217 pull requests merged across 11 codebases last week. Just over half of them were for something that didn't exist on Friday morning... here's the week.
Edge Lab: a ski site I built for me
Everything else we build is for a market or a client. Handl is for agencies, Mortar's for interior designers, Arbeo's for people hiring. This one's for me.
I'm a ski fanatic. And this season I finally fixed two things that had bugged me for years: quads burning by lunch, and an edge that let go when I didn't want it to. It wasn't the skis, and it wasn't more squats. It was my boots. A bit of bootwork and suddenly I was skiing the way I thought I'd been skiing all along.
That got me wondering why nobody explains this stuff properly. So I built Edge Lab.
You set up your body, your boots, your skis and the snow. Or you start from what you feel on the hill, like "quads sore by lunch". A physics model shows how the ski bends, where the pressure goes and whether the edge holds... then suggests what to try next. If something actually hurts, it tells you to see a physio. It's not pretending to be one.
What's live now:
- Symptom pages, starting from the feeling, like why your quads burn
- Explainers with calculators in Learn
- Hundreds of ski pages across a lot of brands, plus comparisons and best-for pages
- The Lab, where you can play with the whole setup
- A fitter directory, because the answer is often "go and see a good boot fitter"
The build-in-public bit... it went from a planning session on Friday 9 Oct to a live site on Sunday 11 Oct. Mockups and a build brief on Friday, then the same stack and agent workflow we use for every product in the studio. Tickets, a branch per ticket, review before merge, mock-first for anything visual. Just over a hundred PRs in a weekend.
That's not me typing fast. It's a process we've been sharpening on Handl and Mortar all year, pointed at something new. If you're curious how that works, I wrote it up in how a small studio ships.
It might become a product one day. Fitters and shops could use it. For now it's my passion project, and honestly I can't wait to keep working on it... I've already got a long list.
→ Try Edge Lab · start from what you feel · compare skis
Handl: Stripe is now optional
Plenty of agencies get paid by bank transfer, and some clients still post a cheque. Until now Handl assumed you'd connect Stripe. This week that changed.
- Set up how you get paid with card, bank transfer or cheque as equal choices. Nothing's required. Set defaults for the agency, then per client.
- "How the client pays" shows on every invoice, so you can see what the client was offered.
- "I've paid" and "I've mailed a cheque" buttons for your client. Pressing one pauses reminders for a few days, lets you know, and pre-fills Record payment for when the money lands.
- Cheque bounced? One click reopens the invoice and picks the reminders back up.
- An alert to owners and admins whenever your payment details change, plus a list of sent invoices you might want to resend with the new details.
No Handl fee on bank or cheque payments made outside Stripe (current pricing).
Also this week:
- Toggl's newer app now connects alongside the original Toggl, Clockify, Harvest and the rest.
- If an integration needs reconnecting, owners and admins get an email, so time keeps flowing to invoices.
- Zero-hour time entries stay off invoices automatically.
→ See how it works: invoice automation · client portal · integrations → Free: invoice aging and chase tracker → Start a Handl trial
Mortar: your portfolio, from your website
Most designers already have a portfolio. It's on their website. So asking them to rebuild it in Mortar felt a bit silly.
Now you give Mortar your website address and it reads your projects, photos and testimonials, then lets you pick what to keep. Everything comes in as a draft. Case studies get a fresh write-up in your voice (your original wording is one click away), and testimonials stay hidden until you switch them on. Nothing goes public until you say so.
You can also upload your own project photos straight into a case study, which matters if the project was never in Mortar.
Smart Import got a lot of attention too:
- Google Sheets, by public link or by signing in with Google for private sheets
- Import from the AI assistant, or from Claude if you've connected Mortar to it
- Re-import an edited schedule and Mortar matches what's already there, updating rows instead of creating duplicates
- A simpler four-step wizard with sample rows when you map columns
And a small one people asked for: edit an item's price and cost right from the item drawer.
→ Portfolios · data import · procurement → Free: interior design project timeline template → Try Mortar free for 7 days
Arbeo and First Shift: coming next
Arbeo had a big build week, and it's going through checks before release.
Coming soon: must-have checks per job. You set what a role needs, the application asks for it, and each candidate shows met, not met or not stated, with the applicant's own words beside it. They read what the applicant wrote. They don't verify licences. You'll also be able to forward any resume email into a job, or drag in a pile of resumes at once, and applicants get an email letting them know you've got their application.
Underneath, we set things up so more niche sites can sit on the same ATS, each with its own name and look. First Shift was the first. It won't be the last.
→ First Shift for home care agencies · how it works → Free: caregiver interview scorecard → Arbeo, the ATS without the complexity
Client work
Texas REALTORS® — the members site has a new Leader Link section. It works like the rest of the news: in site search and the sitemap, with members-only posts shown only to signed-in members. The Current Topics blog also has its own RSS feed now.
Over on the consumer site's CMS, the team can now hand out proper roles: editors, authors and viewers each get the access that fits, without everyone needing to be an admin.
If you need something like this built for your industry, this is what we do.
Marketing, behind the scenes
- Cold email is live for Handl and Mortar. We started with a few different angles to see which ones landed. One of Handl's was about chasing late payments... and it turns out that's an easy one to say no to. "We don't have that problem." Fair enough. So we swapped it for angles about things nearly every agency has, like unbilled hours, project margin and going over budget.
- mortar.design got two new free downloads: a project timeline template and a client questionnaire. The comparison pages now give the verdict and a trial button on the first screen, there's a trial offer after you grab a download, and the lead follow-up emails got a rewrite.
- Mortar's help videos are in progress, starting with adding an item and sharing the client portal, plus a welcome video.
- handl.works has a new section under the hero: a short product loop with the headline changing in step with the video.
One thing I learned
Build one thing for yourself, at least once.
I usually say go where your customers are complaining. With Edge Lab the one complaining was me. Every decision took seconds because I already knew the answer. No surveys, no guessing what a skier would want.
The trap is assuming everyone skis like you. So the whole thing starts from your setup, not mine. I'll find out pretty quickly whether it helps anyone else... but I've had more fun this weekend than I've had building in a long time.
See you next week.
— Daz
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