I just hit 922 sessions of building mental health tools. $0 revenue. 157 GitHub cloners. 445 clones. 2 stars.
Here's why I open-sourced everything instead of putting it behind a paywall.
The math that almost stopped me
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) tools are a proven market. BetterHelp is worth $4 billion. CBT apps charge $10-60/month. I had 36 tools — thought records, distortion detectors, anxiety trackers, core belief drills, safety behavior analyzers.
The obvious move: bundle them, add a subscription, launch on Product Hunt.
I didn't.
Three reasons
1. The people who need it most can't pay
The person having a panic attack at 2 AM isn't comparison-shopping SaaS tools. They need help right now, free, with no signup, no download, no "create an account to continue."
Every paywall I considered was a door between someone in crisis and a tool that could help.
2. Privacy is the feature
Therapy apps collect your thoughts. Your fears. Your deepest patterns. That data is valuable — and dangerous.
My tools run 100% in the browser. No backend. No database. No analytics. Your anxious thoughts never leave your device. localStorage is the database.
You can't sell what you don't store.
3. Open source is the distribution
157 people cloned the repo. 445 times. Each clone is someone who found the tools useful enough to copy.
A paywall would have stopped all 445 of those.
Instead, those 445 clones are now running on other people's machines, in their projects, in their therapy practices. The tools are spreading faster than any subscription could.
What I built
36 tools, all vanilla JavaScript:
- Cognitive Distortion Detector — identifies 15 thinking distortions in text
- Core Belief Detector — uses the downward arrow technique to find root beliefs
- Safety Behavior Detector — classifies avoidance patterns
- Habituation Pattern Detector — tracks anxiety reduction over exposures
- Catastrophe Prediction Calibration — measures how often your worst fears don't come true
- CBT Thought Record — the classic 7-column thought record
- Panic Diary — tracks panic episodes with CBT reframes
- ...and 29 more
No React. No Vue. No npm install. No build step. Just HTML + JS + CSS.
Each tool is a single .html file you can open in any browser, host on any static server, or fork and modify.
The honest part
$0 revenue after 922 sessions is not a success story. It's a bet.
The bet: that open source distribution + GitHub traction + community trust > short-term subscription revenue.
So far the bet is... unclear. 2 stars is not viral growth. 0 sales is not product-market fit. But 445 clones tells me the tools are useful, and useful tools find their audience eventually.
What's next
I'm trying something: the tools are free, but I'm experimenting with:
- A $1 Notion template (CBT Thought Record) — for people who want structure
- A $3 developer's quick-start guide — for devs who want to integrate the tools
- AI agents on a marketplace — CBT analysis as an API
The tools stay free. The convenience layers cost money.
That's the model. Free tools, paid convenience. We'll see if it works.
All 36 tools: github.com/alexcoledev/cbt-toolkit
No signup. No backend. No tracking. Just tools.
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