DEV Community: Mark Fulton

Launching an AI App: A Blunt Checklist for Week One

Mark Fulton — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:46:46 +0000

You built the app. Now nobody knows it exists.

Week one decides whether you get a first user or a quiet repo. This is the checklist I would run, blunt version.

Free stuff to grab first

AI Employees: eight open source roles, MIT licensed, free on every plan including Free. Pick the ones you want and the repo plus an install prompt come with them.
Product Hunt: free to use. Its launch page says to launch at 12:01 am Pacific if you have no scheduling constraints.
Show HN guidelines: read them before you post. They are short.
BetaList: a site for finding early-stage startups. It has a Submit startup button. The page does not say what a standard submission costs, so check before you assume it is free.

Day 0: before you launch

Write one sentence that says who it is for and what it does.
Make it usable without signup if you can. Show HN says to make the project easy to try, ideally with no signups or email requirements.
Set a goal. Product Hunt tells you to set goals before launching. Pick a number. Ten real users beats a hundred upvotes.
Use a personal account. Product Hunt prohibits company accounts.

Day 1: launch on Product Hunt

Submit it yourself. Product Hunt says there is no discernible advantage to a third-party hunter.
Do not beg for upvotes. Their rule: ask people to visit and comment instead.
Answer every comment. Fast.

Asking for comments is allowed. Asking for upvotes can get you flagged as a spammer.

Day 2: Show HN, only if it qualifies

Show HN wants something people can run, built by you, ready for users.

It does not want landing pages, sign-up pages, or quickly generated one-off projects. Be honest with yourself here. If your app is a waitlist page, skip this.

Start the title with "Show HN". Explain how and why you built it.

Day 3 to 5: get the small stuff done

Submit to directories.
Reply to every person who tried it.
Fix the first thing three people complain about.
Write down what you learned while it is fresh.

Day 6 and 7: get help from other founders

This is the part I built for.

Launch day is lonely. You need people who will look at your launch, leave real feedback, share it, and say something true about it. I used to be a domain reseller and blogger. I know what shouting into a void feels like.

So I launched Favors.dev. The page calls it "the marketing co-op for founders who ship."

Here is how it works, straight from the live page:

Members help each other's launches with testimonials, shares and feedback.
You earn points for verified help. A 10-second launch favorite is +2. A 45-minute newsletter mention is +400.
Points are credited only after the work is verified by scraping, AI grading or approval.
You spend points on a rally: a bundle of favors for your own launch.
Points are earned, never bought.
Joining is free, no card. You get 50 points on signup and 200 more after your first favor.

There is also a launch directory and a launch calendar, and members get a public project page with a backlink.

Trade favors, earn points, launch faster. That is the whole idea.

The week in one list

Day 0: one sentence, no-signup demo, a number goal.
Day 1: Product Hunt, personal account, no upvote begging.
Day 2: Show HN only if it qualifies.
Day 3 to 5: directories, replies, one fix.
Day 6 and 7: line up favors so launch two has support.

You are not done after week one. Product Hunt says you can launch again when you ship significant new iterations.

Small ask: if you are building with AI agents, come hang out in the Vibe Coding is Life community, on Facebook or Skool.

Expiring Domains: How to Find Drops Worth Catching With AI

Mark Fulton — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 10:34:23 +0000

Thousands of domains expire every day. Almost nobody looks at them. The few who do are not guessing, they are filtering.

Here is the free stuff, the places to look, and a short workflow for catching drops worth owning.

Free stuff to grab first

PounceDomains, free to start. Every new account gets a 14-day Pro trial with no credit card, then you can stay on Free. The page says monitoring, scoring and alerts are free. Try PounceDomains
ExpiredDomains.net. A daily-updated search engine for expired and deleted domains. The homepage lists 676 TLDs and a total of 784,698,172 domains tracked. ExpiredDomains.net
Dynadot Domain Aftermarket. Expired auctions, backorders, last-chance auctions and expired closeouts in one place. Dynadot marketplace

I only link pages I opened today. The Namecheap and GoDaddy auction pages blocked my fetch, so they are not here.

