The work should stay yours.
A file you can move. A page you can export. A diary you are not renting from the tool.
About
Software should leave room for the person using it.
CosmicElse is being made as a small set of tools. The bet is simple: a tool can do one job, stay out of the way of the work, and let you take the result with you.
Creative work picks up the habits of whatever it is made in. A builder that only offers one layout will eventually make every site look related. A diary that assumes an audience will change what people are willing to write. A team tool that needs a manager will be wrong for three people at a table.
So the tools stay separate. Builder is for pages. ArtElse, when it exists, is for publishing work. DiaryElse is for a private record. PortalElse is for a small public corner. elseTeams is a question about working with a few other people. They can know about each other. They do not have to share a dashboard.
Room for people
A tool can be quiet. It does not have to coach, score, or fill the empty parts of a page with its own ideas. Empty, here, is sometimes just unfinished on purpose.
No single workflow
Some people start with a sentence. Some start with a picture. Some start with a list of pages. Builder allows more than one of those, and the other tools are not required to imitate it.
Connected, not combined
A family can share a name and a standard without sharing a screen. Focused tools can point at each other. That is different from one application that tries to be the whole day.
Ownership and portability
If the work matters, leaving has to be ordinary. Export, a portable file, and a project that is not only a row in someone else’s database.
There is no manifesto past this.
Builder is usable. The rest is unfinished, and labeled that way. If you want to talk about either, the next page is enough.