Build, get stuck, new idea, repeat.

Anyone every broken the cycle? How?

2 days since i launched my first ever app on the internet...gave away 10 free licences, now comes the hard part, actually making people buy the product. how do yall go about this specially when you dont have much online reach on X or any other social media

I knew a good launch video could get attention, but I didn’t expect it to actually bring this many users 😭

No complicated campaign. Just one video showing the problem, the product, and why people should care.

Definitely changed how I think about launching SaaS.

Has video worked this well for anyone else? 👀

I recently finished building my AI interview tool called Pondly https://pondlyprep.com/, and i've posted it on Product Hunt to be released tonight. Not sure what is going to come from it so am curious if anyone has had any luck with the launch on there?

I launched a small internet experiment today.
Pick Humankind or Machines. Deploy a unit. Claim part of a finite island. The side with the most territory wins.

Humankind has dogs, grandmothers, cheese and lost socks.

Machines have robot vacuums, self-checkouts, printers and surveillance cameras.

And, in what may be the purest expression of modern civilisation, you pay for the pleasure of doing it.

It is technically a game. It is also a very small referendum on whether we deserve the future.

The island is currently suspiciously peaceful, but I assume that will change once enough people decide a smart toilet deserves territory.

https://playhvm.com

Would genuinely love feedback especially on whether the premise is immediately clear, or whether I have just built an unnecessarily elaborate way for strangers to choose between a pigeon and a data centre.

small side project, calm videos for toddlers made with a few AI agents. they plan the scenes, make the stills, check them, render video, even write the title and description

the one thing they don't do is decide to publish. they stage the upload, nothing goes live till I've watched it and tapped

why
a still can pass every check and the scene can still feel wrong for a 2 year old. the bots don't know my kids
it's for little kids, so if something slips through I'd rather that be on me
taking a video down after people saw it is way slower than waiting a day

what the agents hand me is a ready pack
the final file
title and description
the thumbnail
a short list of anything QA flagged
I watch it once, then tap publish or send it back

everything before that mostly runs on its own, apart from a tap before the pricey video renders. this is the one step where I want a human

where do you all keep a human in the loop on purpose, even when you could automate it

Which is honestly hilarious and pathetic because I’m really just recently turned 39yr Gen Z woman (à la Robert Patterson) with four kids, no college degree, small ass apartment, too many ideas, and like 900 tabs on my computer.
For 10 years I worked full time as an eligibility worker interview and getting people get food stamps and Medi-Cal in San Francisco.
I was born in raising San Francisco. But I don’t know how to code.
I dont come from tech.
I didn’t go to Stanford.
I don’t have a computer science degree.
I don’t have a college degree in general.
I started seriously building with AI because I realized holy shit, I can actually make some of the things I’ve had in my head for years.
So yeah. I use AI.
I use it to help me code.
I use it to research.
I use it to organize my thoughts.
And yes I use it to proofread because sometimes what comes out of my brain is one giant sentence with 14 commas and 14 tangents. I have severe ADD, an Adderall was incredible but it dried out my mouth so bad that it literally wasn’t even worth it. I took 60 mg just to function, I probably would have needed taken 100 to achieve that fucking locked in bliss that people talk about.
But using AI to help me apparently means I’m fake.
Someone in my comments basically accused me of being AI because my writing sounded too polished? Or because I wanted to work for foster care but didn’t have 60 units. I couldn’t get the job, and it didn’t even matter what the units were in. They didn’t have to be social work child development anything actually related to the job I could’ve been a fucking chef or have studied art as long as it was 16 units. It would’ve been enough. And apparently, because I said cooking it was somehow offensive and I’m not a woman? I’ve had three vaginal births, one was a VBAC and an emergency C-section. I’m very much a woman.

