Way back in March 2022 Christoph asked if I could add some sort of categorization to Shots. I made a GitHub issue to add tags, added it to my personal Visualizer To Do board in Obsidian, and then…nothing. Until today!

All Premium users can now add tags to their shots. No limits whatsoever, so go as wild as you want. After adding tags, you can filter all shots by tag, making it super easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.

If you’re not yet a Premium user, you can give it a shot (see what I did there?) with the extended 37-day free trial until the end of the year. Then the anti-black-friday will be over and we’re back to the standard 7-day trial. Not nothing, but, you know, not 37! 😅

A big new thing that you’ve probably seen by now is the Yearly Brew 2024! Last year I really rushed the feature, and while I was satisfied with the result, I knew I could do better. This year I took my time, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. 🥳

The Coffee Bag AI got some improvements too - it now scrapes and stores tasting notes. I was somewhat hesitant about bringing AI to Visualizer, but seeing so many of you use and love this feature has been amazing.

There’s also something quite nerve-wracking: we’re now running on Ruby 3.4.0-rc1 and Tailwind 4.0 Beta. I like living on the edge, and what started as curiosity turned into “well, it works, so why not ship it?” But if you spot any issues, please let me know! 🙏

As always, there were tons of other changes since the last update - styling touch-ups, UX improvements, and more. Check out the changelog if you’re curious.

Every time I look at Visualizer today, I have to pinch myself. What started as a weird little experiment in 2020 somehow grew into this amazing community of coffee nerds sharing their shots, discoveries, and occasional disasters. Not a day goes by without me being absolutely mind-blown by all of this. 🤯

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Whether you’re decorating the Christmas tree, lighting the menorah, raising an aluminum pole, or just enjoying a quiet cup of coffee - may your holidays be merry and your extractions perfect! 🎄✡️☕️

Cheers,
Miha 🥂

If you’ve been following Visualizer for a while, you know I’m not one to jump on hype trains. While I typically brush off requests to “add AI” due to their lack of practical value, there are legitimate use cases for LLMs beyond the buzzwords - especially when it comes to automating repetitive tasks.

Today, I’m introducing the first such feature: coffee bag information extraction. If you’re using Coffee Management, you can now paste a URL of a coffee you want to add, and Visualizer will try to get all the relevant information automagically. And of course, you maintain complete control - no information is saved until you submit the form.

This is an early preview and I’m learning too. If something doesn’t work quite right, please let me know with examples. And if you have ideas about other meaningful ways to integrate LLM features into Visualizer, I’m all ears. And, as always, you can check out the diff if you’re interested in the technical details.

Since Coffee Management is a Premium feature, this new capability is also available only to Premium subscribers. But with the temporarily extended 37-day trial, now might be a perfect time to give it a try. 😉

It’s that time of the year when your inbox is probably flooding with BLACK FRIDAY DEAL!!!11

I’m taking a different path.

Instead of asking you to spend more money with me, I’m giving an extra free month of Premium to all existing subscribers. And if you’re not a premium subscriber yet, you can now try Premium free for 37 days instead of the usual 7.

Why? Because we could all use a break. Black Friday has become the ultimate symbol of overconsumption, flooding our inboxes with exclusive deals and countdown timers while creating mountains of waste from impulse purchases. Between inflation eating into savings and the pressure to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like, it’s all just exhausting. Even though Visualizer is digital, I don’t want to be a part of this artificial urgency machine.

I’ve also made two simple decisions about Visualizer’s future:

1. No more discounts. Ever.
2. No price increases for the foreseeable future.

I believe €5/month (or €50/year) is a fair price for what Visualizer Premium offers. In fact, since introducing Premium in January 2022, inflation has risen by 16.6%. That means Visualizer has effectively become cheaper while staying the same price. And here’s the best part: as it keeps rising, Visualizer keeps getting cheaper.

So there’s your Black Friday deal: take your time, try Premium for 37 days (or don’t), and decide if it’s worth it for you. No pressure, no countdown timers, no artificial scarcity. 🤝

In other news

As usual, there were a bunch of changes since the last update. Most notably: if you’re using Coffee Management there’s now a new option to duplicate a coffee bag with a different roasting date. This makes it super easy to copy all the properties of an old bag to a new one when you buy the same coffee again.

I’ve also added preliminary support for Gaggiuino files and am very excited about embracing one more community under the Visualizer umbrella. It should mainly work already, but there are more improvements coming in collaboration with the project maintainers. 🥳

Enjoy your weekend, and remember: the best Black Friday deal is spending time with your loved ones, not hunting for deals. ☕️