DEV Community: Kumar Kislay

Made first pay on Forg.to by building on Forg.to

Kumar Kislay — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:45:37 +0000

I was in the middle of something completely unrelated when it came through.

A payment notification from Polar. Someone had paid for forg.to Pro.

I put my phone down. Picked it up again. Read it twice.

Then I just sat there for a minute.

I want to tell you what the first sale actually feels like, because nobody talks about this part honestly.

It doesn't feel like money. The amount is almost irrelevant. What it feels like is someone you've never met, in a city you've probably never been to, looking at something you built alone at your desk and deciding it was worth something to them.

That's a completely different feeling from anything that came before it.

Every builder knows these feelings. We just don't talk about them much because they're not the content that performs well.

The first sale cuts through all of it.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about building a product: the validation you're looking for isn't the launch, it's not the press mention, it's not even the users.

It's the first person who pays.

Users can come from curiosity. They can come from a friend sharing your link. They can come from a Reddit post that hit on the right day. That's great, but it's not the same thing.

Someone paying means they had a problem, found your solution, evaluated it against everything else they could do with that money, and chose you. A stranger bet on you with their own money. No obligation. No social pressure. Just a decision that your thing was worth it.

That's the proof you were looking for. Everything before it was signal. This is confirmation.

forg.to is a platform for builders who build in public. Developer profiles, project timelines, streak systems, product launches. I built it because I was frustrated that my work was scattered across six different platforms with no center.

We're now a community of 1000+ builders. People grinding every day, shipping products, documenting the process, building streaks. The number still surprises me sometimes.

The first sale happened in the middle of all of that. Quietly. A notification on my phone while I was doing something else.

I still haven't deleted it.

If you're building something right now and you haven't had your first sale yet, I don't have a trick for you. I can't tell you exactly when it happens or why it happens when it does.

But I can tell you it changes something when it does. Not the business, not the metrics, not the roadmap. Something in you. The doubt doesn't disappear completely but it moves. It becomes smaller. The possibility that this is real stops being something you have to convince yourself of and becomes something you know.

Keep building (on forg.to : D) . Ship the thing. Post the update even when nobody's watching.

The notification will come.

forg.to is where builders build in public. If you're working on a side project and you want somewhere to document it, start a streak, and launch it in front of people who actually build things, come find us.

I Built a Platform for 500+ Indie Hackers Because Twitter Kept Burying My Launches

Kumar Kislay — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:42:02 +0000

Three months of sleepless nights. A working product. A waitlist of 200 people. Real user feedback that told me I was onto something.

I was ready to share my journey with the world. Because that’s what indie hackers do, right? We build in public.

So I crafted the perfect tweet:

“Just shipped V1 of my project! Took 3 months of sleepless nights. Check it out 👇”

Hit send. Watched the engagement counter.

31 views.

One reply. Someone promoting their “AI wrapper tool for content creators.”

My launch tweet, the one I’d been imagining for months, got buried under a sea of “Great work bro! 🔥” comments and people begging me to subscribe to their newsletter.

Fine. Twitter’s algorithm is broken. Everyone knows that.

So I tried LinkedIn.

Spent 45 minutes crafting a thoughtful post about the lessons I learned. Posted it during peak hours. Used relevant hashtags.

Zero engagement.

Meanwhile, a “Thought Leader” with “Ex-Meta | Ex-Google | 10x Engineer” in his bio posted something about taking a breath of air and how it taught him about B2B sales. 10,000 likes. 300 comments.

Okay. LinkedIn is for corporate content. Let me try the builders.

That’s when it hit me.

The problem isn’t that I’m bad at marketing. The problem is that these platforms were never designed for people like me.

They’re designed for viral moments, engagement farming, and algorithmic games. Not for showing your actual work.

So I did what any frustrated indie hacker would do.

I built the platform I wished existed.

What Forg.to Actually Is (And Isn’t)

Forg.to is a community platform for indie hackers and builders to share their product journey, track progress, and connect with people who actually get it.

It’s not another Twitter clone trying to fix engagement with better algorithms.

It’s not a Product Hunt clone trying to gamify launches.

It’s something different.

Here’s what makes it work:

Your audience is actual builders. Not engagement farmers. Not bots. Not people who leave “inspiring!” comments and disappear.

Your content doesn’t get buried by someone’s viral tweet about productivity hacks. The feed algorithm is designed to surface quality work, not just viral bait.

Feedback is real. When someone says “your pricing page is broken,” they clicked the link. When they say “this feature slaps,” they tried it.

Your progress is verified and visible. Not self-reported screenshots of Stripe dashboards. Actual data pulled from GitHub, Product Hunt, and other platforms.

The tagline says it all: Launch together. Build in public.

The Five Features That Changed Everything

When I started building Forg.to, I had a simple thesis: indie hackers need a home base. A place where all their scattered activity (GitHub commits, Product Hunt launches, blog posts, YouTube videos) comes together to tell one coherent story.

Here’s what I built:

Verified Builder Profiles (The Resume That Actually Works)

Every builder gets a professional profile on Forg.to. But it’s not just a static page.

It’s an aggregation layer that pulls in your activity from:

GitHub (commits, repos, stars)

Product Hunt (launches, votes)

Dribbble (shots, followers)

YouTube (videos, subscribers)

Medium (articles, readership)

Dev.to (posts, reactions)

LeetCode and Codeforces (for devs who like to flex)

This turns your profile into a resume people can trust.

Not “I ship things.” Here’s the actual proof.

When someone visits your Forg.to profile, they don’t just see what you claim to do. They see your last commit from yesterday. Your Product Hunt launch from last month. Your Medium article from last week.

It’s all there. All verified. All in one place.

The Execution Log (Your Public Accountability System)

Your build log on Forg.to is a searchable, immutable history of what you’ve shipped.

