Weekly coding update, turning Draft Path into a paid product

This was a much more substantial Draft Path week than a quick commit scan suggested. The biggest milestone was landing the Stripe subscription work: a free tier, a paywall after the first concept, and the plumbing needed for real subscription access rather than just a theoretical pricing page.

Making payment part of the product

The important shift is that Draft Path now has the bones of a commercial product. Users can try the core idea first, then move into a paid path when they want to keep creating. That is a meaningful step because it connects the product experience to a business model without forcing payment before the value is clear.

There was a lot of practical work behind that: checkout, subscription status, portal handling, webhook behaviour, access gating, and tests around the risky edges. It is the sort of work that should mostly disappear when it is working well, but it is central to whether the product can actually be used and trusted.

Cleaning up after the milestone

After the Stripe merge, the week also included cleanup in Draft Path itself: moving data reads into clearer query modules, improving the idea-to-plan flow, and adding some small interface polish. That follow-through matters because a big feature landing is only half the job; the next step is making the codebase and product shape easier to keep building on.

• Merged the Stripe subscription paywall and free-tier concept limit
• Added the supporting checkout, portal, webhook, access-gating, and test coverage needed around billing
• Continued shaping the concept dashboard, plan revision flow, and internal data access patterns

Overall, this felt like a week where Draft Path became more real. The product is no longer just about generating and shaping ideas; it now has more of the structure needed to become something people can try, pay for, and keep returning to.