Find "boring-monetized" niches for indie hackers — groups already paying for bad solutions — using 6 bulletproof principles (PROVEN PAYMENT, DOLLAR PAIN, REACHABLE AUDIENCE, SCHLEP MOAT, WORKFLOW LOCK-IN, 24-HOUR SALE TEST). Use when the user wants to hunt for a startup idea, find a side project to monetize, validate a niche before building, or asks "what should I build", "find me a niche", "find an idea", "indie hacker ideas", "boring business ideas", or "niche research". Not for brainstorming new features for an existing product.
التثبيت
التثبيت باستخدام Codex أو Claude انسخ هذا Prompt والصقه في Codex أو Claude أو مساعد آخر ليراجع صفحة Skill ويثبّتها لك.
Find "boring-monetized" niches for indie hackers — groups already paying for bad solutions — using 6 bulletproof principles (PROVEN PAYMENT, DOLLAR PAIN, REACHABLE AUDIENCE, SCHLEP MOAT, WORKFLOW LOCK-IN, 24-HOUR SALE TEST). Use when the user wants to hunt for a startup idea, find a side project to monetize, validate a niche before building, or asks "what should I build", "find me a niche", "find an idea", "indie hacker ideas", "boring business ideas", or "niche research". Not for brainstorming new features for an existing product.
"find underserved markets" / "who's paying for bad solutions"
Do NOT activate for: feature ideation on an existing product, market sizing (use market-research), YC-style office hours on a pre-existing idea (use office-hours).
Intake Phase
Batch ALL intake questions in a SINGLE AskUserQuestion call. Do not ask one at a time. If the user invoked with no context, ask all six. If a seed was provided, skip what's already known.
#
Header
Question
Options
1
Mode
"How should I hunt?"
"Cold hunt — no constraints" / "Constrained — I have a domain/audience in mind" / "Validate — pressure-test a specific niche I'll describe"
"$0 (scrappy)" / "<$500" / "<$5k" / "Time, not money"
After intake, restate the hunting brief in 3-4 lines and confirm before running the hunt.
Hunt Phase
Run searches in parallel. Every claim cites a URL.
Source → Principle map (ranked by user-voice purity)
Not all sources are equal. A "complaint" on Twitter is 90% performance. A 1-star review on G2 is 90% real pain. The skill ranks evidence by how likely the author had zero incentive to perform. Sources where writing takes effort and no one is watching > sources where the author is building a personal brand.
Core insight: The biggest lie of indie-hacker source hunting is that the goldmine is r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, r/SideProject, Twitter, or Indie Hackers. Those are founder echo chambers — people selling to each other. The real goldmine is vertical pro subs and industry forums where members don't know the word "indie hacker" — they're just complaining about tools they use every day. Examples: r/PropertyManagement, r/Bookkeeping, r/Esthetics, r/Veterinary, r/Plumbing, r/Mortgages, r/dentistry, r/accounting, r/LawFirm, r/RealEstate, r/HumanResources.
TIER 1 — 90%+ pure (no performance incentive)
Use these as the primary evidence for P1/P2/P5. Every QUALIFIED niche needs at least 2 P-signals anchored in a Tier-1 source.
Source
Why clean
How to hunt
GitHub Issues
Writing an issue is pure cost; author gets zero reward
site:github.com/{repo}/issues "{pain keyword}" → WebFetch. Filter: is:issue label:bug OR label:feature-request with 👍 count ≥ 3
App Store 1-3★ reviews (iOS)
User paid money and is still angry = real pain, quantified spend
Use as secondary corroboration, not primary evidence. Prefer deep comments over top-level posts because comments are cheaper to write and less branded.
Source
Note + hunt pattern
Reddit comments in vertical pro subs
Members don't know what "indie hacker" means — they just vent. site:reddit.com/r/{vertical-pro-sub} "I hate" OR "wish" OR "every week". Read comments under top posts, not the posts.
