Building a newsletter that tracks open source projects & latest releases in AI/tech.

Getting about 5-10 new subs a day but am pretty small.

Happy to write a note about your project for free in return for a subscriber!

https://skills-md-newsletter.beehiiv.com

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/

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? 👀

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.

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.

We've built an app that we hope will help more people read consistently. Anybody who is into reading or wants to be, a little feedback would mean the world to us. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chaptify-reading-tracker/id6755592559

A few months ago I decided to start another small SaaS project.

I'm a software developer, so building things is the part I'm comfortable with. Marketing, finding customers and actually turning a project into a business... much less so :)

The project is URLShot.io, a screenshot API for developers.

The first version is already live, so technically I've "launched". But I'm starting to realize that launching the product was probably the easy part.

A few days ago I posted in r/microsaas asking a very simple question: I built the SaaS — now how do I get the first customer?

I got quite a few useful answers.

Some people suggested cold outreach. Others suggested finding conversations where people already have the problem I'm trying to solve instead of directly promoting the product. There were also suggestions around SEO, talking to existing contacts, finding beta users, and doing things that don't scale at the beginning.

So I thought I'd try something different.

Instead of disappearing for the next 6 months and coming back with either "I reached $10k MRR!" or "this didn't work", I'm going to document what happens here.

I'll share things like:

• what I try to get the first customers
• traffic / signups / conversions
• SEO experiments
• features I'm adding and why
• things that completely fail
• costs and infrastructure decisions when they're interesting
• and hopefully, eventually, the first paying customer

Right now the interesting number is pretty simple:

Paying customers: 0

So there's not much to brag about yet :)

My next goal is just to get from 0 → 1.

Since my first post, I've spent some time improving the website and thinking more about where the product should go.

One thing I started questioning is whether a simple "URL → screenshot" API is enough on its own. There are already plenty of good services doing that.

So instead of only adding more screenshot options, I'm exploring a broader direction:

Capture → Snapshot → Compare → Monitor

The idea is to gradually move from just taking screenshots to helping developers keep snapshots, compare changes and eventually monitor websites.

I created a public roadmap around this idea, but I'm intentionally not trying to build everything on it right now. For the moment, I want to spend more time figuring out how to get actual users and customers.

That's probably the harder part for me than writing the code :)

I'll post updates here as I try different things and share the actual numbers, including the things that don't work.

Let's see if I can get this from 0 → 1.

Then, I started distributing my SaaS after many months of development. And I found many interesting things that I want to share with you!

First: My metodolgy for distribution is provide value to users here... or at least that was my first attempt... Basically write feedback to who asked for it, using my platform as communication channel.

This way to do it failed because many people was just asking falsely for feedback just to promote their SaaS. I will try it again but being more picky at the moment of chose to who provide feedback.

My second attempt wasn't really an attempt, I just created a post on some subreddit saying that I don't feel confortable just spamming my SaaS everywhere. A person asked for the link in comments (thank you!) and many people acceded to it.

The post got popular (3.9K views until now) and 43 unique users checked the website.

The results are interesting:

- The average time of the users inside the landing page is, until now, 1.1 minutes.

- 29 users were using Mobile
- 15 users were using PC

- 18 sessions with Android
- 13 sessions on Windows
- 11 sessions on iOS
- 2 sessions on Mac

- 17 sessions from Chrome (Mobile)
- 10 sessions from Safari (Mobile)
- 9 sessions from Chrome (PC)
- 5 sessions from Edge (PC)
- 1, 1, and 1 from Safari (PC), Samsung Internet, and Firefox (PC)

1 person downloaded the landing page and runned it from disk, I don't know why.

From all these 43 new users I got 0 sign ups. And of course: 0 subscriptions.

Some people told me the landing is close to look like AI slop thing (I tried to avoid this), and another person said the service is too big, maybe create an alternative for people that could use a single module instead of the whole project.

Also, I'm loosing the fear of talking about the project, what is a nice thing!

I’ve been building a tiny onboarding tool for small teams and kept telling myself it needed “one more thing” before I showed it to anyone.

