Anyone else built a "simple" tool that turned into way more scope than expected?
Curious how common this is — I started building what I thought would be a small, single-purpose tool (a text/font styling generator called textstylr.com), and it slowly grew into something with way more moving parts than I planned: multiple style categories, search/filter functionality, comparison features, character-limit logic for different platforms, mobile performance tuning... the list kept growing.
None of it felt unnecessary in the moment — each piece solved a real problem I noticed while testing. But looking back, the "simple tool" idea and the finished thing are pretty different.
For those who've built something similar: did your project scope creep in a similar way? At what point did you decide "okay, this is done" vs. keep adding? And with hindsight, is there anything you added that you'd cut if you started over?
Replies
I can definitely relate to this. Feature creep often starts with solving real user problems one by one, and before you know it, a "simple" tool becomes a much bigger product. I'm curious, do you have a link to your tool? I'd love to check it out and see how you've organized the different styling options, search, and comparison features. It sounds like an interesting project.