On June 28, 2025, I shipped the first production build of Tavrn Alpha. The release notes called it “a major milestone,” which is generous for a build whose own known issues list included “Unstyled / Incomplete Components.”
Alpha had servers, DMs, link safety, invite codes, a media gallery, uploads, experimental GIF support, and 2FA. Signup was disabled, account switching was buggy, and the mobile UI was rough enough that I told people to test on desktop. All of that was accurate.
Today it’s v2.1 of the public beta, and anyone can sign up. Servers became rooms, with a Home tab, events, categories, audit logs, and a real safety suite. Voice chat exists and has already been rebuilt once. The theme system was rebuilt from scratch. There’s a Windows desktop client with offline reading, push notifications that actually arrive, and TavKit, so other people can build on the platform.
The feature list is the less interesting comparison, though. The bigger difference is what kind of work I was doing.
Alpha was about getting things out the door, literally. Establishing the basics, shipping them, and fixing whatever broke. A lot of the time I was playing catch up to features a chat app is simply expected to have. Now the basics are there, and I get to be more deliberate. I can refine something properly, decide what belongs and what doesn’t, and rebuild a thing because it should be better, not because it’s falling over. Scrolling in 2.1 was rebuilt from the ground up for exactly that reason.
It wasn’t a straight line. There were points along the way where I wanted to give up. I’m not going to dress that up, and I’m not going to dwell on it either. I kept going, and the result is a fully functional app with a lot more on the way. E2EE for DMs, custom room roles, and the Shop are all still ahead, and it’s still a public beta with mostly one person building it.
What gets me is looking at the two versions side by side. I can remember every step it took to get from one to the other, including the ones that were not fun. It’s a strange feeling, and mostly a good one.
~ vctrl