FirexportRoadmap
Where Firexport is headed
Hi, I’m Jerry, the person who makes Firexport.
I first released Firexport in July 2024. It didn’t start as anything grand. Something in the Firebase console kept getting in my way, an idea popped into my head, and with AI’s help I turned it into Firexport almost overnight. It was closer to an impulse than a plan.
But once it was out, it turned out I wasn’t the only one it bothered. Watching people install it, pay for it and email me about it, I realized Firexport had solved one sharp problem that people really wanted solved.
To be honest, things were a little different after that. Building it the first time was a lot of fun, but as time went on, my motivation to change anything shrank while the burden of changing it grew. I wasn’t sure I could build what I had in mind, or that it would work properly if I did, and as my day job got busier I had less and less room to look at Firexport at all. So for a year or two, Firexport stayed in a “it works, so don’t touch it” state.
What changed things was AI. As AI improved quickly, the burden of building and fixing things dropped noticeably, and I found the joy of working on Firexport again. Then came another good change I hadn’t expected: with less energy going into implementation, I had room to think about what to build. I could step back and look wider, reason more objectively about what people really want, and try things in small experiments.
This letter is what came out of that thinking. Before shipping more features, I wanted to put into words where I’m going.
Firexport is growing from “an extension that exports” into “an extension that fills the gaps the Firebase console leaves.”
In fact, that change has already begun. Over the past few weeks I’ve quietly added features like the Read meter, which counts the reads the console makes while you browse Firestore; Recent queries, which brings back the queries you ran before; and a query builder for Enterprise databases, which only have a code editor. Each of them is something I caught myself asking “why isn’t this here?” about while using the console. And there’s much more I haven’t released yet. Stay tuned.
Where I picture Firexport ending up is “The missing toolkit for Firebase console.” There used to be desktop apps that replaced the console altogether to make up for what it lacked. Firexport may end up in a similar place. The difference is that you don’t have to leave the console: it lives inside the console you already use, as a Chrome extension.
If you’re curious about what’s new, look at the changelog first for now. I’m not putting it on the home page yet. Rather than perfecting every plan and releasing it all at once, I think it’s better to let you try things yourself, a little at a time. I’ll keep going in the direction I’ve set, and once it takes shape, I’ll make it an official release and give the home page a fresh look along with it.
Pricing will change too. It will probably move from today’s one-time payment to a subscription. I’ll announce it in the changelog as soon as it’s decided. One thing I can promise now: if you’ve already bought a Lifetime license, you can keep using Firexport for life after the pricing changes, with every feature added from here on.
These days, building Firexport is fun again, the way it was at the start. I hope some of that joy reaches you too. If something bothers you while you use it, or you catch yourself thinking “I wish the console had this,” email me anytime at jerry@firexport.dev. Every one of those emails is the biggest hint I get about where Firexport should go.
Thank you.
Jerry