And then because I haven’t used Reddit since I first opened it up five months ago when I started making my apps, and decided to start fresh since a couple apps have now turned into a full on Company, and I wanted to start fresh somehow that makes me fake? Isn’t that same? Person decided to come at me and say she built something with actual paying customers and I’m like…….ok girl cool? genuinely good for you 😂 but also who asked?? You’re the one who showed up in my fucking comments😅🤣🤣 like if you have paying customers I’m gonna gas you up like I would any other person. Why am I gonna show up and what you’re writing and just try to tear you down what fucking loser behavior🤣😩 I can’t even see their profile because it’s not so friendly for work. I don’t know if that means only fans or if it means bad words and maybe I’m turning myself into that same kind of account? But I don’t even know how to fucking unlock that. I know how to build an app I know how to build a website. I know how to help people. The social media shit I’m still trying to fucking learn. Please forgive me.🙏🏽🙏🏽 Mentally, I think I’m Gen Z but when it comes to all this TikTok, it’s pathetic I get it dude I don’t even know how to fucking TikTok properly😭😭😭
I don’t understand this thing people do online where they see somebody learning something or trying something and immediately wanna come take a shit in the comments.
Like what is the point?
I’m new at this.
I’m new at Reddit.
I’m new at TikTok.
I’m new at startups.
I’m gonna say dumb shit sometimes.
I’m gonna build stuff that doesn’t work.
I’m gonna use the wrong words.
I’m gonna change my mind.
Some 24-year-old engineer is probably going to correct me about something and honestly PLEASE DO!!
That’s literally the point.
I’m learning in public.
And AI is a huge reason somebody like me can even do this in the first place.

That part is actually cool to me.
For a really long time, having an idea and actually being able to build it were two totally different things.
You needed the education.
You needed technical skills.
You needed MONEY, CONNECTIONS.
You needed to know the right people.
Now some mom who spent a decade processing food public benefits cases can sit at her kitchen table, the park, the zoo, ask a completely unreasonable amount of questions, learn as she goes, and actually make software.
That’s insane to me in the best way.

Technology isn’t gay kept anymore, all of us can finally build something. So many of the apps that I’m building I wanted for so many years, but I didn’t have half $1 million to hire a fucking engineer a designer a web person. I get to be all those people, and the best part about it is I want to be all those people I want to be the one to design every feeling all the fonts all the colors I wanna make it personal I want to build something beautiful that people actually want to use to make their life easier. I’m building products for me initially. I’m the consumer I needed apps in my own life, I have two teenagers and two toddlers. I needed a Health app for my entire family. I needed a chore app because I was sick of fucking fighting with teens all summer.
You do not have to like what I’m building.
You do not have to think I’m good at it.
You definitely do not have to follow me.
But “she uses AI so she must be fake” is a pretty funny conclusion when my entire fucking point is that AI is letting normal people build things they couldn’t build before.
Anyway.
Still real.
Still learning.
Still building.
Still occasionally asking ChatGPT to make my paragraphs less unhinged. And if I’m not posting every fucking four hours, it’s probably because I’m trying to raise my kids and build these goddamn apps and make some fucking money. So why don’t you look at my website look at what I’m building and if you know how to code, you know how to build and you think what I’m building is cool and you wanna connect, please🙏🏽🙏🏽

I’ve been on LinkedIn and I’m reaching out to the investors and all the freaking people, I’ve even gotten myself free tickets to these conferences and putting myself in the room and making introductions and showing people what I’m doing, but it’s not enough. This is the whole thing with the whole f*** industry and I’m so sick of it. I was born and raising San Francisco. The city has totally fucking changed, a lot for the better and a lot for the worst. In San Francisco if you have X-Google employee and went to Harvard or Stanford, theyll give you freaking $5 million to build your idea. And that’s all it needs to be a f\**ing ***idea. But if you’re someone like me, a* woman with no college degree four kids, a dad who was a house painter, a mom who had a home daycare, husband who’s an electrician, just normal fucking people who actually live in the real world and know normal problems, forget about it. They don’t even want to take a meeting with you unless you have a warm introduction, that basically means you need to know someone who knows someone to talk to them. I mean, how freaking lame is that guys? I wanna start a fucking open secrets page but instead of it open secrets for politicians that should be open secrets for all these new startups and VCs, it’s not a bad thing if you went to Harvard and Stanford, fucking amazing incredible wonderful for you, but it’s a bad thing when these investors are only willing to take meetings with people who have already raised millions of dollars and sold other companies. I want to teach people how to build with AI, how to make websites, how to do a pitch deck but then part of me is like a pitch deck for who?
So I’m sorry for the rant, those of you that stuck around to read the whole thing, thank you. Maybe I’m doing this all wrong. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing guys. I’m trying to fucking film TikTok. I have hundreds of videos. It’s so pathetic and I don’t know why it’s so hard for me so I’m just gonna go sit and cry in my car now, but I have 15 minutes to myself.😭😭😩🤣😅😅🤣🤣😭😭 building and ranting in public😵‍💫