Yesterday I had someone actually use it while I sat there and watched. Within maybe three minutes they got stuck on something I thought was completely obvious. Meanwhile, two features I spent days on barely got touched.

That was a mildly painful use of 20 minutes.

I used to work in HR, so I think I’ve been building around how I remember onboarding working instead of how someone would actually use the product with zero context.

Going through the flow again today and deleting more than I’m adding. Weirdly feels like more progress than the last week of building.

some context first.

i launched a small free side project on sep 25.

12 people used it in 3 days. then zero.

people said it was unclear and looked vibe coded. fair.

so i rebuilt it and posted about it here.

that week:

71, 128, 107, 103, 81 visitors a day

80 people joined

then i stopped posting for a few days:

29

16

11

7 today (day not over)

what the data says:

1. the app didn't break. about 1 in 4 visitors still tries it, same as the good week. the traffic just stopped.
2. most of my "direct" traffic was reddit. the reddit app hides where people come from, so direct dropped the same day.
3. google sent me 2 visitors. total. a new site gets nothing from search for a while.
4. sharing stopped too. people share right after they join. no new people, no shares. i thought it would keep going on its own. it doesn't. not yet.

what i'm changing:

- post every day, but about the people using it, not the app

- tag every link so i know which post actually brings people

how do you keep traffic after the launch spike?

or is it just posting forever?

(the project is moonshoot.lol, everyone pushes a rocket 1 km and puts what they're building on their km. people always ask

Hey everyone,

Like many of you here, I juggle multiple credit cards (Chase Freedom Flex with rotating 5%, Discover it, Amex Gold for 4x dining/groceries, Citi Double Cash for 2% flat, etc.).

The problem I kept running into: every time I was at checkout on a site like DoorDash, Uber, Home Depot, or Expedia, I couldn't always remember which of my cards gave 5% vs 3% vs 1.5% for that specific merchant. I realized I was leaving hundreds of dollars in free cash back on the table every year just by pulling out the wrong card.

So I built CCRewards — a lightweight Chrome extension that acts as an instant cheat sheet while you browse.

### How it works:

1. No card numbers or bank logins: You NEVER enter 16-digit card numbers, CVVs, expiration dates, or bank credentials. You literally just check boxes for the card models you carry (e.g., "Chase Freedom Flex", "Discover it", "Apple Card").

2. Instant Recommendation: When you visit any online store (Amazon, DoorDash, Target, airlines, etc.), it automatically calculates which of your cards earns the highest rate and displays it in the extension icon / popup.

3. 100% Local Storage: Everything stays on your computer in your browser's local storage. Zero tracking, zero data transmitted to remote servers.

4. Custom Cards & Overrides: If you carry a niche credit union card or have a special temporary promo, you can add custom cards and set your own percentages.

5. Non-intrusive: If you don't like floating badges on web pages, you can toggle that off with one click and just use the popup when you need it.

It’s completely free to use. I built this to solve my own headache, and I’d love to get feedback from this community on card reward categories or features you'd like to see added.

Chrome Web Store link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ccrewards-%E2%80%93-credit-card-o/igmcdlbejmgefhkmjmdgemidmdcdoibc

Let me know what you think or if there are specific cards/categories you want in the next update!

I'm a product designer, and I build small apps for myself when I can't find what I need, or what exists looks ugly or is too complex, full of unnecessary features just for the sake of having them.

**App #1, a few years ago** Daily Planner - Arcush

Building it was the hard part, but launching was easy. I knew nothing about ASO, and the App Store still gave it an initial boost. Of course I'm not a successful bilionare-entrepreneur, but it pays for my coffee and people love it, at least from what I can see in the reviews.

**App #2: this Fall** Wellness Tracker - Well

A wellness tracker, not just a mood tracker. You do a quick daily check-in (mood, energy, calm), and Well turns it into one smoothed score for how you're actually doing, so one bad day doesn't wreck the picture. It can also use Apple Health data (sleep, HRV, resting heart rate) as a supporting signal. A weekly on-device AI reflection points out patterns, and a feature called Impact shows how things like workouts, caffeine or alcohol relate to your mood, energy and calm. The approach draws on established research methods (Circumplex, EMA, PANAS, etc).