Think of it as a verified timeline that proves your velocity to investors, users, and the community.

Why immutable? Because your embarrassing early posts are proof of growth.

That cringy first attempt at describing your product? That’s in there. The pivot you made after realizing your original idea was wrong? That’s documented.

This isn’t vanity. It’s accountability.

You said you’d ship by Friday? The timeline remembers.

You claimed you’d launch in Q1? The execution log shows if you actually did.

And here’s the beautiful part: watching your own timeline fill up is incredibly motivating. You start to see patterns. Weeks where you shipped a ton. Weeks where you got distracted. The data doesn’t lie.

Traction Verification (Show Me The Numbers)

This is one of the features I’m most proud of.

Forg.to automatically visualizes your growth. From first commit to first revenue.

Not self-reported numbers. Not screenshots you could fake in Photoshop. Verified milestones pulled from connected accounts.

Imagine showing an investor your Forg.to profile and watching their eyebrows go up as they see:

First commit (March 2025) → First beta user (April) → First paying customer (June) → First $1K MRR (September)

All verified. All in one place. All provable.

This solves a real problem for indie hackers: how do you prove traction without sending 15 different screenshots and hoping the investor believes you?

You send them one link. Your Forg.to profile. Done.

Creator Studio (Stop Copy-Pasting Your Updates)

The biggest time sink for indie hackers? Cross-posting.

You write an update for your build log. Then you have to reformat it for Twitter’s character limit. Make it LinkedIn-friendly. Remember to post it. Schedule it. Oh wait, you forgot Bluesky exists too.

Creator Studio fixes this.

Write once. Publish everywhere.

Your update auto-distributes to X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and Bluesky simultaneously. You can even generate content from your raw GitHub commits using AI.

Schedule cross-platform posts in advance. Your build log lives on Forg.to regardless of what platforms you use.

This was the feature that took the longest to build. It’s also probably the most immediately useful.

Because here’s the thing: indie hackers know they should build in public. But the friction of actually doing it across multiple platforms kills momentum.

Creator Studio removes that friction.

Weekly Launchpad (Launches That Actually Get Seen)

Every week, Forg.to runs a new launch batch. Up to 20 products launch together, competing on a leaderboard for 7 days.

During the “Launch Boost” window:

Products compete for visibility in the community

Top 3 earn badges

Real feedback from builders who actually click links

No “upvote my thing on Tuesday pls” energy. This is accountability and momentum, not launch-and-pray.

The Weekly Launchpad solves the Product Hunt problem: your launch gets 24 hours of attention and then disappears into the void.

On Forg.to, you get a full week. And even after the week ends, your product stays on your profile with the complete history showing the journey from Idea to Launch.

The Product Lifecycle System

Products on Forg.to don’t just have “launched” or “not launched.”

They have a 13-stage lifecycle:

Idea → Validating → Building → Alpha → Beta → Launched → Growing → Profitable → Funded

And three terminal states: Paused, Dead, or Acquired.

Each transition has enforced rules. You can’t go from “idea” directly to “launched.” That would be lying.

The “launched” stage has a 7-day Launch Boost lock. During this window, only the system can transition you to “growing.” This prevents gaming the leaderboard.

Why care about this?

Because it creates honest accountability. Your profile shows your current stage. If you’ve been stuck in “building” for 8 months, that’s visible. If you went from “idea” to “profitable” in 6 weeks, that’s visible too.

The data tells your story. And the story has to be true.

What I Learned Building This

The Problem Isn’t the Format. It’s the Audience.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit… they all have “build in public” content. The problem isn’t that the format doesn’t exist.

The problem is who’s reading.

When your tweet gets 31 views and one is from a bot promoting their AI wrapper, the platform has failed you. Even if the format was perfect.

Forg.to solves this by having a curated audience of builders. If you post on Forg.to, the people reading it are the people who might actually use your product, give real feedback, or become paying customers.

Not engagement farmers. Not bots. Not people farming followers.

The Aggregation Layer Is the Moat

Anyone can build a profile page. The value is in connecting GitHub, Product Hunt, Dribbble, YouTube, Medium, and making that data tell a coherent story.

Most indie hackers scatter their activity across 5+ platforms. Forg.to is the place where it all comes together.

That’s defensible. That’s a moat. Because even if someone clones the UI, they still have to build all those integrations.

Accountability Beats Motivation

Every productivity system eventually fails when motivation runs out.

Forg.to’s streak system and execution log are accountability mechanisms, not gamification.

The timeline doesn’t care if you had a hard week. It just shows what you shipped. Or didn’t.

That’s harsh. But it works.

Because when you see your streak about to break, you ship something. Even if it’s small. And small daily progress compounds into big results.

The “Build in Public” Movement Is Real and Underserved

The FAQ on the Forg.to landing page says it better than I can:

“Real talk: Ideas are worth $0. Execution is everything. Your idea for ‘Uber but for dogs’ isn’t special. Your ability to actually build it, market it, and make people care IS special.”

Builders want to share their journey. They want community. They want accountability. They want tools that don’t get in the way.

Forg.to is that tool.

The Brutal Honest Part Nobody Talks About

Building Forg.to wasn’t smooth.

I spent two weeks building a cross-posting feature that nobody used. (Sound familiar? That’s because I wrote about it in another article.)

I had to refactor the entire feed algorithm three times because the first two versions were garbage.

I launched on Product Hunt and got buried on page 2.

I had days where I questioned if anyone even wanted this.

But here’s what kept me going:

Every time a builder signed up and actually filled out their profile. Every time someone posted their first update. Every time I saw a launch get real, thoughtful feedback instead of “great work bro.”

Those moments reminded me why I was building this.

Not to create another viral social network. But to create a home for people who actually ship.