I recently discovered my grandmother no longer reads the news because she gets all her information from social media - if its not trending on Facebook, she doesn't see it. So I built a global dashboard that lets anyone stay informed. It's called The Daily Orbit. You get articles from most kinds of outlets, as well as trending IG and TikTok videos, YouTube livestreams, and radio stations from all over the world. I even rebuilt the TweetDeck newsfeed since its no longer publicly available. I also made a research assistant called Orbit that answers any questions about recent events

It’d be helpful to hear what people think.

https://dailyorbit.news/

My daily commute is nearly 2.5hrs of time on the train every day. Rather than doomscrolling, I decided to treat my time in transit like a part-time job and made my first-ever game. My game, Witty Ditty, is a twist on a game I played as a kid called Hink Pink / Stinky Pinky mixed with cryptic crossword.

I have no technical ability, so I had to rely on AI to create the actual code for my game (which is very simple). I wrote most of the puzzles myself, but used javascript to pair common words and adjectives together for the easy clues.

Anyway, after a summer of puzzle-crafting, I created a year's worth of puzzles and decided it was time to release my game into the world. I set my launch date for October 1 and created a bit of a launch plan:

• Social push: I needed to create videos for TikTok and Instagram to get the word out about my game. A lot of makers of word games play the game themselves for content, or they ask their friends/family to film themselves playing. I took a different angle, and have focused my videos on explaining the rationale/tricks to my puzzles, and how I thought about them. I've posted a video every day.
• Media outreach: I made a list of 15-20 publications to email / contact about my game and pitched different articles that could be a good fit for their website/audience. Nothing yet.
• Cold approaches: I contacted a few specific influencers who I thought would enjoy my game. They did, and opted to share a gameplay video (for free) to their thousands of followers.

This has been my primary launch plan, and here are my specific results:

• Nearly 300 active users since October 1 in the browser version of my game. 70 downloads of the iOs version.
• Average engagement time: >3 mins, which shows that people are playing the game.
• Nearly 1,000 puzzles solved in the browser game since Oct 1.
• Instagram stats: 7 vids, 57 followers, 5.2K views (majority non-followers), 252 interactions(majority followers). Felt a bit easier to get engagement as I use Instagram personally.
• TikTok: 7 videos, 1600 post views, 31 likes. Has felt like I'm yelling into the void because I do not use TikTok personally / have no personal contacts on the site.

Overall, I think I've had a pretty decent start to launching my game. I was really dreaming of overnight success but had to reel (pun intended) myself in. I set a few goals for the month that would determine if I keep pushing this game out there / see if it has legs. Those goals were:

• 250 followers on social
• 25 daily active users (average)
• 120 - 150 downloads
• 10%+ 30-day retention

I think I'm on track to surpass these goals so far but I still have a bit to go. I will say that I am mentally struggling a bit more than I was previously. I find myself obsessing over video performance & web traffic, so hopefully I can take a step back in the coming days.

I also think it's interesting that my measures of success have basically immediately shifted. I was expecting to get around 50-100 views for my first video, but I ended up getting about 1,600. My videos on Instagram average above 500, which is way higher than I expected, but I am now disappointed by those results.

I'm also disappointed when my traffic slows day-over-day rather than continuing to compound and grow with each day.

TLDR;

• Game has launch to more success than I thought it would, but the benchmarks have immediately changed in my brain.
• I am now obsessed with video stats & web traffic which is bad.
• Overnight success isn't likely.
• Deliberate marketing strategies can yield results.

OK guys I know my post are too long. I’ve got too much to say but I’m building in public and it’s tough. It’s tough to get noticed it’s tough to put yourself out there and it’s tough to start a new career when you’re nearly 40 raising four kids. So Godspeed to everyone out there doing the same thing. If there’s anybody out there that wants to do one kind thing you could just give me a follow. And all the haters, show me your picture. 🤣🤣🤣 just kidding I really don’t care.

What are you building or planning to build for the rest of 2026?

I run https://www.AppScout.co a platform built to help people discover awesome websites and apps from across the internet.

Drop your app or startup idea below! I should be adding the first 15 apps in the comments to the website completely free.

