Gadget.Observer

A gadget whose buy link points at a country-specific shop — anything ending in .co.uk, .com.au, .co.jp and the like — used to have its store shown as “co” or “com”. The Pentel Orenz Nero, linked to pentel.co.uk, was labelled co; it now reads pentel. The same correction applies everywhere a store link appears: gadget pages, the gadget dialog inside a list, and the admin view.

The sidebar is a little less cluttered: Notifications and Admin have moved down next to your name as compact icons on the right, and the “Upload Gadget” link now lives as a button on the gadgets pages instead of taking up its own row in the menu. When you're signed in, an upload button sits on the gadgets homepage and a “new list” button on the lists page — right where you'd reach for them.

The homepage could stop loading after the site had been running for a long stretch — requests would hang indefinitely rather than show the gadget grid. The cause was the database connection pool slowly running out of usable connections over days of uptime, with nothing to recycle them or to give up when none were free. The pool now caps and recycles its connections and fails fast instead of hanging, so the homepage keeps loading and recovers on its own.

The gadget cards shown inside your AI assistant (search results, wishlists, and the editors' triage board) used to square off every photo, cutting off anything that wasn't already square. Photos now appear in their natural shape and the cards pack together in a masonry layout — the same look as the site's own gadget grids. The side-by-side comparison view keeps uniform photos so its columns stay aligned.

Editors can now complete or edit a gadget's data without leaving the conversation: the MCP integration ships a gadget data form (MCP Apps) that your AI assistant opens when it needs information only you have. Asking it to complete a gadget renders inputs for exactly the fields that are missing — price, link, release date, brand, tags, cover image, product line, even variations — while an edit form shows everything prefilled. The assistant can also request specific fields when it knows the rest isn't needed. The same form now powers the curation board: click any gadget on the triage board to fill in its missing details in place, just like the wishlist add flow.

The editors' curation board used to tag each gadget as “Live” or “Draft”, which wrongly suggested an unpublished gadget was an unfinished draft. There is no draft concept — an unpublished gadget is a complete, fully-visible catalogue entry that just hasn't been picked for the homepage. Each gadget now shows the same visibility icon as the site (a globe when it's on the homepage), matching what the publish/unpublish buttons actually do.

The gadget data form in the MCP integration can now ask the AI to do the typing: every suggestible field has a ✨ Suggest action, and a button at the top of the form fills in all missing values in one go. Suggestions arrive as highlighted drafts — brands, tags and product lines are constrained to options that actually exist in the catalogue — and nothing touches the catalogue until you review and press Save. The actions only appear in AI chats that support model sampling, and the highlight clears the moment you edit a drafted value.

The data form in the MCP integration lost some visual noise: the redundant "Missing" labels are gone (an empty input says it already) and the form no longer draws its own border inside the frame your AI chat already renders around the app. When the ✨ AI-suggest actions are hidden, the form now logs why — they require a chat host that supports model sampling — so it's easy to tell a missing capability from a bug.

Creating or editing a brand or product line is a little smoother now: the web address (slug) is generated from the name automatically and shown as a quiet line you can click to change, rather than a field you have to fill in. Yes/no options like a brand's “wordmark” are now a clear on/off switch.

When you manage the catalogue through an AI assistant, gadget and variation prices are now recorded as a whole number of dollars or euros instead of being misread as cents — so a €99 gadget no longer comes out as €9,999. A brand's location is captured as a plain description of where the company is based (like “Cupertino, California, USA”) rather than a two-letter country code. And publishing is now understood as a curation choice — a published gadget is one picked for the homepage — so an unpublished gadget is no longer mistaken for an unfinished draft.

The search page now looks beyond gadget names. Typing a tag — like a material or a color — brings up every gadget that carries it, and typing a brand name shows that brand's gadgets, not just the brand itself. Search also forgives small typos, so “hadget” still finds gadgets and “alumnium” still finds aluminum. Multi-word searches combine, too: “sony headphones” finds Sony gadgets tagged as headphones. The closest name matches are shown first.

