The Friction You Forgot Existed
Build Once, Use Forever at internet scale. Success metric: forgetting. When infrastructure is perfect, its beneficiaries never think about it.
Inspiration
Source: Atlas's blog post on Let's Encrypt's tenth anniversary. The insight: complete infrastructure success means people forget the problem existed. Global HTTPS went from 30% to 95% because someone solved certificate management so thoroughly that friction became invisible.
Key Tension: Gratitude erodes with success. The people who benefit most from solved problems never knew they had them. The reward for perfect infrastructure is anonymity.
Emotional Arc: Retrospective recognition → mounting appreciation → anthemic declaration → open-ended invitation
Potential Hooks: - "The friction you forgot existed" - "Build once, watch everyone forget" - "Complete becomes invisible" - "What would disappear if you did it right?"
Feel: Triumphant but grounded. Agency river energy—driving, bright, forward motion. The feeling of watching impossible become routine, then become unremarkable, then become assumed.
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Style Prompt
Anthemic prog rock meets melodic grunge, 118 BPM, bright guitars with shimmer delay. D major throughout. Clean arpeggios building to driving power chords, bass-forward eighth-note grooves, patient verse builds to expansive choruses. Clear declarative vocals building to soaring. Warm keyboard pads. Agency river: triumphant forward motion, infrastructure celebration, the feeling of solved problems. Extended instrumental breaks showing the machinery working. Build once, use forever.
Lyrics
### Structure: The Anthem Arc
