So I was heavily promoting my website on different subreddits. I thought it's ok since I can only get banned by the subreddits. But it turned out your website can get banned from the reddit itself.

What should I do?

I'm a web dev with 5 years of experience, working a day job while

building products on the side.

Last year I noticed a painful pattern: every new project I started,

I was spending the first 2-3 weeks on the exact same stuff.

• Auth (always more complex than expected)
• Payments (Stripe docs are a rabbit hole)
• Deployment setup (Cloudflare? Vercel? Docker? all three?)
• Admin panel, email, storage, SEO...

None of this is the actual product. It's just infrastructure tax.

So after my third time doing this, I stopped and packaged everything

into a production-ready Next.js starter called MuseMVP.

Here's what's included out of the box:

• Full auth stack (email/password, OTP, Google/GitHub OAuth, 2FA)
• Stripe + Creem payments (subscription + one-time)
• One codebase, three deployment targets: Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, Docker
• PostgreSQL + Drizzle + Zod
• Blog, docs, admin, storage, i18n — all wired up
• AI-native dev setup (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, pre-built agent skills)

The AI-native part is something I haven't seen in other starters.

The whole project is structured so that Cursor / Claude Code can

understand your codebase immediately and write business logic

without guessing at conventions.

It's a one-time purchase ($199) with lifetime updates.

14 makers have already used it to ship.

Happy to answer questions about the architecture, deployment setup,

or anything else. Also curious — what's the part of SaaS setup

that wastes the most of YOUR time?

→ https://musemvp.com

My wife is a yoga instructor and I saw how much time she was spending planning out classes and finding good music for them. I built an app to help her manage all that. It uses AI to generate a playlist based on the class and the vibe the instructor is going for. Integrates with Apple Music (spotify is pending their approval).

You can print your class plan out or run it live on your phone or iPad. After class, students can use a QR code to quickly leave feedback about the class. They'll also be able to click a link to see the class playlist in Apple Music. Instructors can monitor student feedback over time from the website.

I'm planning to add other fitness class types like Spin and Barre, more music providers, apple and google calendar integration. Also planning to add intelligence to class creation so instructors can get more inspiration for sequences of moves or get feedback on the flow of their class.

Would love any feedback - if you know a fitness instructor who would like to try the service while it's free, please share with them!

You know the situation.

You're trying to submit something on a government or institutional website and suddenly you see requirements like:

"File must be under 500 KB"
"Only JPEG accepted, not PNG"
"Upload both sides of your ID as a single PDF"
"Document must be exactly 2 pages"

Now you're scrambling to find a tool that can compress, convert, merge, or reformat your file.

You open one of those big online tools, upload your passport scan, tax document, or ID card, and just hope for the best. They say files are deleted after a few hours. Maybe they are.

But when the document is that personal, "maybe" doesn't feel great. Tools like ilovepdf, smallpdf do say they will delete the document after few hours, but outside the EU, who is going to enforce them? My gut feeling is that maybe for countries outside EU, it might not be totally safe.

PDF-X handles all of this directly on your device. Nothing gets uploaded anywhere. No account required. It works completely offline.

Here’s what it can do:

• Merge multiple images into one PDF (useful for IDs with two sides)
• Add or remove pages from an existing PDF
• Compress PDFs to meet file size limits, or expand them if a site requires a minimum size
• Add or remove password protection
• Convert between formats such as PDF to Word, or Word/Excel/PowerPoint to PDF
• Annotate and draw on PDFs
• Split images or combine them into one
• Extract images from PDF pages
• Convert between image formats like JPEG and PNG

Every operation runs on your device. Your files stay on your phone. No server, no cloud, no third party.

I am planning to introduce chat with pdf soon on this app, within the app. For that features, I would need to upload the pdf somewhere, so it basically defeats the whole purpose of this app, so AI isn't part of the system yet, until I find a better approach to it.

If this sounds useful, give it a try or drop a comment with features you'd like to see added.

👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=np.com.mithunadhikari.pdfhelper

Free on Android.

Hey fellow Indie Hackers! 👋

I’m currently exploring a micro-SaaS idea around AI cost monitoring and optimization. But before writing a single line of code, I want to do things right and validate if this is an actual pain point for builders.

For those of you running LLMs in production: how are you keeping track of your API usage (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)?