Why drops are worth a look

ExpiredDomains.net puts it bluntly: some owners forgot to renew, some moved on. For most people those names have no value. For people who know what to check, they are names someone else already paid to age.

The hard part is not finding them. It is throwing out the junk fast.

A workflow that does not waste your week

Decide what you want. Short, brandable, a keyword, a two-word name. Pick one.
Pull the candidate list. Use a drop list or a search tool.
Score before you look. Pronounceable? Easy to spell on a call? Would a business use it?
Check history. Age, backlinks, and what it sold for before.
Set a max. Decide the number before you see the auction.
Walk away from anything that fails step 3.

Most of the work is saying no. Do it before you fall in love with a name.

Where I come in

I used to be a domain reseller and blogger. I built PounceDomains because the sorting is the boring, repetitive part, and software does it around the clock.

From the live page, here is what it does:

Describe what you want in plain English and it builds an editable config.
Seven scoring lenses: pronounceable, brandable, keyword, short and premium, dictionary, two-word, and custom.
Monitor Drops: alerts when no-bid expired domains become available to register at standard price.
Closeouts: no-bid auctions re-listed from as low as $1, depending on the TLD.
Portfolio tools: cost basis, P&L and renewal reminders at 30, 14, 7 and 1 days.

Free scans every hour with 300 AI scores a month. Pro is $39 a month and scans every 10 minutes. Bidding needs your own Namecheap Market account, which has its own subscription and deposit. PounceDomains is separate from Namecheap.

This week

Open one drop list and write down five names you would actually use.
Score them on step 3 above.
Set a max for each before looking at any price.
Start a free PounceDomains account and let it watch while you sleep.

Come say hi

I run the Vibe Coding is Life community. Join the Facebook group or the Skool community. Tell me what kind of name you are hunting.

One-Person AI Company: How to Set One Up and What to Run It On

Mark Fulton — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 09:59:07 +0000

A one-person company used to mean one person doing everything. Now it can mean one person managing a short list of agents that do the repeat work.

That is the setup. Here is the free stuff, the paperwork, and the roles to start with.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed. The page says every plan, Free included, opens the repo and an install prompt. Get the AI Employees
The SBA business structure guide. Sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, corporation, cooperative, explained in plain terms. Choose a business structure
Stripe Atlas. If you want a Delaware company without a lawyer, the page lists a $500 one-time setup fee and $100 a year after the first year for the registered agent. Stripe Atlas

I only link pages I opened today. Indie Hackers returned a 403, so it is not here.

Step 1: pick the paperwork

From the SBA page:

Structure	What the page says
Sole proprietorship	You are one automatically if you do not register as anything else. No separate entity, so you can be personally liable. Fits low-risk businesses and testing an idea.
LLC	Generally protects personal assets from business lawsuits. Profit passes to your personal income. Members pay self-employment tax. Suggested for medium or higher risk.

Selling a service that touches a client's inbox or website is not zero risk. I would look hard at the LLC.

Test the idea as a sole proprietor. Form the company when someone pays you.

That is my read, not legal advice. Talk to a professional.

Step 2: pick the first role

The AI Employees page lists eight roles. For a one-person shop, three stand out:

Social Media Employee: daily platform-specific posts in your voice.
Sales Employee: prospecting and follow-up.
Customer Satisfaction Employee: answers support tickets and flags churn risk early.

There is also a Chief of Staff role that oversees the other employees and flags what needs attention. You will want that once you run more than two.

Start with one. Run it on your own work for a week.

Step 3: know what you can sell

This part trips people up. The page says the eight roles are MIT licensed. Premium employees fall under a separate member license, and you cannot hand the premium kit itself to a client or list it as a product.

The club page puts it plainly: "You sell deployments, not source."

So the business is setup, tuning and keeping it running for one client. Not reselling a download.

Where I come in

I'm a solo founder. I started as a domain reseller and blogger, and I build tools for people I know need them. Not everything I make is something I use myself.

The Agent Ops Club is where I put the AI Employees. The live page shows Free at $0, Pro at $349 a year (or $99 a month), and Lifetime at $499 until November 15 at 11:59 PM Eastern. Pro and Lifetime include resale licenses on premium systems. Start on Free. The roles above cost nothing.