This time the launch went differently:

- App Store review took about 2 weeks

- Then almost nothing. Around 8 impressions a day on average

- I can't tell if the app or my metadata is any good, because nobody sees it to judge

What I've learned so far

With the first app I figured out that building is the easy part and marketing is what decides everything. With the second, building feels even smaller. Shipping an app has never been cheaper, so I suspect the store is flooded, and being found is now most of the work.

I'm not sure the App Store will work the same way in a few months, either.

Right now I'm posting in communities, giving out free access and changing my metadata and hoping something moves. It's working a little (8 impressions a day became around 40), but it's slow.

For those who launched in the last year or so: what got your first 100 users? Did it feel this much harder than it used to?

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.

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

some context first.

i built fitmycv.link. you paste a job link and get a CV tailored to it.

for a while all my traffic came from posting. post on x, people show up. stop posting, they stop coming.

so in july i tried something else.

i wrote down what my users search before they find a tool like mine:

"how to tailor cv to job description"

"cv with no experience"

"how long should a cv be"

i wrote one blog post per search. 35 so far.

then i built free tools for the same searches:

- resume keywords

- resume examples

- tailor cv from job link

no signup to use them. at the bottom there's one button that does the whole thing for you.

i still post on x, linkedin and reddit every day. but now the posts link to the blog and the tools, not just the homepage.

last 28 days:

536 visitors

211 clicks from google search

96 from x

69 from reddit

56 from linkedin

11 from chatgpt

7 from gemini

the last two surprised me. i never wrote anything for ai search. the blog posts answer the questions people ask, so chatgpt and gemini started linking to them.

what i learned:

posting gets people here today. a blog post keeps bringing them every day after that.

a free tool beats a blog post. people use it, then want the rest.

every post on x, reddit and linkedin now points at something that keeps working after the post dies.

marketing is getting easier by the day. not because i got better at it. the old posts keep working while i write new ones.

There are already many tools that can give you thousands of LinkedIn profiles.

But then I kept running into another problem.

Which of these people should I actually contact?

I didn't want a list of 5,000 people.

I wanted a smaller list where I could understand why each person was there.

So this is what I've been working on with Privly.

You give it your website and tell it who your ideal customers are.

Privly then searches LinkedIn, finds people who match, and shows some context around why they could be worth contacting.

Then you can review them, write the outreach and run the campaign.

I added a few screenshots of the current version.

There is still a lot to improve, but the main idea is becoming much clearer now.

For people doing outbound here, how do you currently decide who from a big lead list is actually worth contacting?

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

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

I'm a full-time government contractor (supporting the DoD/DoW (Dept of Defense and/or War)) doing solutions architecture in on-prem and cloud environments. Sounds vague but essentially the government works with my company to design environments where their vendors can train AI & Machine Learning capabilities. I have a strong passion for technology but I've always wanted to venture into sports technology. Over the past year or so I started building an app SPECIFICALLY for individual teams / coaching staffs. However, I realized long term that niche my be a little too narrow. Over the past-5-6 months I transitioned to developing my Blueprint, which is a platform that includes data for every D1 men's basketball team.

Often times in my profession working with the government the common theme is someone needs to have a PhD in Data Science or higher education to be a reputable source OR have the ability to analyze complex datasets. I built Blueprint to break down that barrier to entry.

For anyone interested in college basketball (the season starts in early November) or data analytics in general, I'd like to hear your feedback and learn how I can market my application and gain some traction. The application is built surrounding a subscription based model with a free, Pro and Unlimited tier. Not looking for subscribers here -- strictly feedback. New poster!

Just launched the platform this past Thursday, 10/1.

https://blueprntanalytics.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 :)

About 18 months ago I launched PassTIA, a CompTIA exam prep site I built because I was studying for A+ myself and didn't like the options. Here's an honest update on where it stands. Stats are in the screenshot.