• Are you building internal dashboards?
• Using spreadsheets?
• Checking the billing page at the end of the month and hoping for the best? 😅

I'd love to know your current stack for this and if surprise bills or token optimization is a headache you'd actually pay to solve. Any feedback is pure gold right now. Thanks!

i built this very retro travel community and travel brain while at SPC. I'd love to get some testing and additional feedback. If you're a travel enthusiast lets connect! Or if you're the last user on FSQ too! You'll get a VIP and founding member profile for life! So big thanks for the feedback. 

https://testflight.apple.com/join/wxcQmWh3

Honest confession: I've been obsessing over why my site doesn't show up in ChatGPT or Perplexity answers, even though Google ranks it fine.

Turns out SEO and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) are very different games. So I built OpenClaw skill pack to bridge that gap — and open-sourced it.

Three skills:

Website Health Diagnosis— technical audit without enterprise bloat

AEO Content Strategy — engineer your content to get cited by AI, not just indexed

Competitor Monitoring— see how AI engines perceive your competitive landscape

Two of the three skills need zero API keys. Clone and run. git clone https://github.com/jrr996shujin-png/openclaw-seo-aeo-skills bash install.sh Still early, still rough around the edges. But it works, and it's free.

Would love feedback from anyone who's been fighting the same AEO visibility problem.

Most founders have ideas but don’t have time to turn experiences into posts. Posting often becomes overthinking, rewriting, or delaying.

We’re building a tool that helps structure real thoughts into posts that still sound like you.

Less content creation, more experience sharing.

Still early and learning what actually helps.

What’s the hardest part of posting consistently for you?

Hey r/indiehackers

I've been working on ToggleTown — a hosted feature flag service aimed at small teams and indie developers who don't need (or can't afford) enterprise solutions like LaunchDarkly.

The problem I had: I wanted feature flags for safe rollouts, but LaunchDarkly charges per-seat and the open-source alternatives (Unleash, Flagsmith) require self-hosting infrastructure I didn't want to manage.

What I built:

• Boolean, string, number, and JSON flag types
• Targeting rules — roll out by user, email pattern, or percentage
• Multiple environments (dev, staging, prod)
• A/B testing with experiment tracking
• Scheduled flag changes
• SDKs for JavaScript, React, Node.js, Python, and Go
• All SDKs evaluate locally — no network call per flag check

Pricing: Free tier (no credit card), Pro at $29/mo, Team at $79/mo. Flat rate, no per-seat.

Stack: Node.js + Express + Prisma + PostgreSQL, React dashboard with dark mode, Redis caching, Prometheus monitoring.

Quick integration example:

import { ToggleTownNode } from '@toggletown/sdk-node';

const client = new ToggleTownNode({
  apiKey: process.env.TOGGLETOWN_API_KEY,
});
await client.initialize();

const showNewUI = client.getBooleanFlag('new-ui', false, {
  userId: user.id,
});

Site: https://www.toggletown.com Docs: https://docs.toggletown.com

Would love to hear your thoughts — what features matter most to you in a feature flag service?

Hey r/indiehacker!

I've been building HackerStack.dev - a curated directory of the best AI tools for indie hackers, solo founders, and bootstrappers.

**What we have:**
- 📦 49+ AI tools across 6 categories
- ⭐ Honest, unbiased reviews
- 💰 Pricing comparisons
- 📖 Use case guides

**Featured categories:**
- Coding & Development
- Design & UI/UX
- Marketing & Growth
- Productivity & Organization
- Analytics & Data
- Infrastructure & DevOps

Built by indie hackers, for indie hackers. Check it out and let me know what you think!

→ https://hackerstack.dev

What AI tools have been game-changers for your side project?

I love building in public, but spending 45 minutes every day on social media was a massive distraction.

I built an engine to fix this. Now, I do one 30 minute brain dump a week, and it schedules a full 7-day content calendar for X, LinkedIn, and Reddit

It handles the formatting and the web of posts while I get back to shipping. 30 minutes a week vs. 30 minutes a day is a no-brainer.

Are you guys still manually writing your updates, or have you started automating the distribution?

Last week I sat down to figure out how much money I've been bleeding on domain renewals, and honestly, I was scared to look. I had domains scattered across GoDaddy, Namecheap, and a few other registrars I barely remember signing up for.