Where Forg.to Is Now

500+ active builders. Hundreds of products launched. Thousands of updates shared.

The codebase is open (well, the web app is. The API and help center have their own repos).

The community is growing. Not explosively. But steadily. Which is exactly what I wanted.

Because explosive growth attracts the wrong people. The engagement farmers. The bot operators. The people who leave “inspiring!” comments and never come back.

Steady growth attracts builders. People who stick around. People who contribute. People who actually care.

The Part Where I Ask You to Try It

If you’re an indie hacker building something, come check out Forg.to.

Create a profile. Add your products. Start your execution log.

Connect your GitHub. See your commits turn into a visual timeline.

Write an update and cross-post it to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Bluesky with one click.

Launch your product and get a full week of community visibility instead of 24 hours.

The platform is live at forg.to.

And if you’re a developer who wants to contribute, the codebase is structured, tested, and has good documentation.

The goal is simple:

Build a place where builders can share what they’re working on, get real feedback, and hold each other accountable.

No bot comments. No algorithmic burial. No “Great work bro! 🔥” energy.

Just builders, shipping.

Because your hard work deserves better than 31 views and a bot reply.

It deserves a community that actually cares.

Find me on X or join the Discord if you want to talk about building in public, product development, or why indie hackers are the best people on the internet.

6 Best LinkedIn Alternatives for Developers in 2026

Kumar Kislay — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:00:05 +0000

LinkedIn has 1 billion users. For developers, it also has a feed full of posts that have nothing to do with building software, an endorsement system that’s been gamed into uselessness, and zero understanding of what a commit graph, a LeetCode streak, or a shipped side project actually means.

If you’re a developer who feels like LinkedIn misrepresents you and you’re not wrong. Here are 6alternatives worth knowing about in 2026, broken down by what each one is actually good for.

forg.to is Best for developers who actively build things

forg.to is the most interesting new platform in this space for developers who build side projects or do build-in-public content.

The core is a profile at forg.to/@yourname that aggregates your work from every platform you already use like GitHub, LeetCode, Codeforces, dev.to, Medium, YouTube, Dribbble. Not a static page. A live profile that updates with your actual activity.

What makes it genuinely different:

Projects have timelines and status indicators, not just screenshots

Creator Studio: write one update, post to X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky simultaneously

GitHub integration: your PRs get converted into draft posts automatically

Launchpad: weekly launch cycle for indie products, focused on builder feedback

This is biggest community of builders right now and early, but the tooling works independently of community size. Best for developers who ship side projects, indie hackers, and anyone tired of maintaining a static portfolio.

→ forg.to

GitHub Profile README

Before any other platform: make sure your GitHub profile has a customized README. It’s free, it ranks for your name on Google faster than almost anything else, and every developer already has one.

Limitations are obvious but it’s purely manual, static, and has no social layer. But as a baseline it’s non-negotiable. Pair it with forg.to for the living, aggregated layer.

Polywork is For career milestones

Polywork is a timeline-based professional network focused on career highlights and collaborations. Less developer-specific than forg, more career-track focused.

It’s grown more slowly in the past year and the activity on the platform is lighter than it was at launch. Still worth having if you want a milestone-based career record, but not particularly alive as a community right now.

If you freelance, Contra is worth a look. It’s a portfolio and marketplace for independent workers, with commission-free payments built in. More useful if you’re actively taking client work than if you’re building products.

Layers.to is For designers who code

Layers sits at the design/development intersection. If your work is visually heavy like UI components, design systems, motion and Layers has a beautiful showcase format. Small and high-quality community, but fairly design-oriented.

Peerlist is For credential verification

Peerlist focuses on professional credibility and skill verification. More LinkedIn-adjacent than the others here and it’s about career history and verified credentials rather than active building. Has a solid community in the Indian developer and startup ecosystem. Worth setting up a profile if credentials and professional history are what you want to showcase.

The honest answer

There’s no single LinkedIn replacement yet. LinkedIn’s network effect in recruiting is real and you can’t opt out of it if you’re job hunting.

But for showing your actual work as a developer and the projects you built, how you built them, what you’re working on right now. forg.to is the most purpose-built tool available in 2026.

Forg is giving away Claude Pro For FREE who builds in public

Kumar Kislay — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 02:30:18 +0000

We're not running a promotion. There's no discount code. No referral trick.

Here's the deal: build on forg.to for 100 days straight and we'll pay for your Claude Pro subscription. Hit 200 days and another month. Every 100 days after that, forever.

That's it.

PS - This article was originally written on https://forg.to/articles/forg-is-giving-away-claude-pro-for-free-who-builds-in-public

Why Claude Pro?

Because developers who've been building in public for 100 days aren't dabbling anymore. They're shipping real things, debugging real problems, moving fast. Claude Pro with its extended context, higher limits, and access to the most powerful models and is the right tool at exactly the right moment.

We want to put it in the hands of the people who'll actually use it.

Who earns it?

Not the person who opened forg.to, set up a profile, and disappeared.

The person who showed up on a Tuesday night with nothing interesting to post and posted anyway. The one who connected their GitHub and kept committing. The one who wrote "not much progress this week but here's what I learned" on day 43 when everything felt slow.

Those people. The ones who grind when it's boring, not just when it's exciting.

100 days of that earns you Claude Pro. Because you earned it.

The streak doesn't require perfection

Every 7 days you earn a Streak Restore token and a free pass to cover a missed day. What they don't exist for: weeks of silence. You either show up or you don't.

What the 100 days actually does to you

This is the part nobody talks about.

The Claude Pro is real and you'll claim it. But something else happens first and somewhere around day 30 or 40, the streak stops being something you maintain and starts being something you don't want to break. The accountability loop kicks in. You start shipping things just to have something worth posting.

Then the posting attracts people. The people give feedback. The feedback improves the product. The product gets users.

