You can't build everything for everyone. Even when writing code gets faster, you still have to decide which problems your product is going to solve.
For Clipflow, the job we've been building around is creating content at scale with a team. That gives us a reason to bring the relevant work together in one place.
It also means some workflows won't fit. You can make almost anything configurable if you keep going, but eventually you end up with a product that's trying to accommodate everything. The specific task you wanted to make easier becomes harder to recognise.
That's difficult to accept when the customer asking for the change is paying you. In a small business, losing a customer hurts. You want to help, and you know that you could probably build what they're asking for.
But I have to think about the product we're trying to deliver over time. Some workflows struggle because we haven't built for them. Taking on every one of those requests can send us away from the job we actually want to do well.
This is an ongoing decision, rather than a line you draw once and never reconsider. Customer needs change your understanding of the business. You still need a reason for saying yes.
I want to be able to explain how a feature improves the content workflow we're building around. If I can't do that, the fact that we can write the code isn't enough.
A request can be reasonable and still belong in a different product. Being clear about that is part of looking after the product and the customers who use it for its intended job.
