Thursday, October 15, 2026

    Sunset on the wrist

    Freetail's widget learns when the bats will fly, and our pages get read against the code.

  • Candy Crawl, from a clip of the self-playing demo: the witch walks, the ghost drifts.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2026

    Cut paper, and a witch who walks

    Every Bestiary insect becomes a Cricut cut file, and Candy Crawl's trailer finally shows someone playing.

  • The Bestiary's icon: a cloisonné beetle on plum velvet.

    Tuesday, October 13, 2026

    A beetle brooch

    The Bestiary gets its icon, and the website finally looks right on a phone.

  • The Bestiary open on a Duo. The slider at the bottom is what the hinge is about to replace.

    Monday, October 12, 2026

    The hinge is the spine

    On the iPhone Duo, the Bestiary's book finally folds where the phone does.

  • The first Tide Pool jetty on a device. The fish still look like they are wearing tartan.

    Sunday, October 11, 2026

    Three new faces

    Three apps get icons that look made by hand, and the Tide Pool's first jetty goes out with the tide.

  • Waypoint's trail, with the carved-wood buttons that replaced the system ones.

    Saturday, October 10, 2026

    The hiker gets a signpost

    Waypoint trades its stock buttons for carved wood, and the paper insects stop walking through each other.

Notes from the Workshop, once a month: releaf.site/beta/letter

Play the betas