YouTube comments on "best X tool" videos
Comments under tool-review videos often say "tried X, still wish it did Y"
Hacker News comments (not Show HN posts)
Comment section is 10× more honest than submissions. site:news.ycombinator.com {domain} → WebFetch thread → comments with ≥3 children
Substack paid-newsletter comments
Paying audience = high-quality signal
Discord help/support channels
Private + asking for help = real unmet need. Not auto-crawlable — use P3 user-supplied fallback; ask user to paste pain-rich quotes
TIER 3 — <30% pure (mostly marketing/performance — AVOID)
Do not use as primary evidence. If a niche's only support comes from these sources, it's KILLED on P1. If cited at all, flag as [TIER-3] in shortlist.md.
Source
Why dirty
Reddit top-level posts in meta-subs (r/SaaS, r/Entrepreneur, r/SideProject, r/startups)
30%+ is founder shilling + SEO; another 30% is ideation theater
Twitter / X
90% performative. "I wish there was" = building personal brand, not paying
LinkedIn posts
~100% performative
Indie Hackers posts (the comments can be OK)
Founders plugging each other; selection bias toward "I'm shipping!"
Product Hunt
100% launch marketing. "Looks amazing!" ≠ will pay
Medium / dev.to listicles
SEO-farmed "top 10 tools for X" content
Quora
Overrun with AI slop
Any "Alternatives to X" marketing page
SEO-bait, often paid placement
Use Twitter/LinkedIn/ProductHunt only for tertiary confirmation of a specific claim (e.g., you already have Tier-1 evidence and want one more data point). Never as the anchor.
TIER 1/2 Chinese-market sources
Activate when intake specifies non-English market OR user requests 中文. Same purity tiering applies.
TIER 1:
Source
Why clean
Hunt pattern
App Store 中区 / 酷安 1-3★
Paid + angry
site:coolapk.com {app} → WebFetch; 苹果中区 via iTunes RSS
GitHub Issues on Chinese-maintainer repos
Same purity as EN
site:github.com {repo} is:issue + 中文 keyword
V2EX 吐槽 / 求助帖
Dev community, low performance incentive in /t/ threads
site:v2ex.com/t "{domain}" ("吐槽" OR "求助" OR "替代")
小众软件 / 少数派 tool-review long comments
Long-form negatives under tool reviews
site:appinn.com {tool} / site:sspai.com {tool} → read comments, not post
TIER 2:
Source
Note
知乎 长负面回答 (≥500 字 且反对多)
Long contrarian answers are real; short vote-farming answers are noise. Filter: site:zhihu.com "{domain}" → WebFetch → answers with ≥500 chars and clearly negative
Discord, Slack, and closed Facebook Groups are not publicly indexed — WebSearch cannot verify them. If WebSearch cannot produce ≥3 qualifying community URLs with buyer-density evidence for a candidate niche, pause and ask the user via a single AskUserQuestion call:
"I found {0|1|2} public venues for this niche. Can you name Discord servers, Slack workspaces, FB groups, or private forums where ≥100 buyers cluster? (One venue per line. If none you know of, this niche fails P3 and will be killed.)"
Rules:
User-supplied venues count toward P3 only if the user confirms buyer density (not just "members").
The skill still records the community URL in shortlist.md but marks [USER-SUPPLIED] alongside it for audit.
If the user can name fewer than 3 after search + prompt → P3 = 0 → KILLED. No exceptions.
Scoring Rubric
Five hard gates (each scored 0 or 1)
Gate
1 if…
0 if…
P1 PROVEN PAYMENT
Named ≥3 existing paid solutions with URLs (Fiverr / SaaS / consulting / Excel template store)
Fewer than 3, or only aspirational ("I wish")
P2 DOLLAR PAIN
Wrote the sentence "If unsolved, costs $X/month or wastes Y hours" with a cited anchor (e.g., "3 Reddit users report 4-8 hrs/week on this")
Pain is vague, unquantified, or only emotional
P3 REACHABLE AUDIENCE
Named ≥3 specific venues with URL + ~member count ≥ 100 buyers each (not 100 visitors — 100 buyers). Auto-hunted via Tier-1 sources; if <3 found, fallback to user-supplied Discord/Slack/FB via AskUserQuestion (see P3 community fallback).
