Changelog

Hands-on Leo Liang reviews

Started a Mon–Thu cadence of real-use AI SaaS reviews on the blog (first pieces: Photoroom, Uizard), written from a user POV with Tested / Not tested called out — not press-release fluff.

Editorial scores on tool pages

Item pages can show a hands-on editorial rating (1–5) with a link into the matching review — while reviews link back to the directory listing via related tools (sidebar card + end-of-article CTA).

Review author card

Blog sidebars now show the author avatar and bio (Leo Liang — indie developer who likes photography) beside the related tool card in a compact two-column sticky layout.

Compare & alternatives share images

Dynamic Open Graph images for /compare and /alternatives pages — so shares look consistent with the rest of the site.

Selective motion polish

Added Motion Primitives only on high-value surfaces (success/empty/404, key cards, micro-interactions) — no full-site animation spray.

Anti–thin-page indexing gates

Empty categories stay noindex; harvest tools stay out of alternatives/compare sitemaps until editorial thickness is there — quality over URL spray.

Clearer listing policy

Public copy updated with contact unified to info@toolifynav.com and unpaid Featured stars stripped from self-harvested listings.

Vote counts stay honest

Removed leftover fake social-proof upvote seeds from catalog scripts — so listing vote numbers match real votes.

Review images keep aspect ratio

Portable Text images in blog posts no longer get force-cropped to a fixed box — preserving natural aspect ratios.

Tool evaluation pages

Listings now support Best for, Pros/Cons, Verdict, pricing summary, and Last verified — so every page has real comparison value, not template fluff.

Alternatives & compare pages

New /alternatives/$slug and /compare/a-vs-b routes for commercial search intent, with honest fallbacks when editorial picks are still thin.

Claim listing + maker analytics

Founders can claim a published listing via HTML meta verification and see views, website clicks, and CTR in Dashboard → Analytics.

Free-plan badge requirement

Free listings require a verified Listed on ToolifyNav badge on your site before review. Badge embed lives on publish — not public item pages. Pro/Sponsor skip the requirement.

User-first homepage & trending board

Hero speaks to people discovering tools first; Popular shows rank-only trending without early-stage absolute view counts.

Directory density & collections

Expanded the curated catalog to 90+ hand-reviewed tools, filled evaluation fields, backfilled cover images, and shipped six JTBD collections including coding, images, meetings, and SEO.

Publish re-sync no longer wipes counters

Owner saves and plan upgrades now patch submission-owned fields only, preserving viewCount, votes, and editorial data.

Weekly digest emails

Subscribers now receive a curated weekly email with the latest AI tools added to the directory.

Notifications center

Dashboard now shows notifications when your tool receives votes, gets approved, or is published.

User profile pages

Every submitter now has a public profile at /u/$username showcasing their published tools.

shadcn/ui migration

Replaced 18 hand-written UI patterns with shadcn/ui primitives.

Newsletter welcome email

Fixed a bug where subscribers received plain-text instead of the branded template.

Design token compliance

Full audit and alignment of all components with the system design token specification.

Biome linter migration

Migrated from ESLint to Biome 2.x for 30x faster linting across 185 files.

Popular leaderboard

New magazine-style leaderboard page ranking tools by real view counts.

TanStack Start migration

Migrated from Astro to TanStack Start with SSR, type-safe routing, and server functions.

Collection ranked lists

Editorial collections now display tools in ranked order with recommendation reasons.

Cloudflare Workers deployment

Production now runs on Cloudflare Workers with D1 auth and KV rate limiting.