Iron Swan

I actually made a thing. Well, I argued with three different Large Language Models to try and make a thing for another thing. Friends, I present to you, the bestest Markdown-based, web book platform this week, or maybe ever: Iron Swan.

So let’s say you want to write a book and put it on the Internet, and you don’t want to put it on Wattpad or some other app thing and you sure as hell aren’t going to spin up Ruby and configure a server thing so you can run Writebook. And what if you were so inspired by the number one siege comedy of 2017 The Gates of Vienna that you just had to make your own?

If you’re like me and like to make internet books for no one in particular and are working on a comedy about a black metal band who inadvertently summon a troll, and just so happen to be a designer in software, and are inundated with all this hype about AI, you go and make your own way to make internet books.

You can get it and learn more at the Github repo. You can also read the sordid development history.

You might think that with an amazing graphic like the above (requirement for v1) it would be enough, but I spent hours and hours arguing with robots so you don’t have to and made a thing you should be able to download/fork/copy, chuck some Markdown files, tweak the names of some stuff and should just work and you go put it on the Internet somewhere.

Because I’m a designer, I’m clearly also into making my life harder than it needs to be due to a combination of DIY subculture youth, overthinking, perfectionism and way too many years of art-school over-education. So I need to do things myself. Like you, I saw all the videos of all the bros making their cool AI things at the press of a button and thought to myself, well, you can guess.

I hate calling it “vibe coding,” not just because it is an utter shit name, but in reality should be prompt coding but it’s probably too late. Anyhow, easily the best part is getting to make the cover or whatever you want to call it where I used AI to help with the swan mesh and the space background.

Names I was originally considering:

• Steel Dominion
• Celestial Warlord

But obviously its named after The Sword’s opus “Iron Swan” off of their 2006 debut studio album “Age of Winters.” Now imagine the acoustic, dare I say troubador-esque intro, lulling you into a place where you can’t handle the pummeling riff that melts your face off seconds later. Its going to totally be like that.