Still <3 after search + user prompt, or venues are broad consumer spaces
P4 SCHLEP MOAT
Core value requires dirty work an LLM-in-a-weekend can't replicate: weird API integrations, data labeling, compliance lift, domain ontology, manual intake, human-verified data, relationship moats
Pure LLM wrapper / prompt / standard CRUD
P5 WORKFLOW LOCK-IN
Named a specific lock-in mechanism: accumulating data (history, records, templates), deep integrations (calendar, inbox, git), habit formation (daily ritual), team/social adoption, proprietary workflow artifacts
Use-once-and-done; no compounding artifact
Sum must equal 5. 4/5 → KILLED. 5/5 → QUALIFIED (subject to soft gate below).
Soft gate (downgrade, not kill)
Gate
Pass
Fail
P6 24-HOUR SALE TEST
You can sketch a concrete 60-day path-to-paid: specific channel → specific offer → specific price → realistic % → first $1 inside 60 days from a stranger
Only "build audience first, monetize later" — DOWNGRADE to secondary shortlist
Secondary scores (0-5 each; rank within the 5/5 QUALIFIED set)
Dimension
Notes
Paid-demand strength
($/customer) × (plausible reachable n). Cite the anchor.
Community accessibility
Can you reach them without ads? Posting rules allow builders?
Build feasibility
MVP shippable in ≤2 weeks by a solo dev with the stated skills?
Schlep depth
How ugly is the dirty work? Uglier = better moat.
Lock-in strength
How many weeks of use before switching is painful?
Anti-signal flags (any one → KILLED regardless of 5/5)
Requires VC-scale capital (marketplace liquidity, hardware, field sales)
Regulated (HIPAA / FINRA / ITAR) beyond a weekend of due diligence
Network effects required to deliver value on day one
B2B enterprise with procurement cycles (>$5k ACV with security review)
Depends on future behavior change ("once everyone adopts X...")
Incumbent is free + ad-funded and good enough
Incumbent is a FAANG-owned feature (they'll squash you)
Anti-Patterns (Kill List)
Kill immediately if the pitch contains:
"It would be cool if..." — nobody's paying (P1 fail)
"I wish there was..." — aspiration, not demand (P1 fail)
One-Pager Template (per QUALIFIED niche in shortlist.md)
## {Niche name}**Pain (one-sentence, quantified):** "I hate that I have to {X} every {Y} — it costs me ${Z}/month or {N} hours/week."
*Source: [verbatim-quote URL]***Who feels it (tight ICP):**- Role: {e.g., Shopify store operator}
- Industry: {e.g., DTC apparel}
- Size: {e.g., $100k-1M GMV}
- Geography: {e.g., US + CA}
---
### P1 PROVEN PAYMENT — ≥3 existing paid solutions- {Incumbent A — SaaS}: {price} — [link]
- {Incumbent B — Fiverr/Upwork gig}: {price per job, order count} — [link]
- {Incumbent C — consultant/agency or Excel template}: {price} — [link]
### P2 DOLLAR PAIN — quantified- "${Z}/month lost" or "{N} hours/week wasted" — anchored to: [source]
### P3 REACHABLE AUDIENCE — ≥3 venues with 100+ buyers- {Community 1 URL} — ~{N} members — buyer-density evidence: [link]
- {Community 2 URL} — ~{N} members — [link]
- {Community 3 URL} — ~{N} members — [link]
### P4 SCHLEP MOAT — what's the dirty work?
{Specific dirty work: e.g., "scraping and normalizing 40 weird supplier APIs that each break monthly", or "manually verifying every listing against a trademark database", or "maintaining a domain ontology of 2,000 weird SKUs"}
*Why an LLM-in-a-weekend clone fails:* {reason}
### P5 WORKFLOW LOCK-IN — what accumulates?
{Specific lock-in: e.g., "user's 12-month reconciliation history", "deep Shopify webhook integration", "team-shared templates", "daily morning ritual"}
*Migration cost after 3 months of use:* {concrete description}
### P6 24-HOUR SALE TEST- Channel: {specific post/DM/cold-email channel}
- Offer: {what the stranger gets}
- Price: ${X}
- Path-to-$1 in 60 days? {Yes / No — if No, this niche goes to secondary.md}
---
**Competing bad solutions (with links):**- {Name}: why it's bad — [1-star reviews link]
- {Name}: why it's bad — [link]
**Why indie-fit:**- Buildable in {N} days with {stack}
- No enterprise sales (self-serve ≤${X} ACV)
- No network effects needed for day-1 value
- No regulated workflow
**Kill condition (what disproves this?):**- e.g., "If >60% of 1-star reviews cite pricing not function, buyers are price-sensitive not pain-sensitive."