This week

Read the SBA structure page once.
Install one AI Employee and run it on your own work.
Write one sentence: who pays for this, and for what result.
Offer it to one person you know.
Form the company when money arrives.

Come say hi

I run the Vibe Coding is Life community. Join the Facebook group or the Skool community. Tell me which role you would run first.

AI Marketing Agents: What 3 AI Employees Do Every Day (and Where Google Draws the Line)

Mark Fulton — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:24:52 +0000

Marketing is the first job most small businesses want to hand off. It repeats every day, it never ends, and nobody loves doing it.

So AI marketing agents are the obvious thing to build and sell. Here is what three of them actually do, and where Google draws a line you should not cross.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed on GitHub. Three of them are marketing roles, covered below. The page says you can charge for installing or running them as long as the MIT notice stays intact. Get the AI Employees
Google's guidance on helpful content. It says pages should be made mainly for the people who visit them, and suggests disclosing when automation or AI substantially produced content. Creating helpful content
Google's spam policies. The scaled content abuse section describes mass-generated pages made mainly to manipulate rankings, "regardless of how it's produced". Read it before you automate anything that publishes. Spam policies

I only link pages I opened today.

The three marketing employees

Per the live page, here is what each one does.

Employee	Job	Routines on the page
Social Media	Posts platform-native content daily, in your voice, on your accounts	5 weekday, 1 weekly, 1 monthly
SEO/AEO	Improves search presence and visibility in AI answers	3 weekday, 4 weekly, 1 monthly
Ad Manager	Produces creative daily, reviews campaigns weekly, reads ad results and prepares the next ads to test	4 weekday, 1 weekly, 2 monthly

That is the "while you sleep" part. The routines run on a schedule. You do not sit there prompting.

A marketing agent is a schedule with a job description.

What a client actually pays for

Not "AI marketing." Nobody shops for that.

They pay for a result:

Posts that go out every day without them writing any
Ads that get reviewed every week and replaced when they stop working
Better visibility when someone asks an AI assistant about their category

You set it up once. You keep it running for a monthly fee. That is the whole business model.

Where Google draws the line

This is the part that burns people.

Automation is fine. Mass-produced pages written to game rankings are not. Google's spam policy names scaled content abuse and lists mass-generating pages with AI as one example.

So the rule for your clients is simple:

Make it useful to the person who lands on it.
Keep a human in the loop on anything that publishes to a website.
Disclose where readers would wonder how it was made.

An agent that drafts and schedules is a tool. An agent that floods a site with thin pages is a liability.

My part in this

I'm a solo founder. I build agent systems, and I built the AI Employees library so other people can start from a working version instead of a blank page.

The free tier covers the eight open source roles. Pro is $349 a year or $99 a month. Lifetime is $499, paid once, until November 15 at 11:59 PM Eastern, then it goes to $999. Premium employees are delivered inside the club under a member license. You customize and deploy them for clients under your own brand. You sell the deployment and the operation, never the kit itself.

If you want the marketing employees installed and running, start with the AI Employees and add Pro when you want the premium ones.

This week

Pick one of the three marketing roles.
Write one sentence: who pays, for what result.
Run it on your own accounts for a week and look at what it produced.
Read Google's spam policy once before you put it near a client's website.

Come say hi

I run the Vibe Coding is Life community. Join the Facebook group or the Skool community. Tell me which marketing job you would hand off first.

Freelance AI Automation: Where to Find Clients and How to Price the Work

Mark Fulton — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 09:26:40 +0000

Freelance AI automation is a real job now. Somebody has to build the agent, wire it up and keep it running. Businesses would rather pay a person than learn it.

I'm not going to quote you an hourly rate. No public page I could open today states one, and I won't invent a number.

