Would it work?Check the evidence before you build.
Chatbots call every idea brilliant. We look for who already built it and what real users complain about, then show you the links. When the evidence is thin, we say so.
Part 1 · Check your idea
An evidence check, not a pep talk
We turn your idea into searches, collect public prior art and discussions, and write a report strictly from what we found.
- 01
Describe the idea
One or two sentences. Who it's for and what it does.
- 02
We gather public evidence
Search queries run against GitHub repositories and Hacker News stories and comments.
- 03
Read a sourced report
Verdict, similar products, real complaints, risks and the smallest version to build. Every claim links to its source.
Part 2 · Case studies
How real indie products found traction
13 researched write-ups of real indie, AI and vibe-coded products, including the ones that faded. Every number links to its source, and unverifiable numbers are left out.
- TypingMind: a weekend ChatGPT front-end that grew past $1M a yearAI tools
- fly.pieter.com: a vibe-coded game that hit '$1M ARR' in 17 days, then $0Vibe-coded
- Cal AI: a photo calorie counter that MyFitnessPal bought within two yearsConsumer apps
- ShipFast: a Next.js boilerplate built in a week that made $6,000 in 48 hoursDeveloper tools
Latest research
Case studies
TypingMind: a weekend ChatGPT front-end that grew past $1M a year
How Tony Dinh turned a better UI for the ChatGPT API into a $1M+/year product, starting with one-time licenses and adding team subscriptions later.
fly.pieter.com: a vibe-coded game that hit '$1M ARR' in 17 days, then $0
Pieter Levels built a browser flight simulator with AI and sold in-game ads and planes. The headline was $1M ARR in 17 days. The follow-up shows why one-off revenue is not ARR.
Cal AI: a photo calorie counter that MyFitnessPal bought within two years
Two high-school founders shipped a 'snap your food' calorie app in 2024. It passed $30M in annual revenue and was acquired by MyFitnessPal.
ShipFast: a Next.js boilerplate built in a week that made $6,000 in 48 hours
Marc Lou packaged code he kept rewriting for his own apps into a boilerplate. It made $6K in two days and $220K in about four and a half months.
TrustMRR: built in under 24 hours as a reply to one tweet, $20,378 in 3 days
Marc Lou built a verified-revenue leaderboard after Pieter Levels complained about fake MRR screenshots. Ad slots sold out in three days.
Tally: a free form builder that grew to $5M ARR, fully bootstrapped
Tally launched in 2020 with a generous free tier and a 'Made with Tally' badge. Five years later it passed $5M ARR with 11 people.
Every claim is linked
If a statement can't point to a public source, it doesn't go in the report.
Thin evidence is called thin
"Not enough data" is an honest answer, and we give it instead of guessing.
Private by default
Idea reports live at an unguessable, noindex URL and are never listed publicly.