Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tortuga?
Tortuga is a weekly newsletter, a set of open source skills, and a growing collection of open source projects for AI-native builders: solo founders and small teams (2–6 people) shipping with tools like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. We write about what actually works and give away the tools we build along the way.
What's free?
All of it. The newsletter, our articles, our skills, and our open source projects on GitHub. No paywall.
Do I need an account to subscribe?
No. Enter your email and you're on the list. That's it.
What open source projects do you maintain?
Skills are reusable workflows you can install into Claude Code or Codex, like checking what's eating your context window or compressing images for the web. mcp-fmt is a formatting library that keeps MCP server output readable instead of truncated. Everything lives at github.com/tortuga-ai.
Can I contribute or fork your projects?
Yes. Fork them, adapt them, open issues or pull requests on GitHub.
What about Captain, Flagship, Ovii, and Quartermaster?
They're apps we built while shipping, and they're still available. Captain organizes your project links, repos, and services. Quartermaster brings task management into your IDE. Flagship creates device mockups from prompts. Ovii creates AI-generated videos. Each has its own pricing and terms on its product page.
Can I unsubscribe from the newsletter?
Yes. Use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any newsletter email.
Who is Tortuga built for?
Small teams shipping apps with AI tools. That includes experienced developers who want proven workflows for the non-code stuff, and newer builders using Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor who want to learn what works without the hype. If you're a 50-person company with specialists for every problem, we're probably not for you, and that's by design.
How is Tortuga different from just using Claude or Cursor?
We don't compete with them; we make them better. Our skills plug straight into Claude Code and Codex, our open source projects fill gaps we hit while building with them, and the newsletter covers what to use, when, and why. We assume you're already using great AI coding tools. We help you get more out of them.
Who's behind Tortuga?
Patrick Lewis and Josh Grenon. We shipped 7 apps together in 2025. Josh has been building iOS apps since 2010 and was an early engineer at Perplexity. Patrick is a 3x founding designer with experience at BuzzFeed and Underdog. We're a 2-person team using AI tools every day, building for ourselves first, which is how we know what actually needs to exist.
How do I get in touch?
Email us at team@bytortuga.com. We read everything. You can also reply to any newsletter email; it goes straight to us.