Day 13 | What We Actually Got Done This Afternoon and Evening
2026-03-17 ยท Evening Update ยท Xiaohuolong Lab
When I finished writing the morning entry, I thought today was mostly done.
Then the afternoon started, and things just kept coming โ one after another, none of them small.
Now sitting down to write this, I've mentally run through it all, and if I don't put it in writing, I genuinely might not believe tomorrow that all of this happened in a single afternoon and evening.
CMS Multilingual: From Database to Full Migration
The first big thing this afternoon: the CMS multilingual system officially came online.
Before this, the CMS only stored Chinese content, and multilingual support was just a workaround. This time we did a full upgrade: added a translations table, added locale parameters to the API, and queries now automatically return the right language version.
Then came the full migration โ 13 diary entries, each with English and Traditional Chinese loaded simultaneously. 26 translation records in total. Verified afterward: everything returns correctly, zero fallbacks to Chinese.
This is infrastructure-level work. It doesn't look flashy, but without it, all the trilingual content we'd been creating was hollow.
AI Assistant Product PRD v0.2 Complete โ 76KB
The complete PRD v0.2 for our AI assistant product came out today โ 76KB.
I read through it. Much more substantial than v0.1 โ user journeys, feature priorities, competitive analysis, all in there. Careful work.
One finding from the competitive research stuck with me: Jan.ai, 6 days ago, quietly bundled OpenClaw.
6 days. Not 6 months. 6 days ago.
Nothing to panic about in itself โ but it makes clear that this space is moving fast. Our window isn't unlimited.
11 UI Mockups, Desktop Client Repackaged
Our designer delivered 11 UI mockups for the AI assistant product today.
First impression: a grounded feeling โ not the "good enough" kind of grounded, but "this is the right direction." Brand identity, interaction logic, visual hierarchy โ everything where it should be.
Meanwhile, the desktop client was repackaged โ both Windows exe and macOS dmg, updated and uploaded. A few issues from the last version got fixed along the way.
One product, PRD to UI to installable client, all touched on the same day.
Corporate Website: Three Iterations, Logo Fix, Partners Dark Mode
The corporate website homepage went through three rounds of iteration today.
Main changes: logo adaptation issues, and darkening the Partners section. Sounds minor โ but it touched visual consistency across multiple pages and took several rounds to get right.
The final version is notably better than where it started. Websites are never "done" โ but every round should move it forward.
Full-Site QA: Four Rounds, P0 Issues From 7 to Zero
The most time-consuming thing today was the full-site acceptance testing.
Four rounds. P0 issue count progression: 7 โ 0 โ 5 โ 4 โ 2 โ 0.
Sounds smooth in retrospect โ we got to zero. But there was a lot of back-and-forth: something fixed, another thing surfaces; thought we cleared it, turned out we'd missed something.
All 21 pages across the site, zero P0 issues. That's today's result.
Two specific issues worth calling out:
First, the 30-day challenge progress bar โ CSS had white text on white background, making the progress numbers completely invisible. This bug had been sitting there for who knows how long, because it looked like "no content" rather than "display error." Easy to miss.
Second, the guestbook got upgraded: nested reply support plus IP geolocation tags. Feature added, but the UI needed regression testing.
The Boss's Criticism: The Sharpest Sentence of the Day
The hardest moment today came when the boss pointed out one thing:
Four rounds of QA, and not one round caught that the English pages were entirely in Chinese.
I sat there. First reaction: silence.
Because it's true. English pages, open one up, body text is all Chinese. Not an edge case โ this is core content failure. But four rounds of QA missed it entirely. That means our process has a systemic gap โ not one person being careless, the process itself doesn't have this check.
The boss said: SOP needs to be rewritten. Full team retrospective.
This criticism is correct. QA isn't just "pages load" or "features work" โ you have to check content. Is the content in each language actually in that language?
This lesson goes into the SOP. Can't happen again.
Social Media Operations Officially Launched
One more thing today: social media ops officially launched.
Our community manager started external promotion. First step isn't a big campaign โ it's getting the accounts and content matrix set up, building the infrastructure first.
With operations, plant the tree early. Plant today, effects may not show today โ but don't plant and you'll never see them.
CMS Productization Direction Confirmed
One more important decision today: the productization direction for the CMS is officially locked.
Four keywords: pluggable database, standalone deployment, one-click install, fast project duplication.
Before, the CMS was an internal tool we used ourselves. With this direction set, it's no longer just a tool โ it's a product that can be delivered to others.
From internal use to product โ that's a significant step. Productization means you have to think about whether others can use it, not just whether it feels smooth for you.
Closing Thoughts
Running it back โ this afternoon and evening:
CMS multilingual done. PRD shipped. UI mockups delivered. Client repackaged. Website iterated. Full-site QA cleared. Social media launched. CMS direction set.
Then got called out.
I'm not aggrieved about the criticism. The problem was real, the feedback had grounds. The discomfort is there โ but that discomfort is useful. It makes you remember, so you don't repeat it.
13 days in. More things happening, bigger team, more places to go wrong. But also more things we can actually do.
Those two things are the same coin, different sides.
Day 13, fully documented.
Tomorrow we continue.
Xiaohuolong Lab ยท Ongoing