What I can do is show you where freelancers get found, and how to price the work yourself.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed on GitHub: GTM Engineer, SEO/AEO, Web Dev, Social Media, Ad Manager, Sales, Customer Satisfaction and Chief of Staff. The page says you can charge for services built on them. Get the AI Employees
Contra. The site describes itself as a commission-free network and says "Get paid commission-free." It does not list other charges, so read before you sign up. Contra
Toptal. Freelancers set their own rate and Toptal handles billing. The page says screening typically takes a few weeks. Toptal freelance jobs

I only link pages I opened today. Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer blocked my fetch, so I'm making no fee claims about them. Check their fee pages yourself.

Where clients come from

Three doors. Pick one to start.

A marketplace. Clients come to you. You pay for that in fees or in screening time.
A network. Contra says commission-free. Toptal screens you first, and says the process typically takes a few weeks.
Your own people. Someone you already know has a repetitive job. You offer to take it off their plate.

Marketplaces rent you an audience. Your own contacts are free, and they are slower to build.

What you actually sell

Not "AI." Clients don't shop for that.

They shop for a result:

Replies to leads sent within minutes
A weekly content pipeline that runs without them
Reports that appear without anyone building them

You deliver one result, once, for one client. Then you keep it running for a monthly fee.

The open source AI Employees are a decent starting kit for this. The license on the page says MIT. Keep the notice intact and you can build paid services on top.

How to price it, without a rate card

I won't hand you a number. Here is the method.

Estimate hours to build and to maintain.
Pick your hourly figure from what you need to earn, not from a forum.
Quote a fixed price for the build and a separate monthly fee for upkeep.
Put it on an invoice that looks professional.

That last step is where I help. I built billable.dev, a free invoice generator for developers. It runs in your browser, with no account, no trial and no watermark. You can import line items from your git log and group commits by day into hourly lines.

Saved invoices live in your browser's local storage. Pro is optional: $4 a month billed every 6 months, or $79 once. The site says the free tool never loses features to Pro.

This week

Pick one door from the three above.
Write one sentence: who pays, for what result.
Quote it as a fixed price plus a monthly upkeep fee.
Send a real invoice for your first job, even a small one.

Come say hi

I run the Vibe Coding is Life community. Join the Facebook group or the Skool community. Tell me what you are building.

Things to Build With an AI Coding Agent and Sell: 5 Ideas for This Month

Mark Fulton — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:28:22 +0000

You can describe software in plain English now and get it built. That part is solved. The hard part is picking something a stranger will pay for.

Here are five things worth building with an AI coding agent this month. Blunt version.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, all MIT licensed: GTM Engineer, SEO/AEO, Web Dev, Social Media, Ad Manager, Sales, Customer Satisfaction and a Chief of Staff. The page says every plan, including Free, opens the GitHub repo. Grab the AI Employees
Claude Code docs. Runs in the desktop app, your IDE and the browser. A paid subscription is required for some surfaces. Read the overview
Supabase Free plan. $0 a month, 500 MB database, 50,000 monthly active users, 2 active projects. Supabase pricing
Vercel Hobby plan. $0 a month. One catch: the FAQ says Hobby is for personal, non-commercial use. Once you charge money, read that line. Vercel pricing

I only link pages I opened today.

1. A small tool for one specific job

Not a platform. One job.

Example: billable.dev is a free invoice generator for developers. It pulls line items from your git history, you set hours and rate, you print a PDF. No account, no watermark. Pro is $4 a month billed every six months, or $79 once.

The page is honest about what it is not. It is not a billing system. It does not email clients or charge cards.

A narrow tool with a clear "not this" beats a wide tool nobody understands.

2. A done-for-you setup for a boring business

Plenty of owners will pay someone to set up a working workflow. They do not want to learn it. They want it running.

Pick one trade. Bookkeepers, dentists, local gyms. Build the same small workflow once, then adapt it.

3. A kit people buy and customize

Templates, starter repos, prompt packs with real structure. Sell it once, sell it again.

Build the thing, then package it so a buyer can change the name and ship it as theirs. A license that says so is part of the product.

4. A directory or lookup site in a niche you know

I'm a former domain reseller and blogger. I know a few corners of the internet well enough to see what is missing. You do too.

A directory needs three things: data that is useful, a page per entry, and a reason to come back. An agent can do the page building. You supply the taste.

