The current state of Pruvious v4

I want to write down the honest state of Pruvious and where version 4 currently stands.

Over the last months, I've been getting more and more messages on GitHub, Discord, and in DMs asking when v4 will be finished. People also noticed that the gaps between my commits on the v4 branch have been getting larger. I understand why that makes some of you wonder if the project is abandoned.

It isn't.

But the truth is that around autumn last year, I developed a repetitive strain injury, and a bit later also ulnar nerve issues, that made working on a computer very difficult. It started as numb pain in my right hand. Before that, there had already been some tingling in my fingers, which I mostly ignored. The first real alarm was wrist pain after spending several long days working on my laptop.

At first I thought it would go away after a few days of rest. Then a few days became weeks, and weeks became months.

I started noticing a pattern. Anything that required precise hand movement would trigger it - typing, using a knife, brushing my teeth. The only thing worse than typing on a computer was using a phone. That is still something I struggle with. Once the pain started building up, it could become unbearable within 10 minutes, and then the whole day was basically done.

To be fair, my setup and posture had been bad for years. I spent way too much time working on a MacBook Air on the couch, leaning on my elbows, shifting from side to side, laptop in my lap, for 10 to 12 hours a day. And that had been going on for years.

Open source is also not my full-time job. I work as a web developer for a living, and Pruvious has always been my passion project. I've put thousands of hours into version 4 over the last two years. In the past, when I disappeared for a bit, it was usually because regular work got intense. But even then I could still write notes, organize docs, or at least think through the next steps.

With this injury, I couldn't do any of that.

Honestly, after two months without improvement, I had moments where I thought my developer career might be over.

So I started changing everything. I got an ergonomic keyboard, mouse, height-adjustable desk, and a proper chair. I forced myself to sit like a normal person for once. Surprisingly, the biggest difference came from the split keyboard. Being able to keep my hands wider apart instead of cramped over a 13-inch laptop helped a lot. Walking also helped a lot. In some cases it removed the pain completely.

For a while, I thought I had figured it out. I built a routine, the pain slowly faded, and I could work a few hours in the morning and a bit in the evening. Naturally, I started increasing my workload again.

That was a mistake. I pushed too far and ended up right back where I started.

So that is the real reason why development slowed down so much.

What now?!

Now for the part I honestly did not expect.

Exactly seven days ago, I tried Claude Code for the first time. I had intentionally ignored tools like that from the beginning. Same with Cursor and similar products. I was happy using GitHub Copilot as fancy autocomplete, and Raycast AI mostly for research (it slowly became my new Google). That was enough for me. I genuinely like writing code, and I've been doing that for more than 20 years.

Then I kept seeing developers on Bluesky whose work I really respect having an absolute blast with AI, and that finally got me to give it a chance.

And yeah, it completely broke my expectations.

Ironically, with this way of working, I can finally spend long stretches building again without running into the same problems as when I'm typing everything myself. Since my health problems started, I've already been shifting more and more toward voice dictation, and it works almost perfectly with AI. I just wish it would finally learn the word "Pruvious" so I don't have to keep correcting "previous" every time.

What clicked for me is that I tend to give very precise instructions when I work through a problem, and Opus seems to benefit from that. The feedback was consistently really good, and pretty quickly I started trusting it more than I ever expected. Sometimes it feels ridiculous watching the machine do in minutes something that would have taken me weeks.

At one point I was impressed enough that I wanted to change my title from "Senior web developer" to "Machine speaker".

So where does that leave Pruvious v4?

The honest answer is: I still don't know the timeline.

The good news is that v4 is not some empty branch with ideas and unfinished experiments. It is actually usable already, and most of the core features are there. What's missing is polish, cleanup, and a lot of smaller things from my internal to-do list before I would personally call it ready.

Right now I'm exploring how to continue development in a way that works with my current limitations. A week ago I would have said AI was not part of that future. Now my mind changed about it.

So no, Pruvious is not abandoned. But I also don't want to pretend I can give you a reliable release date today.

I'll keep you posted.

Until then, see you, space cowboy.