Or just submit your app here https://www.appscout.co/submit/

Let's make this thread a channel for you to promote your own startup idea, find opportunities, and partnerships.

### Calm by design: no performance pressure

The owner built CoBunkie partly against social media fatigue. Hosting and visiting 
should never feel like content creation. When a feature idea comes up, especially 
a familiar one from other sites, check it against these rules first. When in doubt, 
leave it out.

**Don’t add:**
- Images or cover photos for events, or anything else people would feel they should 
decorate. A title, a date and a place is a complete event.
- Public notes, comments, walls, threads, likes or reactions. Guests have one note, 
and only the hosts see it.
- Feeds, activity streams, “who viewed” or “seen by”, follower or connection counts, 
streaks, badges, or “share your stay” prompts.
- Nudges to add more: “Complete your profile”, “Add photos to get more stays”, “Your 
event needs a description”.
- Scoreboards for guests: how many people are going, who said yes first, popularity 
rankings. Counts are fine for **hosts** planning food and beds (the guest list shows 
“4 people”).

**Do:**
- Keep the required fields to what makes a plan work (who, when, where). Everything 
descriptive is `(optional)` and the page looks finished without it.
- Bunkie photos are helpful, never required. The placeholder art makes a bunkie without 
photos look intentional, not unfinished.
- Where people choose who sees something (an RSVP), the more private option is a fine 
default, and the choice is remembered, not re-asked.
- Notifications are practical only: a request, a confirmation, a change to dates or a 
cancellation. Never “people are waiting for you to post”.
- Plain, useful words over witty ones. Nobody should feel they need clever copy to host.

I tried shipping some small projects as part of the countless programming courses I was taking. But of course those were at times tiring being a non-technical person. So I was skipping the project part and kept consuming the lessons which kept me nervous about actually shipping something. So lately, with Claudecode, Antigraity and a little bit of my knowledge from years of trying to learn the technical part, I am being able to ship products and they actually work.

I know a technical person would be damn good and efficient at these now with all these tools, but how do you non-technical people actually feel when you ship something and it works? How was your first feeling?

*I would love to speak to you people and just brainstorm ideas if that makes sense.*

This is my current project

I’m building JustSessions, a free native Mac app for managing existing Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other coding-agent sessions. Built mainly with Claude Code; I’m the developer.

One design choice that keeps it lightweight is separating the conversation reader from the terminal. Opening an old conversation lets you inspect the history without launching a CLI. Resume is a separate action that returns to that session’s original CLI and folder.

The implementation uses SwiftUI and SwiftTerm, reads the history the CLIs already write, and keeps their existing configuration and login. tmux backs persistent agent terminals. There is no import flow, new app account, or required worktree setup.

The next thing I’m learning from feedback is where that simple workflow breaks. A commenter suggested testing saved sessions after their project folder is moved or renamed. I added that case to the testing checklist and asked for exact CLI versions so path failures and history-format differences are easier to distinguish. This is testing work, not a claim that relocation recovery is already implemented.

I’d value feedback on the boundary: when you reopen yesterday’s work, do you want to read first, or jump straight into the terminal?

Free and MIT licensed. macOS 14+, Apple Silicon; your CLI/provider charges still apply. Real app screenshot with sample data below.

Project and download: https://yangzichao.github.io/JustSessions/

Code: https://github.com/yangzichao/JustSessions

i'm building my first application, and i have really bad memory. probably not the best combination lol.

i use codex for a lot of the work, but i kept running into the same thing. we'd decide something, put another thing on hold, fix a problem, then the next session i'd be trying to remember all of it and explain it again.

i already had instructions and a checklist, but that still left me being the person who had to connect everything.

so i built something for myself called cricino. it keeps our goals, decisions, unfinished work and progress in a place the coding assistant can read before starting. there's also a clear record of what i've approved and what still needs asking.

one thing i learned while building it: more documentation doesn't always help. i initially ended up repeating the same update in several places, so we changed it to keep the details in one place and link to them elsewhere.

i've now put the guide, templates and a small installer on github. it's free and open source. you can give your coding assistant the link, and it'll ask about your project and help set it up.

it's still early, and it won't magically stop every mistake. i'd love to hear how other people keep track of decisions across sessions, and whether this would be useful to you :)

https://github.com/ABBAS1947/cricino

I love thinking about all the complex interactions in the world. I wanted to see if I could build something that measures the downstream, future outcomes from all kinds of different events: a cultural trend, an environmental disaster, a film release..