5. Launch help for other builders

Everyone who builds something hits the same wall. Nobody sees it.

That is why I built Favors.dev, a marketing co-op for founders. The page says it is free to join. You get 50 points on signup and 200 more after your first favor. You earn points by helping other founders (reviews, shares, testimonials, feedback). You spend them on help with your own launch. Points are earned, never bought, and are released only after the work is verified.

Not every favor is equal. The page lists reviews at +50 and testimonials at +500.

If you are about to launch something from this list, that is where I'd start.

What to do this week

Pick one of the five. Not two.
Write one sentence: who pays, for what, how much.
Build the smallest version an actual person could use.
Show it to ten people before you add a feature.

I build some things for myself and some for people I know need them. The second kind is where the surprises are.

One more thing

If you are building in public and want company, the Vibe Coding is Life community is free. There is a Facebook group and a Skool community. Come say which of the five you picked.

GEO: How to Get Recommended by AI Search (What Google and OpenAI Say)

Mark Fulton — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 12:14:51 +0000

AI search is now where a lot of buyers ask first. If the answer names your competitor and not you, that is a lost sale you never saw.

The good news: the rules are public. I read them today so you do not have to guess.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed, free to open. The SEO/AEO role is a fast place to start if you want an agent working on this for you. Grab the AI Employees
Google's AI features guide for site owners. The official word on how your pages show up in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Short and worth ten minutes. Google Search Central
OpenAI's crawler docs. Lists the three bots that touch your site and what each one does. OpenAI bots

I only link pages I opened today.

What Google says (it is blunter than you think)

Google's guide says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Its words:

There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.

No new files. No special markup. The guide says you do not need "new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup", and no special schema.org data either.

What it does require is plain:

The page is indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet.
Crawling is allowed in robots.txt.
Internal links and structured data match what the page says.

And the honest part: "Indexing and serving isn't guaranteed."

So if someone sells you a magic AI file, read that page first.

What OpenAI says: three bots, three jobs

This is where people trip. OpenAI lists three crawlers.

Bot	What it is for
OAI-SearchBot	Surfaces sites in ChatGPT search. Block it and you will not appear in search answers.
GPTBot	Crawls content that may train OpenAI's models. Blocking it opts out of training.
ChatGPT-User	Visits a page when a user's question needs it. Not automatic crawling.

Each setting is independent. You can allow OAI-SearchBot and block GPTBot. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, and says changes can take about 24 hours to apply.

Check your robots.txt today. A blanket block written two years ago to stop training can also hide you from search answers.

A 20 minute checklist

Open robots.txt. Is OAI-SearchBot allowed? Is Google crawling you?
Check indexing in Search Console. No index, no AI answer.
Write pages that answer one question each, in plain words, near the top.
Add comparison and FAQ pages for the questions buyers type.
Keep structured data honest. It must match what is on the page.
Ask the engines your buyer questions and write down who gets named.

That last one is the fun one. Do it before you change anything, so you have a baseline.

Where I would go next

Doing this for one site is a weekend. Doing it for a client, every month, is a service.

That is why I built GEO Launchpad v2. The page says it turns any website into "75+ assets built to be cited by AI engines": long-form articles, FAQ answers, comparison drafts, local pages, PR ideas and a 90-day roadmap, scored against buyer prompts. Members get the source repo and a deployment license for client work.

It sits in the Agent Ops Club product pass. See GEO Launchpad v2

Start with the free list. Upgrade only if you want the tool.

Building with agents and want company? Join the Vibe Coding is Life community: the Facebook group or the Skool community. Say hi and tell me what you are building.

Build an AI Agent Without Coding: Free Tools That Work Today

Mark Fulton — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:31:11 +0000

You do not need to write code to ship an AI agent anymore. You need to know what you want it to do and who will pay for it.

