Every Monday I'd sit down for our team sync and draw a blank.
What did I actually work on last week? How many hours did I put in? Was I in flow or just firefighting?
I had no good answer. Tasks were scattered, time was untracked, and my overtime was invisible — even to me.
The problem with existing tools
I tried a few things. Project boards were too heavy — built for teams, not solo devs. Timer apps were too simple — just a countdown with no context. Notes apps didn't connect to tasks at all.
I didn't want another subscription stack. I wanted one place that understood how a developer actually thinks during a workday.
So I built it myself.
What I ended up building
Melonix is a personal developer workspace with four core pieces:
- Kanban boards — to track what I'm actually working on day to day, separate from whatever the company board says
- Time tracking with overtime visibility — so I know exactly where my hours go each week
- Built-in focus timer — Pomodoro style, no separate app needed
- Code snippets and notes — kept close to the work, not in a separate tool
The hard parts (that nobody talks about)
Keeping it minimal under pressure
Every tool I'd used before eventually became clutter. Features accumulate. UI gets heavy. The goal with Melonix was one tab, no noise. But minimal is harder to build than full-featured — every addition has to earn its place.
Pomodoro state that survives browser refreshes
This sounds trivial but isn't. If you start a focus session and accidentally close the tab, your timer is gone. Getting state to persist accurately between sessions — without feeling laggy or out of sync — took more fine-tuning than I expected.
Syntax highlighting without bloating the bundle
Supporting multiple languages in the snippet editor required a lightweight but extensible approach. Full editor libraries were overkill. Finding the right balance between functionality and load time was a real constraint.
Overtime visibility that's actually useful
Tracking hours is easy. Showing meaningful overtime context — this week vs last week, where the extra time went — required thinking carefully about how data is structured and displayed without overwhelming the UI.
Six months later
I've been using Melonix as my daily driver ever since. My standup answers are better. My overtime is visible. My snippets are actually where I need them.
It's not a startup pitch. It's a tool I built to survive my own workday — and it turned out to be genuinely useful.
The free tier is fully functional for solo devs. If you've struggled with the same standup problem, give it a try and let me know what's missing.
What does your personal dev workspace look like? Do you track tasks separately from your company board — or just wing it?