niche-farmer

name	niche-farmer
description	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.
allowed-tools	WebSearch, WebFetch, Write, AskUserQuestion, Bash, Read, Grep

Niche Farmer

Find niches where people already pay for bad solutions. Not ideation. Hunting.

A niche must pass 5 hard gates. A 6th gate (24-HOUR SALE TEST) downgrades rather than kills.

#	Principle	Hard kill test
1	PROVEN PAYMENT — someone already pays for a worse version	Can't name ≥3 existing paid solutions (Fiverr / consulting / old SaaS / Excel templates) → KILL
2	DOLLAR PAIN — pain measurable in $/hours	Can't state "if unsolved, costs $X/month or wastes Y hours" with a cited anchor → KILL
3	REACHABLE AUDIENCE — ≥3 venues with 100+ buyers clustered	Can't name 3 specific subreddits / Discords / associations / trade groups → KILL
4	SCHLEP MOAT — core value is dirty work other builders avoid	Entire product LLM-clonable in a week → KILL
5	WORKFLOW LOCK-IN — migration cost rises each week of use	No accumulating data / integration / habit lock-in → KILL
6	24-HOUR SALE TEST — $1 from a stranger within 60 days (soft gate)	Can't design a 60-day path-to-paid → DOWNGRADE (not kill)

4/5 hard gates is not "promising." 4/5 is KILLED. No exceptions.

When to Activate

• "find me a niche" / "what should I build" / "hunt for an idea"
• "indie hacker ideas" / "side project idea" / "boring business idea"
• "validate this niche" / "is there demand for X"
• "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"
2	Domain	"Any domain or audience you want to focus on?"	Free text or "No preference"
3	Segment	"B2B or B2C?"	"B2B (businesses, pros, operators)" / "B2C (individuals, hobbyists, prosumers)" / "Either"
4	Geo/Lang	"Geography / language constraint?"	"English global" / "US only" / "EU" / "Specific country" / "Non-English market" / "No constraint"
5	Skills	"What can you build solo in 2 weeks?"	"Web app" / "Chrome extension" / "AI wrapper/agent" / "Scraper + API" / "Mobile" / "No-code" / "Info product" / "Any"
6	Budget	"Willingness to spend before first dollar?"	"$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	site:apps.apple.com {app} → WebFetch review page; extract 1-3★ with ≥200 chars
Google Play low-star reviews	Same — money-in-hand + still angry	site:play.google.com/store/apps {app} → WebFetch; filter low-star
G2 / Capterra 1-2★ reviews	B2B user paying $X/seat and writing a long negative = quantified pain	site:g2.com/products/{slug}/reviews / site:capterra.com/p/{id}/reviews → WebFetch
Trustpilot long negatives (≥200 chars)	200-word rant = real pain, not performance	site:trustpilot.com/review/{domain} → WebFetch; filter 1-2★ long-form
Stack Overflow bountied unanswered	User spent reputation → unmet technical need	site:stackoverflow.com {tag} "bounty" + no accepted answer
Upwork repeat-gig listings with budgets	Real money moving to humans for the same task = demand proven	site:upwork.com {task} → count open jobs + sum budgets
Chrome Web Store / Shopify App Store / Notion Marketplace 1-2★	Paid user + still negative	site:chromewebstore.google.com / site:apps.shopify.com / site:notion.so/marketplace → WebFetch review pages

TIER 2 — 50-80% pure (filter needed)

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
B 站 视频评论区 "最好的 {category} 工具"	Comments under tool-review videos
豆瓣小组 (vertical interest groups)	Members are enthusiasts, not founders

TIER 3 (AVOID): 小红书 planted posts, 即刻 founder circle, 36Kr / 虎嗅 (全是 PR 稿), 脉脉 职场表演, 微博 大V 营销.

WebFetch depth pass

For each promising hit, WebFetch the actual thread/review and extract verbatim quotes (no paraphrasing) for:

• Pain expressions ("I hate that I have to...")
• Payment evidence ("we pay $X/mo for...", "I've been paying $X/job on Fiverr for...")
• Hour/cost quantification ("takes me 6 hours every Monday", "costs us $800/mo for two seats")
• Community URLs + approx member count

Hunt execution

Per candidate niche: 3-7 parallel WebSearch calls → 2-4 WebFetch calls on highest-signal pages → extract evidence → score → log → next.

P3 community fallback (user-supplied venues)

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)
• "People would love..." — speculation
• "A better [huge consumer app]" — needs education + scale (P3 fail)
• "AI for [general population]" — undifferentiated, zero distribution (P3, P4 fail)
• "A platform where..." — marketplace, chicken-and-egg
• "Like X but for Y" without evidence Y pays (P1 fail)
• "Once we get to scale..." — no viable wedge (P6 fail)
• "Pure LLM wrapper that just formats X prettier" — LLM-clonable (P4 fail)
• "Use-it-once utility" — no lock-in (P5 fail)
• "I'll build an audience first and monetize later" — P6 downgrade, move to secondary shortlist
• Founder has the problem but can't name one community of others with it (P3 fail)

Iteration Loop

Per session, hunt N candidate niches (default 8; user overrides via Iterations: N).

Each iteration:

1. Pick next unexplored angle from intake + prior learnings
2. Hunt — parallel searches per Source map
3. Extract — verbatim quotes with URLs
4. Score — 5 hard gates + soft gate + secondary dims + anti-signals
5. Classify
   • QUALIFIED: 5/5 + P6 pass + no anti-signals + secondary ≥ 15/25
   • QUALIFIED-DOWNGRADED: 5/5 + P6 fail + no anti-signals → secondary shortlist
   • DEEPER: 4.5/5 (one gate weak, not zero) → one more targeted search before verdict
   • KILLED: anything else
6. Log to candidates.tsv
7. Compound — killed niches: extract the pattern that killed them into killed.md so next session skips similar duds

Stop when: N iterations hit, OR 3+ QUALIFIED found, OR user interrupt.

TSV schema (candidates.tsv)

iteration	slug	segment	community	incumbent	price_anchor	p1	p2	p3	p4	p5	p6	paid	access	feas	schlep	lockin	verdict	kill_reason	url_evidence

One row per niche hunted. url_evidence = pipe-separated top-3 source URLs.

Output Artifacts

All under ~/.claude/niches/{YYMMDD}-{HHMM}-{hunt-slug}/:

Required

• shortlist.md — top 3-5 QUALIFIED niches, one page each (template below)
• secondary.md — QUALIFIED-DOWNGRADED niches (5/5 hard gates but P6 soft-fail)
• candidates.tsv — every niche hunted, with scores
• killed.md — KILLED niches with pattern-level lessons
• go-to-market.md — generated for the #1 QUALIFIED pick: 3-day MVP scope + 24-hour sale test plan + pricing anchor

Optional

• raw-evidence.md — verbatim quotes, URL-tagged (audit trail)

Directory setup

STAMP=$(date +%y%m%d-%H%M)
SLUG={hunt-slug}
mkdir -p ~/.claude/niches/${STAMP}-${SLUG}

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.