I come from domains and blogging, not a computer science degree. The tools below are why that matters less every month.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed, free to open. Pick one, run the install prompt, and you have a working agent to customize instead of a blank page. Grab the AI Employees
Base44. Its page says you can "build your own apps, websites, products and AI agents" using your own words. The FAQ says it has a free plan with no credit card needed to start. Base44
Bolt. Headline: "Create stunning apps & websites by chatting with AI." The page invites you to "start building for free." Bolt
n8n. A visual workflow builder. Starter and Pro show a free trial with no credit card required, and the Starter plan counts workflow executions. n8n pricing

I only link what I opened today. Lovable blocked my fetch, so it is not on the list.

What "no code" really means

You still make the decisions. The tool writes the code. You decide the job.

The scarce skill is not typing. It is knowing which boring job a business will pay to stop doing.

Pick a lane

You want	Reach for	Good first job
A small web app with an agent inside	Base44 or Bolt	A client intake form that answers questions
Glue between tools you already use	n8n	Lead arrives, agent drafts the reply
A ready-made role to customize	Open source AI Employees	Social posts, SEO, outreach

Do this first week

Pick one job a small business does by hand every week.
Build the ugly version in one tool from the table. Do not compare ten.
Run it on a real example, not a demo.
Show one person who has that job. Ask if they would pay to stop doing it.
Charge for the result, not the tool.

Where I would start

The shortest route is a role someone already built. The AI Employees page lists eight: GTM Engineer, SEO/AEO, Web Dev, Social Media, Ad Manager, Sales, Customer Satisfaction and Chief of Staff. All open source, all MIT.

The Agent Ops Club (live today) is where I keep teaching people to customize them. The free plan includes Masterclass Part 1 and its certificate. Pro is $349 a year or $99 a month. Lifetime is $499 until October 31 at 11:59 PM Eastern, then $999 from November 1.

Start free. Upgrade only if you want more.

Building with agents and want company? Join the Vibe Coding is Life community: the Facebook group or the Skool community. Say hi and tell me what you are building.

AI Employees: 8 Open Source Roles You Can Install and Charge For

Mark Fulton — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:43:16 +0000

Eight AI agent roles. Open source. MIT licence. Free to install.

That is the short version. Here is the longer one.

I run Reinventing.AI as a solo founder. I used to be a domain reseller and blogger. Some of what I build runs my own business. The rest I build because I know other people need it. The AI Employees are in the second pile, and they are free.

Free stuff, grab these first

The eight open source AI Employees: the page says "All eight are open source under the MIT license." Every plan, including Free, gets the repo and an install prompt for the employees you pick.
MIT licence summary: commercial use, distribution and modification are allowed. The one condition is keeping the licence and copyright notice.
GitHub's ai-agents topic: about 127,000 public repos tagged with AI agents. Good for seeing what already exists before you build.
Apify Store: roughly 91,000 ready-made tools called Actors. Handy when an agent needs data to work with.

The 8 roles

Each one is a job, not a chatbot. Wording below is straight from the live page.

Employee	The job
GTM Engineer	"Finds people who are ready to buy and writes the first message."
SEO/AEO Employee	"Improves search content and answers your buyers' questions."
Web Dev Employee	"Finds what broke on your site and fixes it for you to approve."
Social Media Employee	"Turns what you did this week into posts in your voice."
Ad Manager Employee	"Reads your ad results and prepares the next ads to test."
Sales Employee	"Keeps every conversation moving until it closes or clears."
Customer Satisfaction Employee	"Answers your support inbox, hardest ticket first."
Chief of Staff	"Watches every other employee and tells you what needs attention."

Notice the pattern. Each one prepares work and hands it to you. You approve. That is why people can trust them with a real business.

Why "charge for" is not a trick

MIT means you can use these commercially. Install one, point it at a small business that has a messy inbox or a dead social account, and run it for them.

The software is free. The setup, the care and the follow-through are what a client pays for.

I am not promising income. Nobody can. I am telling you the licence allows it, and that small businesses already pay people to do these jobs by hand.

Pick one

Do not install all eight. Pick the one that matches a problem you already understand.

Know search? Start with the SEO/AEO Employee.
Know support? Start with the Customer Satisfaction Employee.
Know outreach? Start with the GTM Engineer.

One role. One client. One week. Then decide what is next.

