Case study · 3-min skim
Pandough
A dough planner that starts from the flour you actually have.
Designed, built and run solo: product, physics engine, brand and go-to-market.
- Product
- UX & UI
- Engine
- Front & back end
- Brand
- Go-to-market
- Built
- Solo · since Nov 2025
- Platform
- Web app & PWA
- Status
- Live
- monthly active users
- ~6kmonthly active usersup from ~1.2k · Feb → Aug 2026
- monthly bake planners
- 2×monthly bake planners302 → 649 · Jun → Aug 2026
- bakes planned
- 4,710bakes plannedas of 12 Oct 2026
- languages
- 13languagesas of Oct 2026
The problem
A copied recipe is written for someone else's kitchen.
The recipe assumes
- Flour
- Strong Italian 00
- Oven
- 450 °C wood-fired
- Kitchen
- 20 °C
Your kitchen
- Flour
- Whatever the shop had
- Oven
- 250 °C home oven
- Kitchen
- 26 °C in summer
- Over-proofed
- Tough to chew
- Won't stretch
- Most calculatorsCount yeast
- A fewAdjust for flour strength
- NonePredict when the dough is ready
- PandoughPredicts when the dough is ready, for your flour and kitchen
Build · observe · improve
One flow, rebuilt in the open.
Same recipe, same flour, same clock, captured at 19 points in eleven months. Drag through it.
18 Oct 202620 / 20
Today: formulas in place, instructions-first summary, every graph tappable.
Commits touching the calculator, per month
| Nov 2025 | 15 |
|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | 28 |
| Jan 2026 | 79 |
| Feb 2026 | 73 |
| Mar 2026 | 38 |
| Apr 2026 | 39 |
| May 2026 | 87 |
| Jun 2026 | 77 |
| Jul 2026 | 111 |
| Aug 2026 | 95 |
| Sep 2026 | 94 |
| Oct 2026 | 99 |
Under the hood
One headless engine for every surface.
- Flour
- Kitchen & fridge
- Mixer
- Oven
- Schedule
Engine · no UI
- Fermentation × temperature
- Yeast × flour strength
- Dough temperature
- Mixer heat
- Bake time
- 6-strategy scheduler
Calculator
The plan, step by step
AI assistant
Answers with the bake's numbers
tool call
plan_bake
flour: Caputo Pizzeria
bake: Sat 19:00
← schedule · weights
MCP server
Claude, ChatGPT & co. plan a bake
replay
26 h cold · 6 °C
before: late peak
after: at peak
Bake replay
Re-runs a real session headless
Tool call and replay values are illustrative.
Making physics visible
Graphs instead of numbers.
What this flour can drink
The curve is drawn from the chosen flour.
When the dough peaks
Tap the graph to move the bake.
Why wetter dough wants less heat
More water needs a longer bake, so less heat.
Teaching in context
Every alert is a lesson, and the assistant knows your bake.
Alert
Critical, warning or tip
- CriticalCan't work as set
- WarningNear an edge
- TipOne change from better
Lesson
Why it happens
Ask
Prefilled with the bake
Answer
Uses your flour, fridge and oven
Why does this appear, and what should I change?
2 h warm bulk at 25 °C, then 18 h cold, with an 11.8% protein flour: the gluten relaxes too far.
Cut the bulk to 1–1.5 h and portion before the fridge.
Real conversation, anonymized and shortened.
Most-asked alerts
- Your oven wants a wetter dough12
- Late portioning10
- Your oven can't reach this style's heat9
- Aim a little before the peak5
- Less yeast won't fix a late peak4
n = 68 alert-started chats. Questions come when two settings pull apart.
One loop, start to finish
A cancelled subscription, a replay and a fix.
What I didn't build
Deciding what not to build is half the job.
- Native appsA PWA ships daily with no store reviews. Native comes after video content.
- Pizzeria dashboardToo little demand in organic traffic, too little field knowledge.
- Full AcademyA landing page collects interest and a launch list first.
Learn by making
Every plan becomes step-by-step instructions.
Bakers asked for guidance in every channel.
- Modernist Pizza· the science
- Ken Forkish· the practice
- Deep research → AI podcasts· while building
Across the product
Phone first, desktop too.
Formulas
Flour pages
The verdict
Getting it to people
Found through search, in 13 languages.
- search clicks
- 3.85ksearch clicksJun – Sep 2026 · 172k impressions
- languages, localized URLs
- 13languages, localized URLsas of Oct 2026
- in the official registry
- MCPin the official registrysince Sep 2026
Flours the engine knows
| 2025-12 | 119 |
|---|---|
| 2026-01 | 203 |
| 2026-02 | 305 |
| 2026-03 | 369 |
| 2026-04 | 370 |
| 2026-05 | 424 |
| 2026-06 | 435 |
| 2026-07 | 452 |
| 2026-08 | 516 |
| 2026-09 | 823 |
| 2026-10 | 2026 |
“The most complete and, above all, the clearest.”
How I work with AI
I designed the product and the engine's models, directed coding agents (Claude, Codex), and reviewed and tested everything they wrote.
What I'd do differently
Extract the engine first, so it's unit-tested, AI-debuggable and runs from stateless interfaces from day one.
Pandough taught me the whole loop. I want to run it with a team, on problems bigger than one person can carry.