By the time you hit day 100 you've already won. The Claude Pro is just forg saying thank you.

Start Building In Public : forg.to.

Full streak reward details: https://help.forg.to/streaks/how-streaks-work

Day 200 gets you another month. Day 300, another. The streak never stops paying.

How We 3x'd Organic Traffic in 14 Days: The Real Claude Code SEO Stack (Not Theory, Actual Production)

Kumar Kislay — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:47:16 +0000

Claude Code just helped us 3x our organic traffic in 14 days.

Not with theory. Not with "here's what you could try."

With a production system that's running right now for a B2B SaaS client.

Everyone's talking about AI for SEO. We built the actual pipeline.

Here's the stack that took our organic impressions from crawl to sprint:

Claude Code — The strategic engine

This isn't about one-off prompts. We connected Claude to our entire content ecosystem with persistent project context. It knows our brand voice, our ICP, our positioning. It writes content briefs, analyzes Google Search Console data, rewrites meta titles, builds internal linking structures. The AI has institutional memory.

Ahrefs — The intelligence layer

Keyword difficulty, search volume, competitor content gaps. This is where we find the "what should we actually write about?" answer. No guessing. Just data on what's winnable.

Sanity CMS — The automation bridge

Connected via API. Content flows from Claude's draft → Sanity staging → published page → auto-indexed in Google. Zero copy-paste. Zero manual uploads. The bottleneck was always the handoff between tools. We eliminated it.

Google Search Console — The feedback system

Weekly automated analysis identifies high-impression, low-CTR pages. One example that shocked us: a page getting 15,000+ US impressions at 0.31% CTR. Same page in India? 15.31% CTR. Identical content. The problem wasn't rankings. It was a terrible US-specific meta title that nobody would have caught manually.

Perplexity — The market context

Competitor positioning, buyer intent analysis, actual questions people ask. Every content brief is grounded in real market behavior, not internal assumptions.

What this system doesn't replace:

Strategic decisions still need humans. Which keywords to prioritize. What angle to take. What NOT to write.

Quality review still happens. Human eyes on every piece before it goes live.

And the best part? The midnight Slack message from the client when they see their impressions spike.

The results so far:

One new page hit position 5 in Google within 7 days of publishing.

Overall impressions 3x'd in under two weeks.

Click-through rates improved across the board once we started fixing titles based on GSC data.

The tools have always existed. The problem was the manual workflow connecting them.

We just automated the boring parts and kept the strategic parts human.

Drop "𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸" if you want the full connector config breakdown article.

Developers Are Invisible, But Forg.to Wants to Change That

Kumar Kislay — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 02:44:31 +0000

The modern developer’s identity is scattered across the web, hidden in fragments that never tell the whole story. LinkedIn reduces you to a job title and a list of corporate buzzwords. GitHub shows your code, but not the late nights, the pivots, or the creative leaps that made it matter. Twitter/X captures your hot takes, but not your process. The result? Builders are invisible—treated as interchangeable units of output, not as architects of ideas.

LinkedIn: The Corporate Mask
LinkedIn is a performance for HR, not for builders. It’s where you go to look “professional,” which too often means “boring.” Your profile lists your tenure, not your talent; your title, not your journey. It’s a platform that rewards compliance, not creativity.

GitHub: The Code Graveyard
GitHub is the gold standard for technical proof, but it’s a ledger, not a story. You can see the final commit, but not the three nights spent wrestling with a race condition, the architectural pivots, or the “aha!” moments that shaped the product. GitHub shows what you built, not why it matters.

The Streak Obsession
Platforms like LeetCode and “100 Days of Code” have turned engineering into a gamified sport. A 300-day streak proves discipline, not impact. It doesn’t show if you can ship a feature users love, debug a production outage, or empathize with your audience. We’ve replaced “Proof of Build” with “Proof of Activity.”

The Fragmented Self
To understand a developer today, you have to:

Check LinkedIn for their job title.

Check GitHub for their code.

Check Twitter/X for their opinions.

Check their (usually abandoned) blog for their deep thoughts.

There’s no single place to “build in public” that bridges code and career, so developers remain invisible—seen as logic units, not creative forces.

Enter Forg.to: The Forge for Builders
Forg.to isn’t just another profile or repo host. It’s a platform designed to synthesize the fragmented pieces of a builder’s life into a cohesive identity. It’s where the messy, iterative process of turning ideas into products becomes the primary unit of value. Forg.to lets you:

Aggregate your work from GitHub, Product Hunt, Dribbble, and more.

Auto-generate content updates from your raw commits and share them across social platforms.

Launch ideas, get unfiltered feedback, and build momentum with real builders.

Show the journey, not just the destination—because “Software Engineer” is a job title, but “Builder” is an identity.

It’s Time to Stop Being Invisible
The industry is obsessed with “Full Stack” developers, but we lack a “Full Stack” identity. Forg.to is the missing layer—a place where the act of building, the struggle, the pivots, and the community engagement are all visible. It’s time to stop pretending LinkedIn represents us. It’s time to build in public, in a place that actually understands what that means.

90 Days of Building forg.to in Public: Real Numbers, Real Mistakes

Kumar Kislay — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:25:29 +0000

Building in public is easy when Stripe pings your phone every hour. It’s a lot harder when your user graph is a flatline.

We launched forg.to 90 days ago. No Product Hunt rocket fuel. No VC war chest. Just a codebase, a Twitter account, and a stubborn belief that builders care about more than just vanity metrics.

This article was originally written on - https://forg.to/articles/90-days-of-building-forgto-in-public-real-numbers-real-mistakes

How We Hit 324 Users (The Slow, Ugly Way)

Everyone chases virality. We got grind.

