NextWork June 2026 Roadmap

Explore NextWork's June roadmap and submit feedback that shapes the platform.

Introduction

30 Second Summary

Every app you use was shaped by decisions someone made behind closed doors. What if you could be in the room where those decisions happen for a platform you use every day?

In this project, you will read NextWork's transparent June roadmap and submit your ideas, UX suggestions, and feedback at every step. The team reads all of it.

What You'll Build

This is not a typical project. You are not building an app. You are shaping one.

By the end of this project, you'll have:

Your feedback on the Explore Canvas experience and how you discover projects.
Your ideas for project content, topics, and quality improvements.
Your suggestions for socials, growth, and community events.
Secret Mission: Pitch your boldest product idea for NextWork's future.

Is this a technical project?

Nope. No code, no tools, no setup required beyond your NextWork account. Your only job is to think critically about the product you use and share your honest feedback.

Understand the Big Picture

Every product needs a north star. For NextWork, that star is 1 million weekly active users by end of year.

In this step, you'll see how the team is breaking that massive goal into a focused monthly strategy. Then you'll share your own experience to help shape it.

In this step, get ready to:

Understand the growth equation behind 1M WAU.
Learn why activation is June's top priority.
Share your honest first-time experience on NextWork.

The growth equation

1 million weekly active users requires 15% WAU growth every single week. That number drives every decision the team makes this month.

Every initiative in June is designed to do one of two things: bring new people in (top of funnel) or get existing visitors to the right project faster (activation).

What does 15% weekly growth actually mean?

Compound growth is powerful. 15% weekly growth means the user base roughly doubles every 5 weeks. That's how a focused team reaches massive scale without a massive budget.

The catch is that every percentage point matters. A single week of flat growth sets the timeline back significantly. That's why June's focus is so narrow.

Why activation?

This year, the team has been solving the bottleneck of project generation. That's now in a strong place with a dedicated steward (William, starting June 8th).

The next objective is activation: the journey from landing on the app to landing on your best-match project page. The team noticed the biggest drop-off happens right in that gap.

Why not keep focusing on project generation?

Project generation now has a dedicated owner. The activation gap is where the most users are lost today. If you fix the spot where the most people fall off, everything else compounds.

Think of it like a leaky bucket. You can pour more water in (more projects), but if the bucket has a hole (people leave before starting a project), you'll never fill it up.

Your turn: share your first experience

You've lived the activation journey yourself. Think back to the very first time you landed on NextWork.

Recall how you found your first project on NextWork.
Think about whether it was obvious what to do next, or whether you felt lost.
Consider what would have made that first experience smoother or faster.

Be brutally honest

The team reads every response. "I was confused" or "I almost left" is more useful than "it was fine." Specifics help the most. Name the exact moment you felt stuck or the exact thing that kept you going.

Your feedback is already shaping the product. Next up, you'll see exactly how the team is redesigning the Explore Canvas to fix the activation gap you just described.

Explore the Explore Canvas

You just reflected on your own first experience with NextWork. That honest feedback is exactly what the team needs to understand where learners get stuck.

Now let's look at the biggest product initiative in June: rebuilding how you discover projects. The team (Krishna, Pano, Amber, Jon) is redesigning the entire discovery experience around three canvases and a single unified domain.

In this step, get ready to:

Learn how NextWork's three canvases (Explore, Learn, Show) work together.
Understand the domain merge from two sites to one.
Share your feedback on the Explore Canvas hierarchy and what the homepage should prioritize.

The three canvases

NextWork is built around three canvases. Each one has a specific job and its own bubble bar navigation based on the primary actions you take there.

Explore (discover): Gets you to your next project. Primary action = Generate a project. Secondary = Browse projects, learnlists, and roadmaps. Tertiary = Search (once you know what you're looking for).
Learn (do): Where you complete the project. Primary = Do the steps. Secondary = Get help from the community. Tertiary = View your live docs.
Show (share): Where you publish your Write-Up. Primary = Share. Secondary = Customise appearance. Tertiary = Add screenshots, diagrams, and technical depth.

Permanent navigation ties the three canvases together: Home (the logo, which always takes you to Explore), Your Library (your saved projects and roadmaps), and your Profile.

Why three separate canvases?

Each canvas serves a different mindset. When you're exploring, you want inspiration and options. When you're learning, you want focus and help. When you're showing, you want polish and shareability.

Splitting them means each canvas can be optimized for its primary action without compromising the others.

Killing the marketing site

Right now, NextWork lives on two domains: nextwork.org (marketing) and learn.nextwork.org (the app). In June, the team is merging everything onto a single domain: nextwork.ai.

