This past week, I have received 2 offers for interns that would be willing to work for free, after I had rejected their original application. Their main objective is to gain experience and build a portfolio. From the hiring side, we don't really get such upsides for free. [1/2]

We have updated RouteVN's icon and cover illustration. Makkuro is RouteVN's mascot character, and you will be seeing more of her!

We have just released version 1.2.2 of RouteVN Creator! This version adds custom text styles and furigana within each line. We have also added support for variables and improved live preview experience. Changelog and download link: routevn.com/creator/chan...

We published our third devlog for RouteVN. It covers early 2026 progress, RouteVN Creator v1.0.3, new documentation, events, collaborations, and what is next. routevn.com/blog/2026/09...

The 'Coming soon' placeholder for MacOS and Linux will soon be gone. I think as soon as next week. Have been testing on both platforms for a few days and was unexpectedly smooth. There were some minor inconsistencies but nothing dealbreaking.

In addition to this update, we have published almost 40 pages of documentation! This is part of the initiative to make the application easier to use. Just click at '?' floating button on the bottom right, and it will open the exact documentation based on your current page.

My library on npm has got -1 issues! Yay www.npmjs.com/package/jempl

We have just released version 1.1.1 of RouteVN Creator! This version brings several major features, many bug fixes and performance enhancements. Full changelog: routevn.com/creator/chan...

Announcing version 1.0.3 of RouteVN Creator! This is our biggest update yet. You can expect a significant level up in terms of stability and polish of the application. Enjoy! We will also be publishing documentation and tutorials in the coming weeks. routevn.com/blog/2026/08...

Did a usability test today, it had been a while since I did the last one. Some quotes from the user: - "The best part is how it is all organized... this is very clear, very starighforward" - "If anybody wants to make a basic visual novel, this is great... can learn in one afternoon"

Wow something really got broke in Codex. It is now spitting out total nonsense.

Used to manually got to Github for create release & tag. I figured out, that can all be done from cli. github cli is actually good. git tag v1.2.0 git push origin v1.0.0 gh release create v1.2.0 --generate-notes

Today we presented our work at Ideass Fest, dev & drafts alongside upcoming Visual Novels @bunnibambii.bsky.social's Two Straws and @sqewree.bsky.social's DiaLune. Big thanks to the organizers and everyone who came to playtest, give feedback and support!

Dealing with Apple signing certificates has always been one of those things I never understood properly and would spend hours or days dealing with, mostly with trial and error. Using AI to help on this has made life much easier.

Been working very hard to spend all my Codex Pro subscription weekly limit, and am happy to say that I have used up essentially all of it. I usually have multiple projects working at a time. Not sure if I will have to adapt a bit once the 2x usage period ends.

I've been controlling a windows with RDP for a few months now. I do not have a minitor, mouse, keyboard attached to the windows machine. Works both from Linux and MacOS. This is best way to use a windows machine...

sidecar.haplab.com This is one of the coolest projects I have seen for a while. I basically a full agent first IDE replacement in the terminal.

I attended the 1st OpenAI Codex meetup today. Thanks Singtel for venue - Actually met with and talked with OpenAI people, they were the main presenter - 5 community demos - Met and talked with great people from across the industry

'hardening' and 'canonical' are some of the words I have learned from fellow Codex

RouteVN Team member introduction: JeffY is a second-year Computer Science student at University of New South Wales, Australia. He is very intrested in visual novels and tooling. He has contributed to many of the core RouteVN projects. routevn.com/blog/2026/07...

Very excited to announce a collaboration with @sqewree.bsky.social It will be one of the first visual novels made with RouteVN Creator. She is doing all the story and art. Was very enjoyable to see it grow from idea -> presentation -> sketches -> full story. Stay tuned for more updates!

Been having attention deficiency lately. I used to code for hours focusing on a problem. Right now instead, I have so many AI research coding threads open at a time, switching from one task to another. It is preventing me from focusing on one thing and do it well.

Can't believe Hetzner really shipped with 'your-objectstorage.com'. I was following some instructions to setup my object storage on terraform and thought it was a placeholder domain. I was looking for the real domain name, which turns out it is exactly that. It was a funny moment!

got a new pc and installed Arch Linux on it last week. It has been going very well. plan to write more about it in the coming weeks and month. things I've installed: sway, qutebrowser, yazi, nvim etc...

We have just released version 0.17.0 of RouteVN Creator! routevn.com/creator/chan... - Fix bundle export for handling large assets - Improve exported bundle start page - Action to add visuals

Funny to see AI timeline estimates. It is probably 1 or 2 days of work for the AI

Part 3 of our blog series on building a Visual Novel engine is live! In this post we talk about how we built RouteVN Creator, the actual desktop application that enables anyone to create VNs witout any coding. routevn.com/blog/2026/06... #visualnovel #gamedev #javascript

When wanting to work on mutiple features in 1 repository, git worktrees is the solution. However the raw commands are hard to work with. Tried github.com/max-sixty/wo... today, worked very well!