First 50 Users (Days 1–10): I DM’d every builder I respected on X and not to sell, but to ask: Does this UI even make sense? Fifty signed up out of pity (or curiosity).

The Organic Flywheel (Days 45–90): Users started sharing their streaks and products. No ads, no hacks and just 2–3 new signups a day, every day. Slow, but free.

What Bombed (And Why It Stings)

The “Team Members” Feature: Spent 10 days building a complex invite system for one power user. Usage: 0. We optimized for an edge case before nailing the core.

Cold Emails: Sent 100 “curated” messages to top builders. Conversion: 0%. Founders don’t want another tool but they want a community they already trust.

What Shocked Us

The Streak Effect: Added a simple counter as an afterthought. Now it’s the #1 reason users return. Gamification isn’t a gimmick and it’s a retention engine.

LinkedIn > X: Built for the “X-Corp” crowd, but 40% of our Pro users come from LinkedIn. The “Build in Public” movement is migrating and we almost missed it.

What’s Next?

We’re not profitable yet. Cloudinary and Vercel bills are creeping up. But at 324 users, we have a signal.

Next 90 days: Not 10,000 users but 1,000 true fans. We’re doubling down on the “Explore” feed algorithm.

The forge is hot. Time to keep hammering.

Question for you: What’s the one “ugly” growth tactic that actually worked for you? (I’ll go first: DMing strangers on X.)

What is Forg.to? (And Why I Think It's Going to Be Big for Developers)

Kumar Kislay — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 06:48:17 +0000

If you’re a developer who’s ever felt like your actual work is invisible — you’ll understand this immediately.

Your GitHub shows a green commit graph. Recruiters don’t know what to do with it. Your LeetCode streak exists but lives in a silo. Your side project articles are on dev.to. Your project updates are in a Twitter thread nobody can find anymore. Your portfolio site hasn’t been updated since you “launched” it 14 months ago.

This is the problem forg.to is trying to fix.

So what is forg.to?

Forg is a platform for developers and indie hackers. You get a profile at forg.to/@yourname that pulls your work from everywhere — GitHub, LeetCode, Codeforces, dev.to, Medium, YouTube, Dribbble — into a single, living page.

It’s not a portfolio in the traditional “static page with screenshots” sense. It’s a profile that’s alive. If you pushed code this week, it shows. If your LeetCode streak is at 47 days, it shows. If you wrote an article three days ago, it shows.

The three layers that actually matter

Layer 1: The Profile

forg.to/@yourname is the URL you send to anyone. Recruiters, collaborators, potential users of your side project. Everything is aggregated there — your connected platforms, your projects, your articles, your activity.

What’s different from a regular portfolio: your projects have statuses (in development, launched, paused, sold) and timelines. Every update you post gets attached to the project history. So instead of “I built X” sitting frozen on a page, there’s a full, dated record of how X actually came together.

Layer 2: The Creator Studio

If you do any build-in-public content — or want to start — this is the most immediately useful feature.

Become a Medium member
Write one update. Studio queues it for X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. Done. There’s also a GitHub integration where your pull requests get automatically converted into draft posts, personalized for each platform. You can review before posting or let it auto-publish.

This matters because most developers who want to build in public stop doing it because posting the same thing on four different apps is just tedious. Studio removes that friction.

Layer 3: The Launchpad

Every Monday, builders launch their products on Forg’s Launchpad. It’s a Product Hunt alternative — but intentionally smaller and more focused. The community is 300+ builders right now. That sounds small, but it means feedback is from actual people who build things, not marketing bots chasing upvotes.

Who should actually use this?

Developers building side projects who want to document the process publicly
Indie hackers who want a launch pad with real builder feedback
Anyone who’s been frustrated by the gap between “what LinkedIn shows about me” and “what I actually do”
Developers job hunting who want to send one link that shows everything
What it’s not (yet)

The social layer is early. If you’re looking for a platform to find developer jobs or network in the LinkedIn sense, it’s not that yet. The network is growing but it’s still small.

But here’s the thing: the value isn’t only in the community. The profile tools, the aggregation, and the Creator Studio all work right now regardless of how many other people are on the platform.

Worth checking out: forg.to

You can set up a profile in about 20 minutes. Your forg URL is forg.to/@yourname.

The Ultimate Work Profile & Log for the Modern Developers

Kumar Kislay — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:31:58 +0000

Your resume is a lie.

Not because you’re dishonest, but because a PDF can’t capture what you actually do.

It lists job titles and dates. It mentions “responsibilities.” It claims you’re “proficient in JavaScript” and “experienced with cloud infrastructure.”

But it doesn’t show your GitHub commits at 2 AM. It doesn’t display the SaaS you built and sold. It doesn’t prove you shipped 47 updates last quarter while working full-time.

Welcome to the core problem with professional profiles in 2026: the tools we use to showcase our work haven’t evolved to match how modern builders actually work.

LinkedIn optimizes for corporate climbers. GitHub shows code but not context. Twitter celebrates viral moments but forgets them in 48 hours.

What if there was a platform designed specifically for people who build things? Not just developers. Not just founders. But anyone who creates, ships, and iterates in public.

That’s Forg.to.

The Problem: Proof of Work vs. Proof of Credentials
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about traditional resumes:

They reward credentials over output.

Went to Stanford? That’s worth more than shipping a profitable side project.

Worked at FAANG? That’s more impressive than building an NPM package with 50,000 weekly downloads.

Has “10+ years experience”? That beats launching three products in three years.

But the people actually hiring builders (especially at startups, agencies, and tech-forward companies) don’t care about credentials anymore.

They care about proof of work.

Can you ship? Can you iterate? Can you build in public and handle feedback? Can you take something from idea to launch without a team of 20 people holding your hand?

These questions aren’t answered by a resume. They’re answered by your work history, your developer log, your GitHub activity, your product launches, and your community engagement.

