Visibility Settings

Control who can see your projects and records.

Overview

Build on Record gives you fine-grained control over visibility at two levels:

  • Project visibility - Whether the project page is publicly accessible
  • Record visibility - Whether individual records appear on the public page

Project Visibility

Public Projects

Public projects are visible to anyone at:

buildonrecord.com/log/username/project-slug

This is ideal for "building in public" - sharing your journey, attracting followers, and staying accountable.

Private Projects

Private projects are only visible to you when logged in. Others cannot access the project page, even if they have the URL. Use this for internal projects, experiments, or personal journaling.

Changing Project Visibility

  1. Go to your project page
  2. Click "Edit" in the project header
  3. Toggle the "Make this project public" checkbox
  4. Save your changes

Record Visibility

Public Records

Public records appear on your public project page for anyone to see. They show up in the timeline and can be shared via permalink.

Private Records

Private records are only visible to you. They appear in your private project view but not on the public page. Use private records for:

  • Internal notes and reminders
  • Sensitive decisions or information
  • Work-in-progress that's not ready to share

Visibility Badge

In your private project view, public records show a green "Public" badge so you can easily identify what others can see.

Default Record Visibility

Each project has a "Default record visibility" setting that controls whether new records start as public or private.

Setting the Default

  1. Go to your project page
  2. Click "Edit" in the project header
  3. Find "Default record visibility"
  4. Toggle to set new records as public or private by default
  5. Save your changes

How It Works

  • Default: Private - New records are private. Check "Make this record public" to share specific records.
  • Default: Public - New records are public. Uncheck "Make this record public" to keep specific records private.

Where It Applies

The default visibility is used when creating records via:

  • The project page "New Record" form
  • The Quick Log modal (⌘K / Ctrl+K)
  • The Quick Log page

The CLI currently defaults to private records regardless of this setting.

Changing Record Visibility

You can change the visibility of any record at any time:

  1. Find the record in your project timeline
  2. Hover and click "Edit"
  3. Toggle the "Make this record public" checkbox
  4. Save your changes

Note: Changing a record from public to private removes it from your public page immediately. Changing from private to public makes it visible on your public page.

Best Practices

  • 1.Start private, share selectively - Keep default visibility private and explicitly mark records as public when you want to share them.
  • 2.Use private records for sensitive info - Revenue numbers, user data, or competitive information should stay private.
  • 3.Review before making public - Check your public project page to see what others see.
  • 4.Consider your audience - Public records can help build an audience, but not everything needs to be shared.

Related