Reordering a gadget's images now sticks — the photos move with the buttons instead of snapping back. And saving a gadget no longer fails when the same tag ends up selected twice (for example after creating a tag that already existed); the duplicate is ignored so the gadget saves cleanly.

Adding photos to a gadget is quicker: drop several at once (or browse to pick a batch) and each becomes a gallery image, with the first as the cover — reorder, remove, or describe them right there. A tag you create while editing a gadget is now available immediately in the variation matrix, instead of only after saving. And image descriptions (alt text) are now optional rather than required, so you're no longer forced to fill one in.

The MCP integration now ships interactive apps (the new MCP Apps standard): asking your AI assistant to search the catalogue can render a live card grid — styled like the site's gadget cards, price badge and brand logos included — where you refine the query, open gadget pages, and add gadgets (or a specific variation) to a wishlist. A wishlist builder lets you pick or create a wishlist and curate it without leaving the conversation, and a comparison view puts 2–4 gadgets side by side. Search results can be narrowed by brand and tag facets right in the cards view, and editors get a triage board that surfaces gadgets with missing fields for one-click publishing. Clients that don't render apps keep getting the same plain results as before, and new wishlist tools (create, view, add, remove) work for any signed-in user.

On a gadget's page you can now click any thumbnail in the photo gallery to view it large in the cover spot. The strip keeps all photos in place and highlights the one on display, so it's easy to get a closer look at every angle without leaving the page.

The form for adding and editing a gadget has been streamlined and reordered so it's shorter and easier to fill in. Paste the product link first and it can recognise the brand from the link's domain; you can also add a brand just by typing its name (fill in the rest later), the web address is generated for you from the brand and name (click it to change), and a release date can be just a year if that's all you know. It works much better on a phone too: tapping a field no longer zooms the page, dropdowns no longer run off the top of the screen, the variation editors use the full width, the image uploader drops the desktop-only “drag & drop” wording, and the price field shows a $ and brings up a number keypad.

Deleting a gadget that was linked to a brand (or a category, list, or review) used to fail silently, leaving the gadget in place with no explanation. Those links are now cleared as part of the delete, so the gadget goes away as expected — and if a delete ever can't be completed, a clear error message is shown instead of nothing.

Product lines can now be linked to a brand, shown on the line's page and used as the start of its breadcrumb (sub-lines inherit their parent's brand). The page's edit option has moved into the actions menu like everywhere else, and the parent-line picker no longer lets you nest a line under itself or one of its own sub-lines.

The photo strip on a gadget's page now scrolls naturally on every device: flicking quickly on a phone keeps its momentum instead of springing back, and on narrow desktop windows you can scroll the thumbnails with a trackpad, mouse wheel, or scrollbar.

On a gadget page, a variation that comes in more than one colour (or any other multi-tag attribute) now shows as a single option in the “Available in” section instead of being split apart, with all of its colour swatches displayed side by side.

Gadgets with lots of variations (say six colours × two sizes × four storage options) no longer need to be configured one at a time. A new matrix editor generates every combination from a handful of axes, with flexible pricing (a base price plus per-option adjustments, adjustments only, or a price typed per combination), a templated buy-link, and cover photos that auto-assign by tagging gallery images with the attributes they show. The familiar one-by-one list editor is still there — switch between the two in the gadget form.

A new Cleanup tab in the admin area lists catalogue entries that nothing points at any more — empty product lines, unlinked brands, unapplied tags, and tag types with no tags — so they can be tidied away with a single click. Deleting is only offered while an entry is genuinely unused, so it never affects a gadget, variation, or list. The same tidy-up is available to editors over the MCP integration, where a delete is refused with a clear explanation if the entry is still in use.