Forg.to is built around this reality.

It’s not a resume platform that awkwardly tacked on a “projects” section. It’s a work profile designed from the ground up to showcase what you’ve built, how you build, and how consistently you ship.

How Forg.to Works: The Complete System
Forg.to is structured around three core pillars: Profile, Distribution, and Momentum.

Let’s break down each one.

Pillar 1: The Professional Profile (Your “Proof of Work”)
Think of your Forg.to profile as a living document that replaces both your resume and your portfolio site.

It has two main tabs: Resume and Work.

The Resume Tab: Verified Career History
This is where you maintain a comprehensive, verified record of your professional background.

Work Experience:
Every role you’ve held, with detailed descriptions, company logos, and dates. But unlike LinkedIn, where anyone can claim they were “Senior VP of Innovation” at a company that doesn’t exist, Forg.to emphasizes verification.

When you add a role, you can request verification from your employer or colleagues. Once verified, your work history displays a verification badge — instant credibility.

Education:
Academic background, fields of study, degrees, and institutions. Again, verification is available to eliminate resume fraud.

Certifications:
Direct links to your official certifications (AWS, Google Cloud, Meta, etc.). Verified credentials build trust faster than self-reported skills.

Skills:
Your core competencies displayed in a clean, scannable format. Not the LinkedIn spam of “endorsed for Microsoft Word by 47 people you’ve never met,” but a curated list of what you actually use.

The Work Tab: Deep Project Integration
This is where Forg.to separates itself from every other professional profile platform.

Instead of just linking to your projects, Forg.to integrates with the tools you already use.

GitHub Integration:
Connect your GitHub account, and Forg.to automatically pulls:

Your repositories (public and selected private ones)
Star counts and fork counts
Primary programming languages
Recent activity and contribution streaks
Your GitHub profile becomes part of your Forg.to identity. When someone views your profile, they see your actual code contributions, not just a claim that you “know Python.”

NPM Integration:
Published packages to the NPM registry? Showcase them directly on your profile with:

Package names and descriptions
Weekly download counts
Versions and dependencies
Links to documentation
If you’ve built tools that other developers use, Forg.to makes that visible immediately.

Chrome Web Store Integration:
Built browser extensions? Display them with:

User counts and ratings
Screenshots and feature lists
Update history
Reviews and feedback
Generic Website Integration (Powered by Puppeteer):
This is where it gets clever.

For projects that don’t fit into GitHub, NPM, or Chrome Web Store (SaaS products, e-commerce stores, content sites, etc.), Forg.to uses intelligent web scraping to pull metadata directly from your landing page.

It extracts:

Open Graph images (the social media preview image)
Favicons and logos
Meta descriptions
Page titles
The result: even your custom projects look polished and professional on your profile, without manual design work.

Pillar 2: Build in Public (Distribution Engine)
Having a great profile is step one. Keeping it updated while building in public is step two.

This is where most builders fail.

They know they should share progress. They know distribution matters. But posting the same update to X, LinkedIn, Threads, and Bluesky separately is a time sink that kills momentum.

Forg.to solves this with the Composer.

The Multi-Platform Composer
Write your update once. Publish it everywhere.

The Composer supports:

X (Twitter)
LinkedIn
Threads
Bluesky
You draft your update in Forg.to’s interface (with markdown support, character count, and preview for each platform). Click publish. Done.

Your update goes live on all four platforms simultaneously.

No copy-pasting. No reformatting. No “oh crap, I forgot to post this on LinkedIn.”

Why This Matters:

Distribution is the hardest part of building in public.

You can ship an amazing feature, but if nobody sees it, it doesn’t matter. You can write a thoughtful reflection on what you learned, but if it only reaches 12 people on one platform, the effort doesn’t compound.

By centralizing distribution, Forg.to ensures that every update you write gets maximum reach with minimum effort.

You spend your time building, not managing social media.

Pillar 3: Gamified Momentum (The Streak System)
Consistency is the hardest part of building in public.

You start strong. Post daily updates for two weeks. Then you skip a day. Then a week. Then you realize you haven’t shared anything in a month.

Forg.to fights this with a Streak System designed to build momentum and reward consistency.

How Streaks Work
Your streak grows every time you contribute to the Forg.to ecosystem:

Share an update on a project
Launch a new product
Give feedback to another builder
Comment on someone’s progress
Engage meaningfully with the community
Each action extends your streak. Skip too many days, and your streak resets.

The Heatmap Visualization
Like GitHub’s contribution graph, Forg.to displays a visual heatmap of your activity.

Green squares for active days. Gray for inactive days.

At a glance, anyone can see your shipping velocity — how consistently you build and share.

This isn’t vanity metrics. It’s a trust signal.

Someone with a 180-day streak who ships updates every week is more credible than someone who launched one project two years ago and went silent.

Unlockable Rewards
High streaks aren’t just for bragging rights. They unlock tangible benefits:

Streak Restores:
Maintain a 30-day streak? You earn a Streak Restore.

If life happens and you miss a day, you can use a Streak Restore to protect your progress. Your streak doesn’t reset.

This keeps the system from feeling punishing while still rewarding consistency.

Super Upvotes:
At 60+ days, you unlock Super Upvotes.

When you upvote another builder’s project or update, a Super Upvote counts double. It gives their work more visibility in the community feed and signals strong endorsement.

This creates a positive feedback loop: the most consistent builders have more influence in supporting other builders.

Pillar 4: Launch Visibility (The Weekly Launch Cycle)
You built something. You’re ready to ship.

Now what?

Most platforms treat launches as just another post. It gets the same algorithmic treatment as everything else. If it doesn’t go viral in the first hour, it disappears.

Forg.to is different.

Every product goes through a Weekly Launch Cycle designed to maximize feedback and engagement.