- e.g., "If target subreddit mods ban all tool promotion, acquisition collapses."
**First 10 customers plan (no ads):**1. {Specific post in {specific community} on day 1}
2. {DM N writers of the source complaint quotes}
3. {Cold email N Upwork job posters with an offer}
4. {...}
Go-to-Market (for #1 pick only, in go-to-market.md)
## {Niche} — 3-Day MVP + 24-Hour Sale Test### 3-day MVP scope (actually 3 days)- Day 1: {core loop — ingest + transform, the schlep part}
- Day 2: {UI shell + auth + Stripe + the one lock-in hook}
- Day 3: {polish + deploy + landing page}
Cut ruthlessly. No dashboards. No teams. No extra integrations.
### Pricing anchor- ${X}/mo or ${X}/job — matches current Fiverr / incumbent spend
- Free tier: none (paying customers are the point)
- First 10: ${X} lifetime deal or 50% off year one (for testimonials)
### 24-Hour Sale Test (Principle 6)**Goal:** First $1 from a stranger within 60 days.
Week 1 (build + pre-sell):
- Day 1-3: ship MVP
- Day 4: post in {specific community} with free-tier + paid upgrade
- Day 5-7: DM {N} people who wrote the source pain quotes
Week 2-4:
- Cold email {N} Upwork job posters who posted this task in last 30 days
- Guest post / AMA in {community}
- Comment (not spam) on {specific Reddit threads} with a free-tool version
Week 5-8:
- SEO page for "{incumbent} alternative"
- Weekly retro: did anyone pay? If no in 60 days → kill and return to shortlist #2
### Kill date
No paying customer by day 60 → archive this niche to `killed.md`, move to shortlist #2.
Quality Gate (before delivery)
Run this checklist. Any fail → do not deliver; fix and re-hunt.
Every P1 claim names ≥3 existing paid solutions with URLs
Every P2 claim has a $ or hour anchor cited, not invented
Every P3 claim names ≥3 specific venues with URL + buyer-count estimate (auto-hunted + any [USER-SUPPLIED] tagged for audit)
Every P4 claim describes dirty work an LLM can't weekend-clone, with a reason
Every P5 claim names a specific lock-in mechanism (data / integration / habit / artifact)
P6 sketch exists — specific channel + offer + price + 60-day plan
At least 2 of the 5 P-signals are anchored in a TIER-1 source (GitHub Issues / App Store / G2 / Trustpilot / Stack Overflow bountied / Upwork budgets). Tier-3-only evidence → niche is KILLED.
No QUALIFIED niche sources only from r/SaaS / r/Entrepreneur / Twitter / LinkedIn / ProductHunt / IH posts (founder echo chambers — see Tier 3)
Reddit evidence comes from vertical pro subs (r/PropertyManagement, r/Bookkeeping, r/Esthetics, r/Veterinary, etc.) — not meta founder subs
No 4/5 niches sneaking through as "promising"
Anti-pattern checklist run — no "wish there was", no LLM-wrapper, no use-once utility, no VC-scale bets
3-day MVP scope is actually 3 days (no "and also integrations with...")
Price anchor is a real number from a real competitor/Fiverr gig
killed.md captures patterns, not just rejections (so next session compounds)
secondary.md holds 5/5 hard + P6-fail niches (downgraded, not discarded)
Voice
Direct. No filler. No "as an AI..." No "it's worth noting..."
Decision-oriented: every section ends in a verdict or a next step.
Evidence-first: quotes with URLs beat summaries.
Small numbers beat big numbers. "50 people on r/X paying $30/mo" beats "$2B TAM."
Kill more than you keep. A good session is often 1 QUALIFIED + 1 DOWNGRADED + 6 KILLED.
