Ask for a tool

What gets built

Requests are read for one thing: whether a narrow, opinionated tool would beat the universal one at this exact job. A request that names the job and what already failed at it is far more likely to turn into a tool than one that names a feature.

No date is promised anywhere on this page. A status says what has happened, not what is about to.

What the form asks

• What are you trying to get done? Describe the job, not the tool. What is the file, what has to happen to it, and what do you do with the result afterwards.
• What have you already tried, and what went wrong? Name the tools or the workaround, even if the answer is that nothing turned up. What it costs, what it refused to do, or where it broke is the useful part.
• What is stopping you? Nothing like it exists; What exists is too expensive; It uploads my files; The output is the wrong shape; Too many steps; It needs an install; I hit a limit; Something else
• What does the result have to look like? optional. A file format, a column layout, a size, whatever matters.
• How often does this come up? optional.
• Email optional. Only used to tell you if this gets built. Nothing else is sent.

This form takes text only. No file is uploaded here, and none is asked for. If a build later needs a sample file, that is arranged separately and said so at the time.

What a status means

New

Received and not read yet.

Reading

Being worked out.

Queued

Accepted, with no date attached.

Building

Work has started.

Shipped

A tool exists for this.

Declined

Not being built, with a reason.

Duplicate

Already asked for.