Launch Boost: 7 Days of Community Visibility
When you mark your project as “Launched,” Forg.to automatically gives it a 7-day boost.

For those 7 days:

Your product appears in the “Recently Launched” section
It gets featured in community feeds
Other builders are prompted to check it out and provide feedback
It stays visible regardless of algorithmic fluctuations
This isn’t paid promotion. It’s a built-in feature for every builder.

Write on Medium
The goal is simple: give every launch a fair shot at gaining traction.

The Badge Exchange: Verification + SEO
Forg.to offers a Verified Badge system, but it’s not like Twitter’s old checkmark that cost $8 and meant nothing.

To get verified on Forg.to, you participate in the Badge Exchange:

Add a Forg.to badge to your product’s website
Forg.to verifies the badge is live
You unlock the Verified Icon on your profile
Your product gets priority indexing via IndexNow
What is IndexNow?
IndexNow is a protocol supported by Microsoft Bing, Yandex, and other search engines that allows websites to notify search engines immediately when content changes.

Instead of waiting for search engine crawlers to discover your site (which can take days or weeks), IndexNow pushes updates instantly.

When you verify your product through the Badge Exchange, Forg.to submits your URL to IndexNow, giving your launch immediate SEO visibility.

The result: Better search rankings, faster discovery, and a verified badge that signals legitimacy.

Why Forg.to Exists: The Philosophy
Most professional platforms optimize for one thing: getting you a job at a big company.

LinkedIn is a recruiting database disguised as a social network. Indeed is a job board. AngelList is a startup job board.

There’s nothing wrong with jobs. But not everyone wants to optimize their profile for recruiters.

Some people want to build in public, ship consistently, and get recognized for what they create.

Forg.to is designed for them.

The Builder’s Dilemma
Here’s the pattern:

You’re working full-time. You have side projects. You’re shipping updates, iterating based on feedback, and learning in public.

But your professional identity is scattered:

Your resume is on LinkedIn (and it’s outdated)
Your code is on GitHub (but nobody finds it).
Your projects are on Product Hunt (but they got buried after launch day)
Your updates are on Twitter (but they disappear in 24 hours)
Your portfolio site exists (but you haven’t updated it in 8 months)
You’re building. You’re shipping. You’re growing.

But nobody sees the full picture.

Forg.to consolidates everything into one place:

Your verified work history. Your active projects. Your GitHub contributions. Your NPM packages. Your Chrome extensions. Your build-in-public updates. Your consistency streak. Your launch announcements.

One profile. One URL. One source of truth.

Who Forg.to Is For
Developers who want to showcase code contributions, not just job titles.

Indie hackers who are building multiple side projects and want a single place to track them all.

Founders who need to manage their social presence while building a company.

Designers who want to display their portfolio alongside their professional timeline.

Product managers who want to show shipped products, not just bullet points on a resume.

Creators who are building in public and want their journey to be more than ephemeral tweets.

Basically: anyone who builds things and wants to be recognized for building things.

How Forg.to Compares to Other Platforms
Let’s be honest about the competitive landscape.

vs LinkedIn
LinkedIn is optimized for corporate careers. It’s great for job hunting at Fortune 500 companies. It’s terrible for showing what you actually build.

Your “experience” section is a list of job titles and vague responsibilities. Your “projects” section is an afterthought with no integrations.

Forg.to inverts this. Projects are the focus. Jobs are context.

vs GitHub
GitHub is amazing for developers, but it only shows code.

It doesn’t capture your design work, your SaaS launches, your Chrome extensions, or your writing. It’s a developer portfolio, not a complete work profile.

Forg.to integrates GitHub as one part of a larger identity.

vs Portfolio Sites
Custom portfolio sites are great when you maintain them. But most don’t.

You build a beautiful Next.js site. Update it for two months. Then it becomes stale because updating it requires deploying code instead of just filling in a form.

Forg.to gives you the flexibility of a portfolio site with the ease of a managed platform.

vs Product Hunt
Product Hunt is for launches. It’s amazing for launch day. Then your product disappears unless it makes it to “Product of the Day.”

Forg.to treats launches as the beginning of a journey, not a one-day event. Your launch gets visibility for 7 days, and the product lives on your profile permanently with a full update history.

vs Twitter/X
Twitter is phenomenal for distribution and building in public. But it’s ephemeral.

Your update from last week is gone. Your launch thread from last month is buried. Your entire journey exists in fragments scattered across thousands of tweets.

Forg.to preserves your journey while still giving you multi-platform distribution.

The Business Model: How Forg.to Makes Money
Unlike LinkedIn (which sells recruiter seats and ads) or other platforms (which charge for premium features), Forg.to’s model is simple:

Free for Builders. Premium for Advanced Features.

The core platform — profile, project integration, basic distribution, streak tracking — is completely free.

Premium features include:

Advanced analytics on profile views and engagement
Custom domains for your profile (yourname.com → your Forg.to profile)
Priority support and early access to new features
Enhanced visibility in community feeds
No ads. No recruiter spam. No paywalled core functionality.

The goal is to build a sustainable platform funded by the people who get the most value from it, while keeping it accessible to everyone.

Getting Started with Forg.to
If you’re sold on the concept, here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Create Your Profile (5 minutes)
Sign up with GitHub, Google, or email. Fill in your basic information.

Step 2: Add Your Work History (10 minutes)
Fill in your Resume tab:

Work experience with company logos
Education and certifications
Core skills
Request verification from past employers or colleagues where applicable.

Step 3: Connect Your Integrations (5 minutes)
Link your:

GitHub account
NPM profile (if applicable)
Chrome Web Store account (if applicable)
Any custom project URLs
Forg.to handles the rest automatically, pulling in project data and keeping it current.