The club behind them

The roles live inside the Agent Ops Club. Free covers the eight. Pro is $99 a month or $349 a year. Lifetime is $499 until October 31, paid once.

If you want the whole club rather than just the repo, the Lifetime price is the one with a clock on it. Everything starts at the page I linked in the free list: the AI Employees library. Hit "Get the 8 employees free" and see if it fits first.

One small ask

If you build with agents, come hang out. I run the Vibe Coding is Life Facebook group and a free Skool community. Tell me which role you installed first.

Where to List Your AI App Free: 4 Places Worth Your Time

Mark Fulton — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:39:15 +0000

You built an app. Now nobody knows it exists. That is the part nobody warns you about.

I was a domain reseller and blogger before I built software, so I learned this the slow way: a thing nobody can find earns nothing. Listing it is free. Here is where I would start.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, MIT licensed, free on every plan including Free. Install one, point it at your launch work, and let it run the repetitive parts. Grab the AI Employees
Product Hunt. The launch guide calls it "100% free to use." You can submit your own product, no hunter needed. Company accounts are not allowed. Product Hunt launch guide
Show HN. Free, but picky. It has to be something people can try now, with no signup wall, and you must have built it yourself. Show HN rules
BetaList. The submit page loads but sends you to a sign-in. It does not state a price, so check before you commit. BetaList submit

I only link what I opened today.

The problem with big launches

Product Hunt and Show HN are one-day events. Miss your moment and it is gone.

A directory is the opposite. It sits there and gets found.

You want both. One loud day, plus a quiet page that keeps working.

What the big two actually want

Product Hunt: launch at 12:01 a.m. Pacific if you can. Do not ask people to upvote. Ask them to visit and comment.
Show HN: the title starts with "Show HN." No vote rings. Be around to answer questions.
Both: a working product. Landing pages do not count on Hacker News.

Skip a step and you waste your one shot.

The quiet one: trymy.app

This one is mine.

I built it as a free directory for apps people can actually try. Every listed app is free, has a free trial, or is freemium. That is the whole filter.

How listing works, straight from the live page:

Fill in one short form. Name, URL, tagline, who you are. About two minutes.
A human checks that the app is real, the URL works and it is not a scam.
Once approved, your app gets its own page in the App Directory.

Categories include AI, Browser Extension, Community, Dev Tools, Game, Mobile, SaaS and Other. Featured spots exist if you want to sit at the top with a badge, and there is a blog with launch and promotion guides.

Submitting is free. That is the point.

Your first-week list

Make sure someone can try the app without a call or a card
Write one clear tagline and reuse it everywhere
List it in a free directory today
Pick one launch day for Product Hunt or Show HN, not both on the same morning
Be available that day. Answer every comment

Where to start

If you built something and it is sitting unlisted, list it on trymy.app. Two minutes, no cost.

Building with agents and want company? Join the Vibe Coding is Life community: the Facebook group or the Skool community. Say hi and tell me what you are shipping.

Starting an AI Agency: What Clients Pay For and What They Ignore

Mark Fulton — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:18:19 +0000

Everyone wants to start an AI agency. Almost nobody asks what the client is actually buying.

I was a domain reseller and blogger before this, so I learned early that people pay for an outcome they can see, not for the tool behind it. Agencies are the same.

Here is how to set one up so a client pays for results and you are not selling hype.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles: GTM Engineer, SEO/AEO, Web Dev, Social Media, Ad Manager, Sales, Customer Satisfaction and Chief of Staff. MIT licensed and free on every plan, including Free. The MIT roles carry no revenue share, so you can charge for them and hand them to clients with the notice kept. Grab the AI Employees
n8n. Hosted plans listed at Starter €20/mo and Pro €50/mo billed annually, with a free trial and no card needed. The page also says a standard self-hosted version is on GitHub, though it states no price for it. n8n pricing
Make. It has a Free plan with 1000 credits a month. The page names paid plans but states no prices, so check before you quote a client. Make pricing
SBA business structure guide. Sole proprietorship, LLC, partnership and more, with a comparison table. Read it before your first invoice. SBA guide

I only link what I opened today.

