Building in Private: Why I'm Not Shipping Until It's Right
· 12 min read
"Build in public" has become gospel in the developer community. Share your journey. Get feedback early. Iterate with users. Ship fast, fix later.
I'm doing the opposite. Sigilweaver has been in private development for months, and it won't go public until mid-2026 at the earliest. The GitHub repo is private. I have zero users. And I think this is exactly right for what I'm building.
This isn't contrarianism for its own sake. It's a deliberate strategy for building infrastructure software that needs to be correct on the first try.
TL;DR
- Early users lock you into bad paradigms - You can't refactor foundations when people depend on them
- Beta warnings don't prevent pain - Users don't care about disclaimers when their workflows break
- Infrastructure gets one chance - Sophisticated users won't give you a second look after a botched launch
- Private building is deep work - No community management, no context switching, just building
- The launch becomes an event - First impression is the finished product, not the scaffolding