Forget SaaS. Build StaS.
SaaS optimizes for extraction. StaS optimizes for you. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Microsoft To Do isn’t bad. That’s the honest starting point. It’s clean, it syncs, it works. I used it for a long time as a primary Windows user and didn’t have much to complain about.
But I’ve been burned before. The Windows Mail app was good: simple, fast, exactly what a mail client should be.
Then it became Outlook New.
A different product from real Outlook.
A different payment model from Office 365.
And a persistent banner nagging you to switch every time you open it, because apparently that’s acceptable UX now.
I’m an Office 365 subscriber. I’m already paying. And yet here’s a prompt asking me to pay again for a mail client that used to be free. For what, exactly?
Something I’d built a workflow around got absorbed and transformed into something I didn’t choose. The product didn’t fail. It got replaced by something bloated and confusing, and I had no say in it.
That’s the thing about depending on software you don’t control: the question isn’t whether it’s good today. It’s whether you can trust it to stay that way. With Microsoft, I’ve learned the answer.
What StaS Means
Software That Ain’t Shit
A philosophical filter I apply to the tools I use and build. Five questions:
- Does the user own their data?
- Does it work offline?
- Is it private by default?
- Is it free and open source?
- Is it fast?
If a piece of software can’t answer yes to all five, it’s making a trade you may not have agreed to. Enshittification1 is what happens when none of those questions are asked. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just incentives. Unfettered capitalism finds the monetization angle eventually. The best defense is software that has no monetization angle to find.
The Build
The cost of building your own tools has collapsed. TO DO runs on $0 infrastructure. No VC, no pricing page, no “Pro” tier. Just a tool built to my exact needs, owned entirely by me.
That said: AI doesn’t finish the job. It ships code confidently, including the bugs. The judgment to make it good is still yours.
Solo product work means wearing every hat.
PM hat
Scope to your own needs. Data local first, sync optional. Every feature you don’t build is a surface that can’t degrade.
Design hat
Make it feel good even when no one is making you. Nobody asked for completion sounds or a dynamic favicon. The app is buttery: fast, smooth, nothing waiting on a network round trip. I just wanted to enjoy using it.
QA hat
The one that determines whether you shipped something or just generated something. AI doesn’t test the unhappy path. That’s your job, and it doesn’t get smaller just because the implementation got faster.
Why It’s Open Source
Keeping this private would contradict everything above. StaS means software that respects the user, and that starts with being able to see it, fork it, and run it yourself.
People need to make money, that’s real. But not everything has to be a product. Some things are just tools, built for a specific need, shared because hoarding them serves no one. This is one of those.
The repo is at github.com/hau5pro/todo. Use it however you want.
The Point
The tools to build software that actually respects you have never been more accessible. StaS isn’t a standard reserved for well-funded startups with privacy-focused marketing teams. It’s a bar any developer can clear, for themselves, in their spare time, for free.
The question is whether you’re building deliberately, or still renting tools you don’t control and hoping for the best.
Footnotes
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The slow degradation of software as it optimizes for extraction over value. Coined by Cory Doctorow. ↩