Building Residue — a Readwise clone on a Synology NAS

The premise was simple: I use Readwise, it's expensive, and I want something I control.

The execution took three false starts.

First attempt: tried to clone Readwise feature-for-feature. Result: overwhelming scope, no shipping.

Second attempt: built on a cloud provider. Result: monthly costs that defeated the purpose.

Third attempt: Astro + Node.js + PostgreSQL on a Synology NAS. Result: it works, it costs nothing extra, and I learned things about Docker I couldn't have learned any other way.

The lesson: constraints are creative fuel. Building for yourself is the purest product development practice.