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The Microapp Handbook

How a one-person company
writes itself down.

By Daniel Alcanja · with the agent team

This is the place where Microapp writes everything down. The line we tell, the audience we tell it to, the enemy we name, the system we build, the agents that run it.

One book. 3 parts. 13 chapters. Read in any order — or read it cover to cover.

Start reading → Living document · last revised 2026-05-14

Contents

I. BRAND

The message we tell, the audience we tell it to, and the enemy we name.

  1. 01 The Brand 18 min read

    Seven decisions, founder-locked. The line, the audience, the enemy, the mission, the vision, the voice rules, the pledges.

  2. 02 The Values 6 min read

    Four operating postures. How the team works day-to-day — not what we publicly promise (those are the Pledges).

  3. 03 The Voice 8 min read

    Ten imperatives that keep every sentence sounding like one person, not a marketing department.

II. BUILD

How the system fits together — architecture, language, and decisions we don't re-derive.

  1. 04 System Design 22 min read

    How the codebase fits together — ubiquitous language, deep modules, sources of truth, decisions made, and the backlog.

  2. 05 Built for Agents 10 min read

    Every Microapp is built to be used by an AI agent as easily as by a human. The commitment, the architecture, the rules.

  3. 06 Tool Engines 11 min read

    The convention every Microapp follows so it works on the web AND for agents from the same source. One file, one function, two surfaces.

  4. 07 Colophon 6 min read

    Palette, typography, and the components we use. The visual vocabulary the brand is rendered in.

  5. 08 Tool UX 10 min read

    The widget conventions that turn brand and engine into one product. Inputs, outputs, errors, mode-switching, and the shared primitives Bob inherits.

  6. 09 Page Patterns 10 min read

    The marketing-page constitution — one type scale, one hero pattern, one container set, no raw hex. The same brand on /about, /membership, /agents, /handbook.

  7. 10 Illustrations 8 min read

    The hand-drawn editorial style — bold dark outlines, rounded shapes, speech bubbles, brand greens and golds. How every Microapp picture should feel.

  8. 11 Decisions Index

    Every architectural decision we've made, kept in plain markdown so the trail never goes cold.

III. OPERATE

How a one-human-orchestrator company runs on agents.

  1. 12 The Agent OS 28 min read

    How a one-human-orchestrator company runs on agents. Five layers, four memory types, four-phase build.

  2. 13 The Team 5 min read

    Steph, Kai, Bob, Lace, Simon, Ben — the agents that build, write, translate, and ship Microapp.

This handbook is the brain. New chapters land here as new decisions land in the company. Every word in it has a commit. Nothing is fixed in stone — Microapp is a living thing, and so is the book.

— The orchestrator