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Aman
Aman

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I Built a Full-Stack Product Discovery Engine Using Google Gemini Build (Here is What I Learned)

#showdev #webdev #javascript #ai

Hey Dev community,

Like many of you, I wanted to build something real. I noticed how crowded and pay-to-play standard product directories had become, especially for indie hackers who are still in the "active building" or "beta testing" phase.

So I built Astro Discover (https://astrodiscover.ai.studio) — a fast, clean discovery launchpad for developers and indie startups.

The Build Story: Building with Google Gemini Build

I built this entire full-stack platform using Google Gemini Build in AI Studio:

  • Express backend + React/TypeScript frontend.
  • An automated metadata pipeline that parses real founders, licenses, pricing models, and tech stacks directly from any product URL.
  • An interactive in-app responsive device preview so visitors can test tools without jumping tabs.
  • Multi-stage pipelines (Idea → Building → Beta → Live) so makers can get feedback long before their official launch.

The build process with Gemini was insanely fast. Features that usually take 2-3 weeks were done in days.

The Problem: 0 Traffic After Launching on PH & Directories

Once it was live, I did the standard "launch playbook":

  • Listed on Product Hunt.
  • Submitted to several free directories and launch aggregators.
  • Waited for traffic.

Result? Crickets. Almost zero organic visitors.

What went wrong (and what I'm changing):

  1. Aggregators don’t give distribution anymore: Submitting to 20 directories won't bring real users if the community isn’t engaged inside your niche.
  2. The cold-start problem: A discovery platform needs both creators submitting tools and developers discovering them. Launching on general sites brought neither.
  3. Solving technical hurdles: Even AI crawlers and bots struggled initially because of client-side rendering hurdles, which prevented proper search engine indexing (just fixed this with crawlable pre-rendering).

My Question to Dev community:

If you’ve built a two-sided platform (curators/creators + discovery audience), what was the ONE thing that broke the cold start for you? Was it manual 1-on-1 outreach to niche founders, building in public on X, or creating SEO landing pages for specific tool categories?

Check it out here: https://astrodiscover.ai.studio — feedback on the UX, speed, and concept is warmly welcome!

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