Pen to Eye

Inspiration

Andy Weir wrote The Martian with the help of real-time feedback from online readers. We wanted to create a platform where authors and readers could collaborate just as seamlessly—making feedback, support, and glossary-building a natural part of writing a book, not an afterthought.

What it does

Pen to Eye connects writers and readers in real time:

• Authors publish work-in-progress books, manage book glossaries, and receive threaded comments with quoted text.
• Readers can discover books by genre, leave feedback, offer support, and interact directly with their favorite authors.
• Monetization tools are built-in, but only enabled for authors with active platform subscriptions.
• Admins can moderate all content, and privacy, analytics, and responsive UI are built-in.

How we built it

We started—with every core feature—on Bolt.new, using its rapid scaffolding, React/TypeScript support, and integrated Supabase database.

• UI flows, forms, chapter management, and dashboards were mostly generated by Bolt.
• We managed our database schema directly in Supabase, iterating frequently to adapt hacked-in features as Bolt refined our workflow.
• Bolt’s commit/plan system let us incrementally refine and fix one issue at a time, “pair programming” - with the AI during all tough spots.
• Production deploy lives on Netlify with Bolt’s badge.

Challenges we ran into

• Keeping tag/genre filtering and display in sync (hydration by tag ID proved surprisingly complex)
• Handling migrations/schema drift between Bolt and Supabase for a multi-user, multi-role app
• React/Vite+TypeScript type-only import errors for shared interfaces (solved via proper import type discipline)
• Getting annotation/comments to anchor reliably in dynamic Markdown text
• Bolt’s project size limits (so we worked in small, tested, incremental commits)
• Rebranding late in the cycle (from “Author’s Writing Nook” to “Pen to Eye”)—Bolt made it doable but it was a lot to change!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Feature-complete role-based UX: Reader, Author, and Admin dashboards, all with the right permissions and tools.
• Real-time, per-book collaboration: Threaded, quote-based feedback (no hanging marginal comments!) and author-level support links.
• Robust, scalable tags/genres: Genre filtering/search that works everywhere, consistently.
• Comprehensive privacy, analytics, and compliance: From robots.txt to privacy policy, and responsible analytics by default.
• Professional rebrand and production deploy: Launched on Netlify with a completely unified “Pen to Eye” theme.

What we learned

• Bolt is most powerful when used for incremental, focused tasks. Trying to batch large features overwhelmed the system, but single-purpose prompts worked great.
• Schema and role management are foundational: Keeping database, RLS, and UI states in sync was key to scaling smoothly.
• Real-world annotation/self-review/UX takes iteration—and Bolt’s commit/plan model made these fixes survivable, even under deadline pressure.

What's next for Pen to Eye

• Feature: Author inbox & reply threading: Authors will be able to receive, organize, and reply to private reader messages.
• Automated book purchase/payments: Integrated Stripe/PayPal for supporting premium content.
• Better collaborative tools: Live chapter editing and more robust notification system.
• Mobile and accessibility polish: More work to make Pen to Eye beautiful and usable everywhere.
• **Growing the community: Launching to new writers and readers—onboarding, publicizing, and iterating based on real feedback.

Built With

• lucide-react
• netlify
• plausible
• react
• react-markdown
• supabase
• tailwind
• vite