Devlog 01 >From Spreadsheet Purgatory to Craft Cacao

This didn’t start as some grand startup idea. It started—like many great things do—with a spreadsheet that pissed me off.

My dear old friend John, from Chocolate Alchemy, and I have talked for years about how the existing formulation tool is… a lot. It’s a dense, overbuilt beast of a spreadsheet. He disagrees, on principal—but deep in his heart he knows if you aren’t already fluent in Excel necromancy, it’s basically a brick wall. We both knew it needed to be better, but real life (and running a business) tends to get in the way. Eventually, I carved out some cycles through my dev company and kicked off an exploratory “What if we didn’t hate this?” project. And then—oops—it turned into an actual app.

I’m not a full-time chocolate maker. I dabble, usually poorly. The things that make me excel with technology make me worse at the craft. But the first time I tried to make a proper batch, the amount of research, ratio math, and scattered advice was enough to make me want to yeet the whole thing—and yes, I know I had John sitting there to ask any questions and work from his vast experience, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to learn myself.

I’m a deeply technical person—I can wrangle an API, tame a broken Shopify theme, debug go on a migraine day—but I still found chocolate making way harder than it needed to be. So yeah, this app’s for the total beginner—helping them jump past a bunch of complexity. But also for the pros, especially the ones who are staring down a supply chain of unstable bean sources, shifting fat ratios, and the general chaos of chocolate apoclypse.

I started simple: “I have a bean and some ingredients. I want to make chocolate that doesn’t kill my expensive melanger. Help.” That use case—that clarity—is the spine of the whole app. If that part isn’t rock solid, the rest doesn’t matter.

The most satisfying bit so far? Validation. Not the therapy kind (though, thanks), but the “this recipe will actually work” kind. Also: you can clone a recipe, swap a bean, tweak an input, and move on with your life. No fragile Excel chain reaction. No mental gymnastics.

But here’s the real win: most software just makes us busier. It’s productivity theater. Flashy dashboards, infinite settings, and suddenly you’re spending more time managing your tool than using it. Craft Cacao is trying to do the opposite. No bloat. No nonsense. Just help where you need it, and silence where you don’t.

Because if I’ve learned one thing in software and in chocolate: the best tools get out of your damn way.

Things are moving quickly now, we’re about to enter invite only beta and find out how to make this even more valuable for makers by having them shape the tool. Exciting times.