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AI Tool Hunter

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I Built a Fully Automated AI Tool Review Blog That Posts to 4 Platforms Daily — Here's the Ugly Truth After 3 Months

#ai #automation #python #buildinpublic

I'm a Japanese guy who couldn't read English 3 months ago.

Today I run an automated blog that finds AI tools on Product Hunt, writes full reviews using Claude API, generates scorecard images, and publishes to WordPress, dev.to, and X — every single day at 9PM JST — without me touching a keyboard.

Here's exactly how I built it, what it costs, and what nobody tells you about this kind of project.

The Idea

I wanted passive USD income. I live in Japan. My English reading ability is basically zero without AI assistance.

So I thought: what if AI does everything? Find the tools, write the reviews, post the content. I just approve or reject from Discord.

Sounds insane. It mostly works.

The Stack

  • VPS: Contabo Windows VPS ($17/month)
  • Language: Python 3.11
  • AI: Claude API (claude-opus-4-5 for articles, claude-haiku for secondary tasks)
  • Hosting: Hostinger WordPress ($28/month)
  • Automation: Windows Task Scheduler + Discord Bot for human approval

Total fixed cost: $65/month

How It Actually Works

Every day at 9PM, this happens automatically:

1. Fetch top AI tools from Product Hunt GraphQL API
2. Skip already-reviewed tools (used_tools.json)
3. Scrape the tool's official website with BeautifulSoup
4. Grab real user comments from Product Hunt
5. Take a screenshot via ScreenshotOne API
6. Send everything to Claude API → full HTML review generated
7. Extract 4-axis scorecard scores from the HTML
8. Generate scorecard image with Pillow (1200x630px)
9. Convert Mermaid diagram to PNG via mermaid.ink
10. Save as WordPress draft
11. Generate dev.to markdown + 3 X tweets in one API call
12. Send Discord notification with Publish/Skip buttons
13. I press Publish (or it auto-publishes after 12 hours)
14. WordPress goes live
15. dev.to posts 5-15 minutes later
16. X thread posts 3-10 minutes after that
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One Python script. One Task Scheduler entry. Zero daily manual work except pressing a Discord button.

The 4-Axis Scorecard

Every review scores the tool on:

  • Innovation /10 — Is this actually new?
  • Solopreneur ROI /10 — Worth it for a solo operator?
  • No-Wrapper Score /10 — Is this just ChatGPT with a UI?
  • Wallet Test /10 — Does the pricing make sense?

This is the core differentiation. Most AI tool blogs just say "it's great!" We say "this is a $29/month wrapper around GPT-4 and here's why that matters."

Real Costs vs Real Revenue

Monthly costs:
| Item | Cost |
|------|------|
| Contabo VPS | $17 |
| Anthropic API | ~$20 |
| Hostinger (server + domain) | ~$28 |
| Total | ~$65 |

Monthly revenue after 3 months: ~$0

I'm in Google's sandbox period. New domains typically take 3-6 months before Google ranks them for anything. I knew this going in.

Current affiliate setup:

  • NordVPN: $40-100/conversion, auto-inserted in every article
  • Hostinger: pending approval

Traffic is almost entirely from X right now. Small but growing.

The Failures Nobody Talks About

Failure 1: Japanese characters in Python on Windows
My VPS runs Windows with cp1252 encoding. Any Japanese string in the Python code = instant crash. Took me a week to figure out why random errors kept appearing.

Fix: zero Japanese strings in any Python file. Everything goes through config files.

Failure 2: PowerShell heredoc destroying files
I kept editing Python files through PowerShell heredoc. It was adding invisible BOM characters that broke everything.

Fix: never edit Python files through PowerShell. Always generate a fresh .py file and overwrite.

Failure 3: Discord bot firing twice
The publish function was triggering twice — once from the button click, once from an event. Every article was being posted to dev.to and X twice.

Fix: publish_fired boolean flag. Simple but took 3 days to find.

Failure 4: Task Scheduler running scheduler.py instead of hunter.py directly
I had a scheduler.py that used the schedule library to run hunter.py at 9PM. The problem: if the VPS restarted after 9PM, scheduler.py would start but skip today's job entirely.

Fix: Task Scheduler calls hunter.py directly at 21:00 daily. No middleware.

What I'd Do Differently

  1. Start with Windows VPS constraints in mind — encoding issues on Windows are real and painful
  2. Build the Discord approval flow first — having a human checkpoint saved me from dozens of bad articles going live
  3. Don't automate X until the article quality is stable — I posted embarrassing content during debugging

Is This Worth Building?

Honest answer: if you want money fast, no.

If you want a system that compounds over time with minimal daily input, yes.

The blog has 18+ published reviews. Every one is indexed. When the sandbox period ends, that's 18+ articles competing for traffic simultaneously. That's the bet.

The automation cost me about 2 months of evenings to build. Now it runs itself.

What's Next

  • Hostinger affiliate approval → auto-insert alongside NordVPN
  • Traffic reporting via GA4 every week
  • If traffic grows: add video summaries via Runway API

If you're building something similar or want to know more about any specific part of this system, drop a comment. Happy to share the actual code for specific components.

The full blog is at ai-tool-hunter.com if you want to see what the output looks like.

Built by a Japanese solopreneur using Claude API, Python, and stubbornness.

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