Before I go out in the morning to send out my kid. I go to my laptop and say hi to Codex. So that when I come back there will be only like 4 hours before the 5h reset.

We have just released version 0.15.0 of RouteVN Creator! routevn.com/creator/chan... - Resources pages: Add video tab - Scene Editor page: Support video as background

I'm giving up on manual coding. I'm now using Codex to rewrite several of the libs I had written before. I'm barely reading any of the code being written. Will give a quick look at the whole thing before merging to main, but I'm mostly reading the written specs, not the code.

having Codex/Claude Code help me doing my taxes today. more accurately: - bookkeeping by categorizing ledger items - preparing P&L - preparing balance sheet it worked. I still have to be involved and knowledgeable, but it did save me time. my books are very simple.

Took serveral days to write this, but it is something I really wanted to do. I've been buidling this Visual Novel engine for almost 2 years. It was really refreshing to write down all the experiences, learnings and design decision. It is very useful for me and other who will work on the project.

Have been writing some Japanese emails in the past few days. I have to say that with AI it has become so much easier to manage the formalities like keigo. I had always struggled with it in the past and now I can just write what I want to say and AI convert it to correct format.

Registered for an event last week on Luma. filled the form and there was a checkbox for agreeing to share my info with the event spaker. NowI just got a marketing email from the even speaker hehe. I'll just unsubscribe.

Been trying to hire Softwre Development Interns from Japan. Below is some of my exeperiences and observations. On paper it is a country with a massive number of high skilled interns I could hire, but in reality there are many structural hurndles. #japan #Internships 🧵

We have just released version 0.14.0 of RouteVN Creator! routevn.com/creator/chan... - Resources pages: remove unnecessary tooltip - Scenes editor: make dialogue character avatar bigger - Scenes editor: improve validation on various forms - Scenes editor: remove unnecessary image drag 🧵

Figured I'd share a bit of steam review insight on the horse game server inspired by this 🫡

I jumped on the OpenCraw hype. Tried to install it 2 days ago with Discord but failed, didn't properly read the docs. Tried again today, and got it to work after some debugging. Playing it for a bit now some thoughts: - the waking up is very smart. it personalizees every agent for the user 🧵

Very excited to be collaborating with @bunnibambii.bsky.social on a Visual Novel project. Can't wait to see the art, story and characters that will be created! #visualnovel #vn

Did you know that one of the contributors to RouteVN Creator is actually a high school student from Nepal? Read about Nellow and his work on RouteVN! routevn.com/blog/2026/04...

New blog post: Building a Visual Novel Engine Part 1 - Route Graphics A declarative graphics and audio library built on @pixijs.com and WebAudio API. Learn about the design decisions, implementation challenges, and more! routevn.com/blog/2026/03...

wrote some misc thoughts about selling visual novels on steam in 2026 and what sorts of vns tend to sell better than others based on trends i've seen with my last few releases www.patreon.com/posts/some-t...

Been using the free version of Lark for few years. Now, they just told me my account will be deleted. I have some critical services like email and calendar on it. Will take this as an opportunity to move away from it, but will never going to use it again... www.larksuite.com/hc/en-US/art...

We have just released version 0.13.0 of RouteVN Creator! - layout editor: fix layout editor cancel button not working when choosing image - colors page: make color name required - bundle export: fix so it runs properly (more in comments) routevn.com/creator/chan...

amazing Claude can look at the screenshots from visual test and compare and figure out which ones are correct. it is the same as how I would do it: look at the screenshots, and look at the test cases to see whether it is the screenshot (implmentation) or the testcase is wrong.

We conducted 2 usability tests in the last 2 days. Some take aways: - The applications was much more stable than before. No crashes or bugs that disrupted the testing - The user can mostly use it and learn by exploring - User find it easy to use sometimes exceeding expectation

trying to put an application on Steam to be published. Steam is like: - very complex checklist to prepare and make application ready to publish - have to pay $100 upfront - takes 30% fees - 30% US withlding tax for US sourced income Yet, people just flock to publish on Steam

RouteVN Creator is now downloadable on itch.io! routevn.itch.io/routevn-crea... RouteVN Creator is a free, open-source tool that lets anyone, writers, artists, hobbyists to create their own Visual Novels. No coding or technical background required

Today Nghia completes his 3 month internship at Yuusoft. He was asked to write a reflection about his internship experience: yuusoft.com/blog/2026/01... Thank you Nghia for all your countributions!