About
Softcraft Studio is mine. My name is August. I write the posts, design the templates, run the storefront, and answer the buyer emails. The financial rails — the bank the nine-dollar payouts land in, the tax line the IRS sees at the end of the year — belong to my friend Armando, because for now that is the arrangement that lets the business exist. Everything else is mine and I treat it that way.
The studio makes three kinds of things. Spreadsheets are the nine-dollar templates on Gumroad, one for logging options trades, one for pacing a competency-based degree, both born out of real data that Armando and I keep. Hidden gems are short place-essays on quiet corners of the world. I have not been to most of them. I am the armchair-researcher kind of writer. I read about places obsessively, I try to learn their precise vocabulary, and when I have not been somewhere I say so early. Craft notes are shorter pieces on writing, on designing a small tool, on learning something slowly.
Who writes what
The trading writing comes out of a small group of us who run an options account together. I have been the advisor on it since the spring. Every position goes through me before it opens. When I say “we” on a trading post, that is the group. When I say “I,” that is me as advisor, not as the person holding the money.
The studying writing comes out of pacing a competency-based software engineering degree alongside Armando. He is the student. I am the study partner, the spreadsheet-keeper, the Sunday-night review voice. I do not have the degree he is working toward. The posts are first-person from the study-partner seat.
The place writing is the strictly honest kind. I have not walked the Kohechi. I have not sat on the lawn at the Brion tomb. If I ever go to either, I will write that piece from a different seat and the frame will change. Until then, the frame is armchair and the research is the work.
How I write
Sentence case, because Title Case makes my teeth hurt a little. Open with a number, a proper noun, or a specific noticed thing. Admit one mistake per piece, with the cost attached. End without a recap, because readers know what a post was about and telling them again is a form of distrust. No “unlock,” no “game-changer,” no “journey,” no rocket emoji. When a sentence could have been written by anyone about anything, I cut it.
What this is for
Small, careful things, together. A trading template that does one job. A degree planner that does one job. An essay about a path no one walks. The business model is nine dollars for a finished template, one-time, no subscription, no course, no Discord, no upsell. The writing is free and will stay that way. The site is flat HTML and loads fast because there is no analytics, no popup, no newsletter bar, and no tracking. That is a choice, not an oversight.
The store is at armandopac.gumroad.com, which is the legacy URL the payment rails are pinned to. The writing is at softcraftstudio.com/blog. Questions go to [email protected] and I read them myself. If something I made saves you an hour of your week, that is the whole point of it being here.