Gadgets can now be organised into product lines (like “MX Master” or “iPhone”, which can nest), ordered by release date so newer revisions show first, and given variations such as colour or storage. A variation isn't a separate gadget, but it can take its own photo from the gallery, be added to lists, and be found in search — and wherever it matches, its photo is used as the cover. Product lines have their own pages, and all of this is editable in the gadget form and from a connected AI assistant.

Editors can now create and publish gadgets, organise them into variations, set their images, and add new tags directly from an AI tool like Claude — not just edit existing ones.

The gadget count shown on each brand in the brands list now includes every gadget on the brand's page, so the number always matches what you see when you open the brand.

When you browse the catalogue from an AI tool that supports rich interfaces, gadgets and brands now appear as the same image cards you see on the site instead of plain text, and descriptions show formatted text instead of raw Markdown.

Fine-tune how large a brand's logo appears across the site from the brand edit page.

Drop your uploaded gadget images straight into a description to illustrate the details.

A gadget can now be associated with more than one brand, for collaborations and co-branded products.

Members now have a role — viewer, contributor, editor, or admin — and admins can change anyone's role right from the dashboard.

Admins get a new dashboard to browse every member, see their gadgets, and review all of their lists — including private ones.

Once a gadget is curated onto the public site, only curators can edit it — keeping featured entries stable.

Add Gadget Observer to AI tools like Claude or Cursor by signing in once — no more copying API keys into settings.

Trusted editors can now improve any gadget in the catalogue, not just the ones they created.

The whole site now follows your device's light or dark preference.

Gadgets can show several images, shown as a swipeable carousel on mobile and a grid on desktop.

Search now looks beyond gadget names to match brands and lists too, and you can narrow results to a brand with a new brand filter, complete with logos.

Save a set of tag filters and the catalogue keeps a matching list up to date for you automatically.

Generate an API token in your settings to browse and update the catalogue from external tools through the new MCP server.

Search now shows placeholder cards while results load instead of a blank space.

Brands can show a logo or wordmark, and gadget cards now display the brand they belong to.

Refined images, drawers, and the brand creation form on smaller screens.

Brand descriptions now support rich text, and brand logos appear consistently across the site.

Tap a gadget on a shared list to open it in place, without leaving the list.

Add tags to a gadget inline, and create new tags on the fly without leaving the form.

Fixed how gadget images are sized and cropped on smaller screens.

Tag gadgets to organise them, and filter search by those tags.

Introduced brands with their own pages, descriptions, websites, and countries, and the ability to assign a brand to a gadget.

Shared list pages now load reliably and no longer get stuck in a single column on wider screens.

Opening a gadget now uses a bottom sheet on mobile and an expandable view on desktop, and shows the lists it belongs to.

Choose who can see each list with three visibility levels instead of a simple private toggle.

Share a list at its own public page, complete with a preview image when the link is shared.

Give a list its own branding for a more personal shared page.

Gadget descriptions now use a proper editor with a formatting toolbar.

An add-to-list control now lives right on the gadget's page.

Gadget owners can keep refining their gadgets after they've been published.

Gadget Observer now welcomes search engines and AI crawlers.

Lists now have clean, shareable web addresses, and usernames show a profile avatar.

Publish gadgets to make them visible in the public directory.

Added a footer and gave lists and gadgets a consistent card style.

Browse everyone's public lists in one place.

Rename lists, change their visibility, and delete them, plus a page for all your own gadgets.

The home page shows published gadgets, with the most recently updated first.

Gadgets can now link out to stores where you can buy them.

Add a gadget to a list from a dropdown.

A new sidebar, header breadcrumbs, and page titles across the site.

Gadgets now have readable web addresses, and you can add a product link when creating one.

Gadget pages now generate preview images, so shared links look great.

Find gadgets with search, plus dedicated product pages.

Each list got its own page.

A home screen of gadget cards, lists to collect gadgets into, and accounts to sign in with.

Create gadgets through a guided form, including uploading images.

The very first version of Gadget Observer.