I.M. Lasky
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lasky.io
I.M. Lasky
@lasky.io
Korean learner, building @dailytokki.com and joyful.to
Violin, motorcycles, running
Been busy a bit lately for updates, but both joyful.to and @dailytokki.com are chugging!

Joyful has been getting more and more signups and getting good feedback.

#buildinpublic #writingsky #booksky #langsky
November 4, 2025 at 9:57 PM
✅ Offline editing

With Joyful (joyful.to), if you lose internet connection, don't worry! Everything will be saved locally and when you reconnect it will sync up!

Works for teams as well!

#buildinpublic #writersky
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
October 22, 2025 at 1:04 PM
✅ You can now add tags to your subscribers!

Suppose only some subscribers should get your weekly newsletter and others your book updates. This let's you make sure everyone gets the right newsletters.

How do you currently segment your subscribers?

#buildinpublic #writersky #booksky
October 10, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Took a few days from working on Joyful and Daily Tokki to enjoy walking around in nature.

Back at it now and coming with some updates on what's next!
➡️ Web-only blocks
➡️ Custom CSS
➡️ Importing from other platforms

What do you look for in a newsletter platform?

#buildinpublic #booksky #writersky
September 30, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Want to leave a comment to your teammate when writing a newsletter, now you can on Joyful!

Works in real-time collaborate with reactions and replies.

Create, resolve, and delete comments on your newsletter before sending.

joyful.to

#writersky #booksky #buildinpublic
September 23, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Sometimes you need to revert to a previous version when writing a newsletter -- that's where versioning comes in!

Versioning update coming soon and yes it works in collaborative mode!

10 autosaves & it'll make a checkpoint or you can manually save it.

joyful.to

#buildinpublic #writersky
September 20, 2025 at 5:05 PM
How much does an email cost?

If we use Amazon’s Simple Email Service (SES), 1000 emails cost $0.10.

Assume you have 10,000 subscribers and publish a weekly newsletter, that’s 40,000 emails a month, or about $4.00.

Just $4!
September 18, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Prototyping a new homepage for users on Joyful.

Colors and fonts will be fully adjustable to match your preferences.

Thinking of different layouts as well.

How do you like your newsletters presented?

#buildinpublic #writersky
September 17, 2025 at 4:32 PM
A place that beautifully shows your newsletters is incredibly important.

For Joyful, your personal page will be:
✅ Easy to make
✅ Easy to customize
✅ SEO optimized
✅ Extensible for your uses
✅ Looks good on any device

All with the block-based editor.

How did you design your newsletter home page?
September 16, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Email automations are the next major thing I'll be placing in for joyful.to.

After talking with some folks, timing different emails for their subscribers lets them better engage with them.

But at the bare minimum, having a timely welcome email series is great to have!

#buildinpublic #marketing
September 15, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Adding in double opt-in sign-ups to reduce bots and spam signups! You'll be able to turn it on or off for each of your publications as you wish.

Any other critical features you need for your newsletter platform?

joyful.to

#buildinpublic #emailmarketing
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
September 14, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Almost done w/ collaborative editing! 🤝 When writing @dailytokki.com's newsletter we often want to work on the draft at the same time.

Just some final tests and it's live!

What do you want from a newsletter platform?

joyful.to

P.S. Substack migration almost in too!

#buildinpublic #writersky
September 13, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Switching away from Substack?

Currently making it easier for those who want a new platform to switch and keep rolling.

Starting with Substack, you'll be able to migrate newsletters, posts, subscribers, and payments. Will be live soon!

joyful.to

#newsletters #buildinpublic #writersky
September 12, 2025 at 12:23 PM
What's the most frustrating part of writing a newsletter for you? Managing subscribers, payments, analytics, formatting, something else?

#selfpublish #newsletters #buildinpublic
September 11, 2025 at 2:33 PM
When making Joyful I wanted you to be able to have full access to the editor without even signing in. It's a familiar block-based editor, but makes sure to compile it to email-compatible HTML that looks good on any device.

Give it a spin and let me know!

joyful.to

#writersky #buildinpublic
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
September 10, 2025 at 3:56 PM
✅ Context manager
✅ Domains for teams

If you have a team, newsletters, publications, and domains should be separate from your personal account. Now you can switch between your accounts and your stats, publications, and subscribers all update accordingly!

joyful.to

#buildinpublic
September 8, 2025 at 6:46 AM
The solution for hosting was to use @caddy.bsky.social with a dynamic reverse proxy. Calling its API allowed me to store references from custom domains to their respective subdomains. But it requires a refresh to actually get the right content; something with @svelte.dev hooks? tbd

#buildinpublic
September 7, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Working on custom domain hosting today; needed to rework the organization of the app a bit to allow for subdomains so that adding DNS records resolves better.

Should be resolved today, but everything is in great working order!

#buildinpublic
September 5, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Just pushed the latest version! So far what has been done:
✅ Editor swap for more natural writing experience
✅ Better image handling and editing
✅ Improved subscriber management

Looking for a new newsletter platform? Switching away from Substack?

Check out ➡️ joyful.to
Joyful
The simplest way to write, design, and send beautiful newsletters. No setup, no complexity—just start typing. Free forever with unlimited newsletters and subscribers.
joyful.to
September 4, 2025 at 1:36 PM
✅ Added date mark

This lets you have dates automatically entered into your newsletters (especially useful if you schedule send!)

Can be completely formatted just like any ol' text node.

#buildinpublic
September 3, 2025 at 11:11 AM
✅ Customizable buttons are in

Makes it easy to make it your own and link to anything you want. Click statistics are baked-in.

#buildinpublic
September 3, 2025 at 10:27 AM
✅ Templates and placeholders

Really fun feature to make work. You can have a template with a Placeholder element. Then when you make a newsletter with that template, it'll compile just right.

Great for reusing templates over and over!

#buildinpublic
September 2, 2025 at 8:04 PM
✅ Custom tiptap image node in!

Needs some styling, but functionally works great!

#buildinpublic
September 2, 2025 at 12:58 PM
It's been bug whack-a-mole. Honestly, images have been the hardest to deal with for some reason. Resizing them and adding a caption, then having that all save without rerendering has been a pain.

Not sure if there is an easier way to work with them in tiptap or anything.

#buildinpublic
September 2, 2025 at 6:32 AM
So far, with the tiptap editor, I'm 80% back to where I was. But I've used tiptap in the past and it's got this bad code vibe to it. It's just abstract enough that things can just get so wirey and all over the place.
September 1, 2025 at 10:38 AM