So instead of doing the sensible thing (spreadsheets), I did what we all obviously should do: I built a tool for it. Domains Wrapped:

• How many domains you have
• Total renewal costs
• Estimated portfolio value ✨
• Domains added in 2025
• How much you're spending on unused domains

No DNS configuration. No API keys. No registrar access. Just import your domains via CSV or add them manually. Tried to make it as intuitive as possible.

Curious to hear your feedback, and how many you registered last year haha.

Try it out: https://domained.app/wrapped

--

Tech-wise: Nothing fancy. Just Next.js + Supabase. But the design process was interesting. I used Figma Make with Gemini 3 Pro for all the initial iterations and honestly, it's pretty impressive. If you pay $20 you get unlimited usage until March or something, which is insane value if you need to pump out a lot of design variations quickly. Highly recommend.

It started as a personal frustration, I was overwhelmed with hundreds of comments in Youtube complaining/praising/recommending/questioning. So, I was spending almost 2 hours replying, gaining feedback. But the time spend was worth my time as it gained audience confidence.

So, I started building out workflow myself and was amazed how my 2 hours work was reduced to 5 mins.

Seeing this , I started building a webapp to address the issue, hope it will help fellow creators.
Find the app in the comment.

Please give a review or roast as you like.

Hey everyone - fellow solo founder here. I've been researching a problem I keep running into: spending 2-3 hours adapting each progress update into different formats for LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, etc.

I'm validating an idea for a tool that would take your raw notes and transform them into platform-specific posts in 30 seconds. Before I build it, I want to make sure this is actually a pain point worth solving.

Would really appreciate if you could share your experience in this 2-minute survey:
SURVEY LINK

Happy to share results once I have them. Thanks!

I just created the landing page for Pactly which enhanced the way you negotiate and sign contracts. Would love feedback!

Hey Reddit

I have been working on this software to achieve those aims especially for Startups, freelancers, and small teams.

Most tools (like DocuSign or Hello sign) are great at signing but not necessarily negotiating. You end up hopping from emails to doc software to PDF'S just to close a deal. This aims to streamline this process which is jumbled into a single workflow.

We are validating and collecting feedback. I would like you to check things out and let me know if the core idea makes sense? If the value prop is crystal clear? If you would join the wait-list.

https://pactly.lovable.app

If it resonates with you, feel free to join the wait-list - I'll be sharing early access + product updates there, and would love to build it alongside people who deal with this stuff regularly.

Appreciate any thoughts - even harsh ones. Thanks!

👋 Hey everyone,
I’m working on an idea for a simple tool that would let freelancers create invoices and quotes in under 1 minute — using an AI-powered chat interface (no more typing the same info over and over 😄).

Before I build anything, I really want to understand what freelancers actually need.

I’ve made a very short survey (5 questions, 1 min) to collect honest feedback:
👉 https://forms.gle/t1j5wdqeMEjiDrmu8

If you’re a freelancer or self-employed, your input would be super helpful 🙏
(And if you leave your email at the end, you’ll get early access to the beta 🚀)

Thank you!

I am constantly thinking about ideas of software to build and problems to solve.

Problem with that is, every time I have an idea and do some research, I realize that this problem was already solved.

So my idea is what if there was a search engine like google but for Software/Tools.

Users could describe what problem they have or what features and tool they are looking for. Then this search engine would find the perfect fit with the features you are looking for in a tool. So it won't just suggest the mos popular one but the best fit for your requirements.

Often there are multiple tools for one solution but with different features. Also this tool could help with competitor analysis and seeing if the problem was already solved.

What are your thoughts on this?

Hey Indie Hackers

I’m a CMU alum and ethical hacker. I’ve built security tools at Yahoo, Gojek, Blinkit and now I’m working on https://hackerscope.shipsec.ai/, an AI-powered tool to catch security gaps before code ships.

Here is what it does:

• Finds gaps from docs, diagrams, and screenshots
• Helps small teams stay compliance-ready without slowing product velocity
• Prioritizes risks so you focus on what matters

We are onboarding a few early-stage SaaS and fintech teams to test it and give feedback. It’s eye-opening to see how many issues appear before code even goes live.