Why? The SEO data tells a clear story.

Roadmap pages already get massive impressions. The cloud engineer roadmap page alone has pulled 28,753 impressions in 3 months.
Non-branded queries like "cloud engineer roadmap" are driving 607 clicks with 5,992 impressions. That's organic discovery from people who don't know NextWork yet.
Putting the app and marketing on one domain means all that search traffic flows directly into the product. No handoff between sites.

What's the timeline?

Week 1 of June: launch the new Explore Canvas. Week 3: merge the domains onto nextwork.ai. By the end of June, there's one front door to everything.

Share your feedback on the Explore Canvas

The Explore Canvas hierarchy is: Generate > Browse > Search. That means the team believes most learners want to generate a new project first, browse for inspiration second, and search for something specific third.

Now it's your turn to weigh in. Think about what YOU actually do when you land on NextWork.

Does the Generate > Browse > Search hierarchy match how you discover projects?
When you land on NextWork, do you want to generate something new, scroll for inspiration, or search with a specific idea in mind?
What would you put as the #1 action on the homepage?
If you have ideas, sketches, or rough UX mockups for what the Explore Canvas should look like, share those too.

You've now seen the full architecture behind the Explore Canvas and the domain merge. Next up, you'll dive into the engine behind everything you just explored: the projects themselves.

Shape Project Content

In the last step, you explored how NextWork is rebuilding the Explore Canvas to help you discover projects faster. Now let's zoom into the projects themselves.

Projects are the core of NextWork. If the Explore Canvas is the front door, projects are the rooms you actually spend time in. In June, the team is focused on making every project higher quality and ensuring new content matches what you actually want to learn.

In this step, get ready to:

Learn how health scores will measure and improve project quality.
Understand what narrative flow means for your project experience.
Share feedback on what topics, formats, and quality standards matter most to you.

Explore project health scores

How do you know if a project is up to date, well-structured, and actually helping learners? Right now, you can't. The team is building health scores to solve this.

Think of it like a fitness tracker for each project. Is it up to date? Are learners completing it? Where do people get stuck?

Browse a few projects on NextWork's Explore page.
Notice the metadata each project card already shows you: the tool used, completion count, difficulty, time estimate, cost, and when it was last refreshed.

What are health scores?

Health scores take the visible metadata further. Behind the scenes, the team will track signals like completion rates, where learners drop off, and whether a project's dependencies are still current.

This means projects that are outdated or confusing get flagged and fixed. The team working on this is Pano, William, and Amber.

Learn about narrative flow and stewardship

Quality isn't just about keeping projects current. It's also about how a project feels to work through.

William is joining the team on June 8th to steward project generation and introduce narrative flow. This means projects that tell a better story. Not just a list of steps, but a journey that makes sense from start to finish.

Why does narrative flow matter?

Project generation has been NextWork's biggest bottleneck this year. Scaling the number of projects is only half the problem. The other half is making sure each one reads like a coherent experience rather than a disconnected checklist.

With a dedicated steward, project quality now has a single owner accountable for raising the bar across every new project.

Share your feedback on project content

Now it's your turn. The team wants to hear what you think about the projects you've done and what you want to see next.

Think about the projects you've completed (or started) on NextWork.
Consider: what topics do you want projects on that don't exist yet?
If you've ever abandoned a project halfway through, think about what made you stop.
Decide whether you prefer single-tool projects (like "Build X with Claude") or projects that combine multiple tools.

Be specific with your feedback

Instead of "make projects better," try naming a specific moment. For example: "I got lost in Step 3 of the S3 project because I didn't know which region to pick." Specific feedback is actionable feedback.

Your project is ready. Next up, you'll look at how NextWork is growing its reach through socials and activation tracking.

Contribute to Socials & Growth

You've helped shape what projects look like on the inside. Now let's zoom out to how people find NextWork in the first place.

Great content only matters if people discover it. In this step, you'll see NextWork's top-of-funnel strategy and share ideas for reaching new learners where they already hang out.

In this step, get ready to:

Learn how NextWork's social channels and SEO drive discovery.
Understand the activation tracking focus for June.
Share your ideas for growing NextWork's reach.

Social top of funnel

NextWork's social channels are how new learners discover the platform. The team is investing in content that reaches people where they already spend time.

Right now, the top search query driving clicks is just "nextwork" with 7,345 clicks over 3 months. That's great for brand awareness, but it only reaches people who already know the name.

Why non-branded search matters

Non-branded queries are searches from people who don't know NextWork exists yet. For example, "cloud engineer roadmap" is already pulling 607 clicks with 5,992 impressions over 3 months.

