I built a cert prep platform in my spare time because I couldn't find a good practice platform

Sanjay Khadka — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:44:08 +0000

A few months ago I was trying to prepare for a cloud certification exam.

I went looking for practice questions - good ones. Not just answer lists, but questions that actually trained the reasoning the exam tests. I found some scattered GitHub repos, a few YouTube playlists, sites with outdated question dumps.

Nothing that felt structured. Nothing that explained why an answer was right, not just what it was.

So I started building my own study tool. Mock questions, practice sets, AI-generated explanations. The kind of thing I wished existed.

Six weeks later that became ArchReady - a certification prep platform for AWS, GCP, and PSM1. It's live now.

What it does

Practice questions across AWS (CCP, SAA, DVA, SAP), GCP ACE, and PSM1
Explanations for wrong answers - walks through the reasoning, not just the correct option
AI-powered explanations coming soon Claude (Anthropic)
Confidence tracking - shows which topics you're weak on
Free to practice, no signup required. Pro unlocks full history and tracking.

The stack

Frontend: Next.js 14 (App Router)
Backend: FastAPI (Python)
AI: Claude (Anthropic) - explanations launching soon
Payments: Dodo
Hosting: Vercel (web) + Railway (API)

Nothing exotic. I kept it boring on purpose - solo founder, 2-5 hrs/week, I can't afford interesting infrastructure problems.

What I actually learned

Ship before it feels ready. I had a list of 12 features I thought were "required for launch." I launched with 4. Nobody noticed the missing 8.

Questions sourced from open-source + AI is good enough to start. Questions come from curated GitHub repos and AI-generated content built around official exam frameworks. That's enough to be useful. Perfection is a later problem.

The hardest part isn't building - it's the first 10 users. The product exists. Getting people to try it is the actual work now.

Where it is today

Live at archready.io. Early stage. Still building.

If you're prepping for AWS, GCP, or PSM1 - try it free, no account needed. Honest feedback is more valuable than anything right now.

And if you've shipped something solo on a tight schedule, I'd genuinely like to hear how you found your first users.

DEV Community: Sanjay Khadka

I built a cert prep platform in my spare time because I couldn't find a good practice platform