The day cfitrim.com became a real domain

Bought the domain at a gate hold. Squarespace registrar, two clicks, twelve dollars, done. Walked back out to the airplane.

There's a particular feeling when a side project becomes a real thing. Mine was tied to a credit-card transaction at an airport with three minutes to push. Clearance was delayed — common — and I had just bought the URL that would be the public face of months of code.

Side projects don't end on a Friday. They end the day you commit to the domain.

Why the name

Trim — as in trim tabs, the small adjustments a pilot makes constantly to keep the airplane on attitude without fighting the yoke. You set them, you forget them, the airplane flies straight. That's the product's job: handle the small persistent adjustments that keep a CFI's workflow on attitude.

CFI tools today require you to fight the yoke. Spreadsheet here, calendar there, paper logbook in the flight bag. Trim is the trim tab.

The boring infrastructure underneath

Same week I registered trimcfi.com as a redirect, moved the Google OAuth project over to a real tarmaclabs account, and got the email-sending domain verified with Resend. The little things. The boring things. The things that mean strangers can actually use the product without me being in the loop.

Side project to company crossed a line that day. Quietly. Between two flights.