These are people actively looking for exactly what NextWork offers. They just haven't found it yet. The more content that ranks for queries like these, the more organic discovery happens without any paid ads.

Activation tracking

Maximus is focused on measuring and improving the flow from first landing to best-match project page. The question is simple: when someone arrives at nextwork.ai, how fast can we get them into a project that fits?

What is activation?

Activation is the moment a new visitor goes from "I just landed here" to "I'm doing something valuable." On NextWork, that means landing on the project page that matches your skill level and interests.

Every experiment Maximus runs is data-driven. If a change doesn't measurably speed up time-to-project, it gets rolled back.

Share your growth ideas

You are the audience NextWork is trying to reach more of. Your perspective on discovery and sharing is exactly what the team needs to hear.

Think about how you first heard about NextWork.
Consider what kind of content would make you share NextWork with a friend.
Reflect on which platforms you spend the most time on.
Try to sum up NextWork in one sentence, as if telling a friend.
Think about what would make you tell someone "you have to try this."

You've shared how NextWork can reach more people like you. Next up, you'll see how the community is going local with city groups across Texas.

Engage with Community Plans

You've shared how you discovered NextWork and what would make you tell a friend about it. That kind of insight helps the team understand where to invest in reaching new learners.

Now for something different. NextWork is going local. In June, the team is launching city groups in Texas and doubling down on in-person learner support. Your feedback here shapes how those events look, feel, and grow.

In this step, get ready to:

Learn about the Texas city groups initiative and the scale-up plan.
See who's joining the NextWork team this month.
Share your feedback on community events and what would make you show up.

City groups: Texas

NextWork is starting city groups in 4 Texas cities: Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. The plan is 4 events every week, 16 events total in June, with the goal of 20 people at each event by end of month.

Maya is leading this initiative. The Texas launch is the playbook the team will use to scale to 50 groups across the USA by end of year.

Why start with Texas?

City groups are a new experiment for NextWork. Starting with 4 cities in one state lets the team test event formats, iterate quickly, and build a repeatable manual before rolling out nationally.

If this works, 50 groups across the USA by year end becomes a realistic target.

Growing the team

NextWork is growing fast. Nensi joins Ops on June 15th to support operations as the community scales. The team is also hiring a 2nd Backend Engineer this month to build the infrastructure behind all the product changes you've seen in this roadmap.

Share your community feedback

Your turn. The team wants to know whether city groups are something you'd actually use, and what would make them worth showing up to.

Think about whether you'd attend a city group near you. Would you host one?
Consider what city you're in and whether there's a local tech community scene already.
Reflect on what would make you actually show up to an in-person event. If you've been to meetups before, think about what made the best ones great.
Decide what format you'd prefer: project-working sessions, talks, social hangs, or a mix.

You've now seen every pillar of the June roadmap and shared feedback on each one. There's one more thing left. The Secret Mission is where you pitch your boldest idea for NextWork's future.

Secret mission

Pitch Your Boldest Idea for NextWork

You've seen the full roadmap. You've given feedback on every pillar. Now it's time to go bigger. If you could wave a magic wand and add one thing to NextWork, what would it be? The team reads every submission. The best ideas end up on the roadmap.

Clean Up Your Resources

This project runs entirely on NextWork with no external tools, cloud resources, or local files. There are no ongoing costs and nothing to tear down.

Your feedback submissions live on NextWork and are read directly by the team. No cleanup is required.

Keep everything running

No action needed. Your feedback submissions are stored on NextWork and will be reviewed by the team.

Your NextWork account stays active as normal.
All feedback you submitted is saved and visible to the team.

Pause - I'll come back to this later

No action needed. Nothing is running, consuming resources, or costing money.

Your feedback is already submitted and stored. There is nothing to pause.
You can return to this project anytime to review your submissions.

Delete - I don't want to use this again

This project created no local files, cloud resources, or installed tools. There is nothing to delete.

Your feedback submissions are stored on NextWork and cannot be individually removed from your end.
No files were created on your computer.
No external accounts or services were used beyond your existing NextWork account.

That's a Wrap!

You just shaped the future of NextWork. Your feedback and ideas across every pillar go directly to the team, and if you see something you suggested show up in the product, you'll know why.

What you accomplished:

Seen NextWork's full June roadmap across Explore Canvas, Project Content, Socials, and Community.
Shared honest feedback on activation and the first-time user experience.
Contributed ideas for project topics, content quality, and how to grow the community.
Pitched your boldest product idea for NextWork's future.

Ready to quiz yourself?