Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• This founder hit $800k with a TikTok app, then the views dried up. Now he's rebuilding his portfolio from scratch.
• 5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI.
• Yesterday's build board winners, including three new product launches from indie hackers.
• 30-second growth tip: Let your most-requested feature become your entire product.

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Louis-David Paul-Hus started out flipping rare sneakers at conventions before building GlowUp in just two weeks and watching it explode to 100,000 users in three days. The app went on to generate $800k in sales.

But now the TikTok views that fueled it have finally dried up. So he is rebuilding a portfolio from scratch.

His current focus is a new app called Archetype, a personality blueprint tool he built in a couple weeks using Claude Code. He sticks to a strict two-week buildout philosophy where marketing begins on day one: ship fast, test distribution before you overbuild, and only commit deeper once a viral format actually pulls.

All of our case studies teach you something valuable, and one of the lessons in this one is what happens when distribution works almost too well. The full interview goes deeper on the TikTok anchor strategy that drove 500 million views for Paul-Hus, his transition to a new portfolio, and the challenges of leaning too hard on a single marketing channel. Hope you enjoy it!

Read the full article →

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1. Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.

2. Continue: Create custom AI copilots in VS Code or JetBrains with one open-source plugin.

3. v0: Type a prompt — v0 drafts production-ready React, Vue, or Svelte components.

4. Qodo: Boost test coverage fast — Qodo writes unit tests and smart code suggestions.

5. Lovable: Describe your idea — Lovable builds a full-stack app and reusable prompts in seconds.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Let your most-requested feature become your entire product.

Sarah Hum and Andrew Rasmussen, founders of Canny (a tool that lets companies collect and manage product feedback from their users), kept hearing the same thing from businesses using their earlier project, Product Pains: “We want to embed this on our own site, and we’ll pay for it.” Instead of brushing it off, they treated that one request as the whole company.

They rebranded, repointed the product at businesses, and migrated their existing users over. Within 7 months, they hit profitability. Canny now does $280K+/month.

Read the full growth report →

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. Anti Noise Feynman: Read it later, Flashcards, Feynman technique, Learning "Build an app in 3 hours" is a lie. It took me 11 days with Claude.	▲ 16
	2. Achiv: Content Marketing on Reddit without SPAM I stole my competitor's entire audience in one click	▲ 12
	3. Aura++: Launch your project and increase online aura Most indie hackers don’t struggle with building	▲ 6

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

AI models have evolved. ChatGPT has not.

We're still using the same old AI assistant products we were using in 2022, even though the models underneath them keep getting better.

It's time for the next generation of AI assistants.

Introducing Hatch, the most productive AI assistant ever made.

From the creators of Indie Hackers, Hatch was thoughtfully crafted to help you get real work done. From floating windows to tagging documents, we've reimagined every aspect of your daily AI assistant to help you operate at a higher level.

Try Hatch free. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off for 1 month.

Speed used to be an advantage when nobody could build apps 5–10 years ago.

Now that everybody can build, it all comes down to quality.

—Channing

Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?

We're constantly changing things up to make this newsletter more useful, so let us know what you think by replying directly to this email. We read every reply!

Special thanks to Yushavel Calderon for the graphic design, and to James Fleischmann for contributing a post.

—Channing