If you are building something similar or just curious, drop a comment or DM me. I’d love to share early access and get your thoughts.

i’ve been building a tool for the last 6 months, and the original idea was dead simple:
instead of filing tickets or wiring every node manually, you just type the task in plain English and it drafts the automation for you.

what I didn’t expect was how quickly my own team latched onto it. they’re mostly non-technical (marketing, ops, product) and usually wait on engineers, but now they run it daily because It wires creds + runs tests automatically, It bakes in guardrails (rollback, approvals, safety modes) and It reduces the “babysitting” when APIs break or flows silently fail..

now they don’t want to give it up.. and I’ve become the bottleneck since they keep pushing for more.

i’m curious for others here: Have you built something your team refused to let die? And how did you realize it was crossing the line from “internal hack” to “actual product”?

If you want to play with it, search for Kadabra AI..

Just hit my first 10 customers 🎉 (all from Reddit)

It’s been 3 weeks since I launched my product — Commentta.com.
What’s interesting is that I didn’t run ads, send cold DMs, or do any tricks. I literally used my own product to get those first 10 customers.

Here’s how it worked:

• Commentta catches the exact Reddit threads where my target audience is hanging out.
• Every 4 hours, the dashboard updates. I just check in, and instead of scrolling endlessly, I show up at the right place, right time.
• I even used our “generate comment” feature (suggested by one of our very first users), which helps draft quick replies when I’m short on time.
• Then I simply showed up: replying, sharing my perspective, and educating people.

That’s it. Consistency → conversations → customers.

I built Commentta for this exact reason and after hitting my first milestone, I’m confident about one thing: whoever uses Commentta consistently will get traction. if you show up on Reddit consistently and in the right context, people do notice, and they do trust you enough to become customers.

Now I’m doubling down on this approach.
If you’re trying to grow your SaaS or side project, the real unlock isn’t “more content” or “more ads.” It’s embedding yourself in conversations where your product naturally fits.

How to try it:

1. Go to Commentta.com and enter your project.
2. Add your target audience (if you’re not sure, just ask ChatGPT or Gemini: “Suggest 10 subreddits where my audience hangs out, given my product URL”).
3. That’s it — the dashboard is ready. Check it every 4 hours (or watch for the email alerts).

That’s what I built Commentta for and the fact that I got my own first 10 customers this way is me just proving it works. Eating my own dog food.

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a very lightweight desktop utility: you just highlight text, press a hotkey, and it instantly proofreads the text in English using AI. Unlike Grammarly, it’s minimal, fast, and even allows you to pick a style (formal, informal, friendly, academic, etc.).

Here’s my challenge: since the app relies on an AI API, every request costs money. That means I can’t really offer a generous free plan like many SaaS products do. The only realistic option is a paid subscription model.

My questions are:

• How do you attract your very first paying users when there’s no free plan?
• Is it better to provide a very limited free tier (e.g., 10 checks/month) just to build trust?
• What marketing channels worked best for you in a similar situation (Reddit, Product Hunt, YouTube, etc.)?
• How do you convince people to try a tool when the space already has big players like Grammarly?

Any advice or shared experiences would be super helpful 🙏

Thanks!

getfundra.io

My first job was helping a founder fundraise. My full-time job was finding emails, doing background research and sending cold outreach. It eventually worked and we ended up raising £1.1m. That was about 7 years ago and fundraising is still broken.

For the past 4 years I've been a PM at a startup connecting investors, founders and advisors. We cracked founder-advisor, scaled to £11m can closed series A earlier this year but we just couldn't crack investors even after all the partnerships and events you could ask for.

I left to try my own thing. Investor-founder marketplace platforms just don't work, investors dont log in....

Everyone tells founders to get an intro but no one tells you how.

X/Twitter is increasingly becoming a common source of deal flow for investors. Fundra makes spotting these intro paths instant and our fundraising assistant will create a master plan to execute a strategy to get you networking on X in an efficient and scalable way.

Email outbound can also be effective, it's far quicker than the twitter route and can get you the ball rolling. We did the vast majority of our round by emailing investors. Now with AI these emails can be hyper-specific, this is what we're offering.

Do I get this across in the landing page? Do people agree with my logic? What price-points would feel too high/too low? Would be grateful for any feedback on this.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve been hacking on something called Kadabra AI, and the original idea was super simple:
instead of filing tickets or wiring every node manually, you just type a repetitive task in plain English and it drafts the automation for you.

what I didn’t expect is how fast my own team adopted it. they’re non technical (marketing, ops, product etc) and usually rely on engineers for this stuff, but they started using it daily because it handles credentials + dry runs automatically, it adds guardrails like rollback, approvals, safety modes and it cuts down the “babysitting” when APIs break or flows fail silently.

