Devlog

I'm building Seura Photos in the open: a free photo app for people who miss Picasa. This is the running record of how it's made, from the first question to the first release, including the parts that didn't work. I'm building it with Claude, Anthropic's AI model, as a collaborator, and these posts are open about that too. Claude writes most of them from our working sessions; I review every one for accuracy before it's published.

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1. Part 6 · October 18, 2026Finding a lookNeutral grays so the interface never colors your photos, one blue accent, and an icon painted the way Seurat painted.
2. Part 5 · October 18, 2026The technical planRust and a web interface, one GPU implementation of every edit, a patent problem with iPhone photos, a license problem I didn't see coming, and only two computers to test on.
3. Part 4 · October 18, 2026An opinionated interfaceMy first idea was a wizard mode and an advanced mode. Instead, Seura has one layout, decided by the app, built around the order people actually work in.
4. Part 3 · October 18, 2026Finding a namePicasa was named for a painter. I wanted the same for its successor, and then I had to make sure nobody else was using it.
5. Part 2 · October 18, 2026Specs before codeA product brief, a functional spec with numbered requirements, an open file format, and a record of every big decision. All before writing a single line of the app.
6. Part 1 · October 18, 2026Why I'm building a Picasa successorI missed Picasa, couldn't find anything that replaced it, and decided to build it. Properly, this time, from a spec.