Building small tools in public
I'm Nan Liang. I build free browser tools — shift schedules, tournament brackets, seating charts, time card calculators — and I write here about how they're built, shipped, and run.
Latest notes
- The Form That Failed Me for a Mouse
A contact form rejected my automation for four days. The blockers: a consent anchor my selector missed, an isTrusted-only mousemove flag, and a dwell timer.
- The 0.00% My Tests Enforced and Math Refuted
My data post claimed a history-aware redraw scored zero repeat pairings in 9,999 draws. Zero was impossible — the floor is eight — and my test asserted it.
- 57 Directory Submissions in One Day
A field report from a directory run across a site family: one new channel onboarded in an evening, two failure modes named, five channels reviewed.
- Error Code 8 Meant Two Different Failures
My pure-HTTP Search Console submitter stalled two windows on the same landmine: error code 8. Four pieces of evidence later, the rule book changed.
- A Dead Session Looks Exactly Like a Dead Proxy
My nightly YouTube scan died three ways at once: 429 on captions, 403 on audio, a skipped feed. Same exit node. The probes that blamed the session, not the IP.
Tools I built
8 free tools, all running in the browser with no signup. See the full list →