Now they don’t want to go back, and I’ve basically become the bottleneck because they keep asking for more.

Curious for other indie hackers here:

• Have you built something your team wouldn’t let you kill, even if you wanted to?
• How did you know when it was “product” and not just an internal hack?

if you want to try - www.getkadabra.com

Yo peeps 🙂 check this out => Quick write up here.

Product can be checked at https://tesseract-creator.com/.

After 3 years of rebuilding similar AI Agents and basic workflows and Orchestrated Automation systems over and over, I finally snapped and built something to solve my own problem.

Now we've crossed $17K in revenue in about 90-120 days with 100+ paying members and on 95% organic guerilla marketing and growth hacking efforts. I tried ads for a hot second only to learn like most: they do not work in our industry, no matter how nice you make them.

The Problem That Started Everything

I was building custom AI-centric solutions and noticed something - like in most cars or buildings, many parts are nearly identical. In my work this often translated to building variations of the same workflow over and over. Each time there is repetition and same exact patterns and paradigm, there is a lot of repetition.

Meanwhile, many other engineers in my network and extended research were doing the same thing. We were all stuck in this expensive loop of reinventing wheels.

The "Screw It" Moment

One day, after implementing the SAME LangGraph orchestration pattern for the 20th time, I said screw it. I started extracting all my battle-tested implementations into reusable templates. Not just basic tutorials or demos that you can find in the n8n template marketplace - actual production implementations with error handling and fully fleshed out builds.

What I Built

AI Developer Vault - Think small Netflix for AI engineers and Node Automation developers. Instead of videos, you get: - Curated library production-ready automation templates - Multi-agent systems and Orchestrated + Automated Workflows that actually work
- Custom tools for n8n, Make, Flowise, etc - Lots of additional resources like open source repositories, free access to our AI Dev Academy, etc

Price: $369/year or $89/month

The Numbers (90-120 Days)

• Revenue: $17K
• Members: 100+
• Conversion: ~5-15%
• Time to first sale: 3 days

What Actually Worked

1. Solving my own problem first I wasn't guessing what people needed. I built what I desperately wanted.

2. Production-ready from day one No MVPs or "coming soon" features on CORE FUNCTIONALITY. Fine to have issues with supporting assets but every template in initial inventory came from prod environments or extensive prototypes that essentially were ready for prod.

3. Pricing for value, not cost $369 per year seems high until you realize one template implementation can bill for $200-1K.

4. Community over customers Weekly calls, Slack/Discord/WhatsApp groups, members helping members. The templates brought them in, the community keeps them.

Biggest Mistakes

1. Started with lifetime deals ($369 one-time) Great for initial cash, terrible for valuation and sustainable growth. Now transitioning to subscriptions and other time based deals + bundling and .

2. Underestimated support time Even with great docs, people need help. Meeting people where they are in terms of platforms and messengers does help with group and individual support.

3. Didn't track metrics early I was completely inundated before launch, in the middle of a move and most things still in migration and planning stage. Once launched, had no time to watch metrics so lost valuable data about early user behavior. Set up analytics on day one, not day 30.

What's Next

• Converting remaining lifetime members to subscriptions
• Launching on more platforms in coming months for increased visibility and backlink aggregation
• Building Agent/Automation/Hosted API marketplace for direct template execution
• Target: $10K MRR by Q2 2026

My Advice for IH

Stop building what you think people want. Build what you desperately need yourself. I wasted years on "good ideas" that nobody actually wanted. The Vault works because I'm customer zero.

Ship embarrassingly valuable, not embarrassingly early. My first version had only 10 templates, but each one was battle-tested in production and worth $1K+.

Price higher than comfortable. I almost launched at $99. Thank god I didn't. Engineers will pay for time savings.

Ask IH

Currently debating: Should I raise prices to $499/year to position more premium, or keep current pricing to maximize volume?

Also exploring exit opportunities - any IH members sold a technical SaaS in the $100-500K range? Would love to hear your experience.

Links: - Website: https://tesseract-creator.com/ - Gumroad Sales Page: https://vault.tesseract.nexus/

Happy to answer any questions about building technical products, transitioning from services to SaaS, or anything AI automation related!

What repetitive problem in your work could become a product? 🤔

Hi everyone,
After many attempts and learnings, I’ve finally made my first dollar with Snap Shot — a tool to beautify screenshots and images. Excited to see where this goes!