Designer-founder of Pistacio. 10 years in design across four countries and seven cities. Worked in everything from startups to enterprise. Currently learning (and fixing) what I was wrong about.
Some of work is too human for AI.
Hours, vacation, inventory, licenses. You can try to disrupt this layer with AI, but it won't work. It's simply too human to book your own vacation days.
We make it real simple, and price it at the lowest number that keeps our small team running. No bloat, but with purpose.
Live on Pistacio
- 30+ people across 4 workspaces
- 31,000+ hours tracked
- 300+ days of leave planned
- €300k+ in assets & inventory tracked
Live & free at pistacio.app
I ship, watch, and cut
- Stopped showing every workspace every feature. A consulting firm doesn't need shift schedules; a cleaning company doesn't need a CRM. Added a resolver that asks "does this even apply to your mode?" before rendering any nav item. Surfacing nothing beats surfacing the wrong thing.
- German users said "Auswertung" when they meant our reports section. We'd labeled it "Berichte." Berichte is what a journalist writes; Auswertung is what an accountant runs. Changed the noun. Same data, right name.
- Ema asked why our app had ambient glowing orbs in the background. I didn't have an answer that wasn't "it looked cool." Ripped them out, flattened the shell, self-hosted the fonts, and collapsed a radius scale that had quietly grown to eleven values. Pistacio looks less like a vibe and more like an operations tool, which is what it is.
- Alex opened /reports on the first of the month and the page tried to show him hours for a month that was four hours old. Built a Monthly Review that sits above the Hours report and only speaks during the month-close window. Pace-aware so it tells you what your team actually has time for, not what looks good on a chart.
- The travel-expense flow used to be three modals stacked on top of each other. Alex opened it for the first time and just stared. Collapsed it into one slide-in with the receipt list inline. The answer was fewer screens, not better ones.
When we put ourselves on Pistacio
Replaced
- Mite → Pistacio (time tracking)
- Absentify → Pistacio (vacation — finds the days that maximize your PTO)
Started doing properly (no real system before)
- Inventory management
- Subscription tracking
- License tracking
- Insurance tracking