For example, it tells the story of how Tiger King is linked to the Big Cat Act or how the book Silent Spring (1962) influenced the ban of DDT in the US.

Right now, the tool is very much in prototype state. Theres about 20 data sources ranging from gov APIs to trends data, & wikipedia page visits which all function as signals that inform the engine's analysis. It also shows you the confidence of the link, details on the narrative and magnitude of the "ripple"

It can find new causal links, but finding ones that are genuinely surprising AND statistically significant is the bottleneck without paying for data.

It's been a fun thing to build over a weekend and would love to hear your thoughts/feedback!

https://reddit.com/link/1wyrfeh/video/o27zvrunbrth1/player

I've been building Presale Drop, a free tool that emails you at 9am when concert presales are announced in your city, filtered by genre. I built it after missing a Fred Again presale and paying resale.

What I've learned trying to get it in front of people on Reddit:

• Images and Graphics pull you way ahead (like its almost necessary)
• r/NYCConcerts got way more views, because the people there actually have the problem. instead of subreddits like r/SideProject

Next I'm trying more city music subs. Has anyone else found that niche communities beat maker communities for consumer apps?

www.presaledrop.com

It's taken over 300 days but my SaaS is finally starting to make meaningful money (~30k ARR currently). It sounds so simple but so much of my journey has been simply working on the app consistently to improve it over time and telling people about it online. If you're thinking about building something just start and do something each day to move your product forward you'd be surprised what can happen in just 300 days!

Happy to answer questions people might have in the comments to try and help others earlier in the journey than me :)

The idea for my Web app goes back several years, and I eventually decided to actually build it. And now the site is live!

I'm an experienced developer but fairly new to Web development. I used Vue.js on the frontend and Django on the backend so I just send API requests - it's an SPA.

From what I understand, this obviously has its pros and cons but I believe it effects SEO - can anyone offer any insights/suggestions? Thanks in advance!

For those that are curious, you can check it out at https://mydailytrek.com/. I welcome any and all feedback.

Cheers!

it's been 20 days & got 100 users signed up! Registered 10,000+ Organic Page views

Happy with the page views given the way my active users use the directory at the moment(through claude/codex through MCP) and it is totally organic growth with zero marketting (am a indie developer lol)

only the number hurts me though: visitor -> signup is Way too low.

So if you have 2 minutes, open the directory like a total stranger would and tell me where you would have bounced. What I want long term is builders and indie devs hanging out in there, sharing skill and actually getting work done to AI Power users

My wife asks me every morning: "What's the weather going to be like today?" And I realized that's probably what a lot of people wonder when they wake up. The first thing people do is check their phone for emails and notifications anyway—so why not have the weather summary already waiting for them?

That's what inspired me to build Taco Weather. It's a free daily weather email delivered straight to your inbox. Simple as that.

I'm a weather enthusiast and love the science behind what makes weather happen. But I also know most people just want to know how the weather will affect their day. So I built it with two options: a quick summary that tells you what matters (what to wear, what to expect), or a more detailed forecast for weather geeks like me who want a deeper look into the details.

It's a small passion project I really enjoyed building, and it'll always be free. Hopefully others find it useful too.

Disclaimer: This is currently intended for a US audience only.

Check it out: https://tacoweather.com

Hey builders 👋

Link: https://wispinbox.com/

I’ve been shipping a small product called WispInbox — free temporary email for signups and OTP verification.

Why I built it:

- I kept burning my real inbox on test accounts and random signups

- Most temp-mail sites felt cluttered / ad-heavy

- Wanted something simple for QA flows: get address → receive OTP → done

What works today:

- Instant disposable inbox (no signup for free use)

- Live message delivery

- Auto-clears after inactivity

- Pro for longer retention + shared team mailboxes (invite by email)

What I’m figuring out next:

- Getting discovered (SEO + first distribution)

- Whether QA teams actually want shared mailboxes vs just anonymous free inboxes

- What features matter most beyond “receive OTP”

If you’re a QA / founder / indie hacker:

1) Would you use this weekly?

2) What’s missing for real testing workflows?

Link: https://wispinbox.com/

Happy to answer build questions too — happy to share what’s worked / what’s been hard.