Skanon has a website

Skanon now has its own address, skanon.ssk-it.fr, in English and in French. This first post says what the product is, and what this blog will carry.

The problem Skanon solves

In most projects, the need is expressed in a ticketing tool — a Trello card, a few lines and a discussion — and built in GitHub, as commits and pull requests. In between, the reasons behind the choices get lost. Six months later, when someone asks why a rule is the way it is, the card is archived, the discussion buried, and the code only says what it does.

Skanon fills that gap. It keeps the product’s specification — its domains, features and business rules — in a Git repository, and evolves it through scopings: dated units of change that carry the goal, the user journey, and every decision with its options, including the ones set aside and why.

How it works

• A scoping is written on a branch and reviewed in a pull request, like code. A GitHub Action checks that it breaks nothing: a rule created with no statement, an impact on a rule that does not exist.
• On merge, its rules are projected into the specification, which then describes what the product actually does.
• Everything is Markdown with YAML front matter, in your repository. History, authorship and review are GitHub’s: the record outlives the tool.

Two ways to use it

The web version is free and installable, and its source is available under the FSL-1.1-ALv2 licence: anyone may read, change and use it, except to build a competing service. It reads a public repository without signing in; a GitHub token opens your private ones, and stays in your browser.

The desktop app, for macOS, Windows and Linux, keeps that token in the system’s keychain, opens a scoping in one click through skanon: links, and receives its updates under licence.

What this blog will carry

Announcements, and Skanon’s release notes: what changes in the product, and why — as befits a tool whose business is that why. The site itself puts no cookie and no third-party resource in your browser.