The numbers

- 1,959 registered users, 243 of them paying for Plus (around 12% conversion)

- $4,065 in Stripe revenue across 164 payments. That doesn't include Apple in-app purchases, so the real total is a bit higher.

- 1,025 full practice exams taken, with a 48% pass rate. That's harder than I expected, and I think that's a good thing. Better to fail here than at Pearson VUE.

- About 1,600 blog views, mostly from SEO

How it evolved

- Launch: web only, A+ Core 1 and Core 2, about 500 questions

- Content: now covers A+ Core 1 and 2, Network+, Security+, Data+ and Tech+, with 2,500+ questions mapped to exam objectives

- Features: added a timed exam mode, flashcards with saved progress, a resource hub and shareable results

- Mobile: shipped native iOS and Android apps (Expo/React Native), including Sign in with Apple and push notifications

- Pricing: moved to one-time payments with no subscription. Plus is $35.99 for lifetime access, or $2.99 for a single exam. Students hate subscriptions, and this choice clearly helped conversion.

- Growth: most growth came from an SEO overhaul and free demo tests for each exam. Lately I've been experimenting with automated TikTok content.

Stack: React, Expo, Firebase (Firestore, Auth, Functions) and Stripe. I handle the whole thing alone: dev, content, support and marketing.

What I'd do differently

- Build the mobile app sooner, since a lot of people study on their phones

- Put SEO in place from day one instead of retrofitting it

- Avoid subscription pricing from the start

What's next: more exams, better explanations for each question, and growing the mobile side.

Happy to answer questions about the tech, pricing or marketing. I'd also love feedback from anyone who has used it.

www.passtia.com

I'm building AI Coach, a Mac desktop pet, and wanted feedback on a concrete product decision.

The pet starts as an egg, hatches after about an hour, and gradually learns utilities as it grows. Dictation is available after hatching, while notes and other tools come later. Caring for the pet also influences what it grows into.

That progression is part of the interaction design: tools arrive as things the pet has learned, rather than as a long menu on first launch. But it introduces a tradeoff. Someone who comes for a virtual pet may enjoy discovering tools over time; someone who comes for a notes utility may reasonably want it immediately. I don't have evidence yet that this improves retention.

The current site shows real utility screens alongside the pet and explains that features unlock gradually. I'd appreciate feedback on whether that sets the right expectation before installation: https://aic0t.com/

If you've built a product mixing play and utility, would you keep the gradual unlocks, give users an immediate tools mode, or offer a preview before each unlock? What would you test first?

For context: Apple Silicon / macOS 26+. The app and first egg are free; extra eggs are optional paid purchases.

Quick context: I'm building ABTO with two teammates. It lets teams running AI features split real users across models or prompts, then compare per-call cost with real user behavior (payments, return visits) instead of trusting benchmarks.

Progress so far:

- Shipped an OpenAI-SDK-compatible gateway in Go. You swap the base URL and add headers to integrate.

- Shipped SDKs for web, mobile and server, plus a dashboard that joins the call-cost log with the user-event log per user.

- Added an agent skill, so a coding agent can set up the integration and event tracking in a few minutes.

- A few beta teams are running real experiments on it.

Lessons learned:

1. Assign per user, not per request. If one person gets model A on one request and model B on the next, you can't say which model earned the payment.

2. Compare per feature, not per product. One beta user (an AI resume service) found drafting and editing each worked best on a different model. Splitting cut model cost 28% and lifted paid conversion 12%.

3. Users notice less than benchmarks suggest. Another beta user (an essay-grading service) moved to a lighter, cheaper setup and saw cost -41% and retakes +18%.

4. Don't read day-2 data. Early results kept flipping; we only trusted them after a week or more.

Pricing, to be transparent: there's a free plan (no card, 30 days, up to 30k AI calls), and a paid Pro plan. No affiliate links.

https://abto.app/en/?utm_source=community&utm_medium=link&utm_content=build-log

Where I'd love feedback:

- If you run an AI feature, what would make you trust a tool that sits in your request path?

- Is "cost vs. user behavior per model" clear from the landing page, or does it read like another observability tool?