Step 4: Add Your Projects (15 minutes)
For each major project:

Set the current stage (Idea, Building, Launched, etc.)
Write a brief description
Add tags and categories
Upload screenshots or link to live demos
Step 5: Start Building in Public (Ongoing)
Use the Composer to share updates:

Progress on features
Lessons learned
Milestones hit
Problems you’re solving
Publish to all your social platforms at once.

Step 6: Maintain Your Streak
Engage with the community. Give feedback. Share updates. Launch products.

Build momentum. Get recognized.

The Future of Professional Profiles
We’re at an inflection point in how professional identity works.

The old model (credentials, job titles, “years of experience”) is dying.

The new model (proof of work, shipping velocity, public building) is replacing it.

Forg.to is betting on that future.

It’s a platform built for people who create things, ship consistently, and want to be recognized for their output, not their pedigree.

If you’re building something — anything — Forg.to is your home.

Not just a resume. Not just a portfolio. Not just a social profile.

A complete work profile that grows with you as you build, ship, and iterate in public.

Your verified professional identity. Your project history. Your build-in-public journey.

All in one place.

Forg.to is live now. Create your profile at forg.to and start building in public.

How to get your first 100 users (even if you suck at marketing)

Kumar Kislay — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 05:47:39 +0000

You don’t need to be a genius. You just need to be relentless.

Here’s the no-BS way to get your first 100 users:

Launch everywhere. BuildinProcess, Product Hunt, DevHunt, BetaList, Indie Hackers, Dailypings, etc. If it allows you to list your product-LIST IT.
Post on socials like your life depends on it. One post won’t do sh*t. Do it 100 days in a row. Copy what went viral. Tweak. Repeat.
Stalk your competitors. See where they’re listed. Submit your product there. Manually. Or use a tool. Just do it.
AI + SEO = free traffic. Spin up blog posts with ChatGPT. 50 solid ones can move mountains. Get that domain rating to 15+.
Run some damn ads. X, Google, Facebook… even Bing. Optimize it once, then let it run.
Cold DMs / replies. Find your people. Be short. Be real. Be helpful. 1 sentence pitch. No spam.

This is how the internet is won. No secret. Just consistent, boring work. And boom-100 users. Then 1000

Read complete article here.

AI was supposed to take your job.

Kumar Kislay — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 13:16:44 +0000

Instead, you just started working harder.
You adapted. You hustled. You learned the tools.

ChatGPT writes your emails in 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes. Should save you time, right?
So why are you working longer hours than ever?

Welcome to the Jevons Paradox, the most counterintuitive law of efficiency.
In the 1800s, they invented more efficient steam engines. Everyone thought, great, we'll use less coal.
Instead, coal consumption exploded.
Why?
Because efficient engines were so cheap to run, people built way more of them.

Same thing happened with LEDs. They used 90% less electricity than old bulbs.
So what did we do?
We put lights everywhere. Buildings became light sculptures. Cities turned into 24/7 daylight.
We used more electricity on lighting than ever before.

And now, AI.
You used to write one email carefully. Now ChatGPT helps you send 50.
You used to research one topic deeply. Now you ask AI about everything that pops into your head.
AI was supposed to free up your time.

Instead it created infinite busy work.
Efficiency doesn't reduce consumption. It makes consumption so cheap and easy that we consume infinitely more.

The better our tools get, the busier we become.
Weird how progress works, isn't it?

Are you using AI to work less, or are you just doing more work in the same time?

What is “Build In Process”?

Kumar Kislay — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:05:21 +0000

The best alternative to classical LinkedIn.

Introduction

Build In Process is a builder-first platform designed for people who are actively creating things like products/projects, startups, tools, and ideas.

Unlike traditional professional networks that emphasize polished resumes and job titles, Build In Process focuses on work-in-progress.

The core idea is simple:

Most platforms treat products like events.
But building is a process.

And the platform is built entirely around that belief.

What makes Build In Process different?
1. A complete builder profile

Your profile on Build In Process isn’t just a bio.

You can:

Showcase what you’re building

Add projects and products

Share ongoing updates

Connect external work (writing, videos, repositories, etc.)

Maintain a clean public profile with a custom URL

Everything lives in one place, making it easier for visitors to understand what you’re actually working on.

2. Product profiles that evolve over time

Instead of a one-time launch page, every product gets a living profile.

You can:

Post updates as you ship
Share progress, learnings, and changes
Collect feedback on every iteration
Show how your product evolves over time

This is especially useful for early-stage builders where progress matters more than polish.

3. Writing, stories, and updates

The platform includes built-in writing and posting tools so builders can:

Share what they’re learning
Write technical or product stories
Post short updates or long-form posts
Engage with other builders’ work

It feels closer to a builder-focused publishing platform than a traditional social network.

4. Discovery without noise

Build In Process is intentionally designed to reduce noise:

No ads at all
No engagement bait
No vanity-first algorithms

Instead, discovery is centered around:

Active builders
Real updates
Consistent progress

This makes it easier to find people and products worth following.

5. Verification and authenticity

Verification on Build In Process is straightforward and free.

Whether you’re a student, professional, or independent builder, the process is designed to be simple — without paywalls or unnecessary friction.

The focus is on authentic work, not inflated credentials.

Build In Process vs traditional networks

Both have their place.

Traditional platforms are great for:

Job hunting
Corporate networking
Formal professional presence
Build In Process shines when it comes to:
Building in public
Sharing progress honestly
Connecting with other makers
Documenting your journey over time

It’s less about who you are and more about what you’re building.

Join biggest network of founders BuildInProcess.

Final thoughts

If you’re a builder who:

Ships regularly
Likes sharing progress
Wants meaningful feedback
Believes products don’t end on launch day

Then Build In Process is worth checking out.

It’s growing quietly, but intentionally and platforms like this tend to matter more over time.