# The 101st Blow

*June 23, 2026 · Note to the team · Roby John*

Some blessings arrive just like the monsoon we're waiting on right now — late, loud, and hopefully worth the wait.

This week I came across the Stonecutter's Creed:

> "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two — and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

There were weeks where we hammered at the same rock in a blazing heat of uncertainty, and not a single crack showed for it. But every build we shipped, every small fix, every line of localization run when no one was watching — that was the hammering. None of it was wasted. The rock doesn't show you the progress. It just splits, all at once, when the work finally adds up.

I'll keep being straight with you about where we stand: cautious optimism — with the emphasis on both words. The blow that splits the rock is never the first one. It's all the ones that came before. Let's keep swinging.