State of Gand — September 2026
In June we published a tour of everything Gand makes. This is the follow-up, and it's a different kind of post: fewer products, sharper focus, and a clear answer to one question for each of them — how does it pay for itself?
Building has never been the hard part for us. Getting small, careful tools in front of the people who need them is. So this quarter we cut, merged and paused until each remaining product has one job, one way to earn its keep and one next step.
The short version
- The vigil.* family is our main bet. The apps stay free; one new subscription, Vigil Pro, lets your AI assistant work across Vigil Today, vigil.wiki and Vigil Quest.
- Skrivist becomes three products: two free readers that need no account, and one paid Cloud plan.
- FableSpun is paused.
- SUDONE is live on Android, with iOS next.
The vigil.* family
A set of small apps that share one account at vigil.center. Every one of them is also an MCP server, so an AI assistant such as Claude can read and act in it for you.
- Vigil Today: reminders and habits that drift from green to red as their moment approaches.
- vigil.wiki: notes with backlinks, and one-click publishing.
- Vigil Quest: long goals broken into milestones.
- vigil.directory: the public face, where published notes live. This post is one of them.
- vigil.computer: private AI that runs in your browser. It's on hold while we focus on the rest.
What changed: the web apps are and stay free. What costs money is running AI access at scale, so that's what we now charge for. Vigil Pro is one subscription, bought once at vigil.center/pro, that turns on AI-assistant (MCP) access for Vigil Today, vigil.wiki and Vigil Quest together. It's $4.99 a month or $39 a year, with a 14-day free trial. It replaces the separate per-app prices we had before, and it rolls out to each app over the coming weeks.
Next: getting the vigil connectors listed where people look for them: the Claude and ChatGPT app directories and the public MCP registry.
Skrivist
Skrivist started as one web app for reading and listening to your ebooks. It's becoming three products, split by who they're for:
- Skrivist Books: free, runs entirely in your browser, and needs no account. Read your EPUBs offline, browse OPDS catalogs and your Calibre library, and keep notes.
- Skrivist Comics: free and local too, for comics and OPDS libraries.
- Skrivist Cloud: $4.90 a month with a 7-day free trial, for people who want their library synced across devices, read aloud, and fed from Calibre.
Most readers need nothing more than the free apps, and they get them without handing over an email address. Cloud is being rebuilt around the new design and will open when it's ready. skriv.ist has the details.
FableSpun — paused
FableSpun spins illustrated, narrated stories from a "series bible" of characters and worlds, and it ran a weekly multilingual library for young children. We've paused it. Selling AI-generated products to children carries a regulatory and moral responsibility that a one-person studio shouldn't take on lightly, and we'd rather stop than do it halfway. The kids' edition no longer takes new sign-ups.
The story engine itself is good. When there's time, we want to point it at adults, for example graded story series for people learning a language. There's no date for that yet.
SUDONE
SUDONE is a barcode scanner for shoppers in Japan. Scan a product in a store, see what Rakuten and Yahoo! Shopping charge for it, and get a straight answer: buy it here, or buy it online. There's no account to create.
It's on Google Play today, and iOS follows as soon as our App Store setup is complete. Before we spend anything on promotion, we want to measure which prices people actually act on. After that we're exploring a "restock at home" feature: a price watch for the things you buy again and again.
What's next
- Vigil Pro rolls out across Vigil Today, vigil.wiki and Vigil Quest, followed by directory listings.
- Skrivist Cloud gets rebuilt around the three-product split.
- SUDONE reaches iOS and starts measuring what shoppers use.
- FableSpun stays parked until we can give it proper attention.
Fewer things, done properly, each able to pay its own way. That's the state of Gand in September 2026.
This post was drafted with an AI assistant through vigil.wiki's MCP connector, reviewed, and published to vigil.directory the same way.