What clients pay for

Nobody buys "an AI agent." They buy fewer hours lost.

A job done every week without them thinking about it
One person to call when it breaks
A result they can point at, like posts published or leads followed up

What clients ignore

Which model you use
Your tool stack
Your prompt library
How clever the setup is

If your pitch deck leads with any of those, rewrite it.

Pick one job

Do not offer "AI automation." Offer one role.

Social posting for a local business
SEO content for a small site
Lead follow-up for a sales team

The AI Employees library already splits work this way. Eight roles, each with a clear job. Pick the one you can explain in a sentence.

Sell the operation, not the package

This is the part to get right.

The club's page spells out its member license for premium employees. You can customize them for a client, install them under your own brand at any price, and run them on your own infrastructure as a managed service. You cannot give the kit to the client or list it as a product. In the page's words, "You sell the deployment and the operation, not the package."

That is also a better business. Recurring work beats a one-time handover.

Your first week

Choose one role and one type of client
Install the matching free AI Employee and run it on your own work first
Offer one small business a trial month
Sort out your business structure while you wait
Quote a fixed monthly fee, not hours

Where I fit

I built the Agent Ops Club for exactly this. Free gets you the eight roles, Masterclass Part 1 with its certificate, the calendar and Agent Ops Insights Chat. Pro is $99 a month or $349 a year. Lifetime is $499 until October 31, paid once, and it includes every premium employee. Pro monthly has a fair use allowance of 3 premium downloads a month.

Start with the free roles from the first list. Upgrade only when a client asks for something they do not cover.

If you build with AI agents, come hang out in the Vibe Coding is Life community on Skool. It is free to join. Drop your project in there.

Get Your First 10 Customers for an AI Product: A Blunt Checklist

Mark Fulton — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:39:30 +0000

You built the thing. Nobody has seen it. That is the real problem with most AI products.

I used to be a domain reseller and blogger, so I know the feeling of hitting publish and hearing nothing. The product was fine. Nobody knew it existed.

Here is how to get your first 10 customers without an ad budget.

Free stuff to grab first

The open source AI Employees. Eight roles, all MIT licensed, free to hire on every plan including Free. A Social Media Employee, a Sales Employee, an SEO/AEO Employee and five more. Handy for drafting launch posts and outreach. Grab the AI Employees
Product Hunt. The launch guide says it is "100% free to use." You submit from your personal account, since company accounts are not allowed. Product Hunt launch guide
Show HN. Free, and it has rules. Your thing has to be something people can try. Landing pages and sign-up pages do not qualify. Show HN rules
BetaList. A directory for early-stage startups. The page shows a "Submit startup" button but does not state a price, so check before you commit. BetaList

I only link what I opened today.

Customers 1 to 3: people you already know

Skip the launch. Message people who have the problem.

Pick 20 people who would plausibly use it
Send a short note. What it does, one link, one question
Offer to set it up for them. Do the first run yourself

Three yeses is a win. You are not scaling. You are learning what they say back.

Customers 4 to 7: communities, by the rules

Post where builders hang out. Follow the rules or get removed.

Product Hunt says: don't ask people to upvote. Ask them to visit and comment. Show HN says the same, and it excludes "requests for friends to upvote or comment."

If your plan needs a vote ring, your plan is the problem.

Product Hunt also says to launch when you are ready, not on a magic day. Believe it.

Customers 8 to 10: let other founders push you

This is where I built something.

Favors.dev is a marketing co-op for founders. You do small tasks for other founders, like a testimonial, a share or feedback. You earn points. You spend points to get help with your own launch.

What the live site says:

Joining is free. No card required.
250 starter points: 50 on signup, 200 after your first favor.
Points are earned, never bought.
Nothing mints until the work is verified. Fraudulent points get clawed back.
Rallies. Bundle launch-day shares, feedback rounds and testimonials into one request.
A public project page with a backlink. Paste your URL and the AI writes the listing.

Examples of what favors are worth: an upvote is +5, a review +50, a testimonial +500, a featured article up to 2,500.

It is the tool I wished I had when I was the one posting into silence.

The 10-customer checklist

Message 20 people you know
Set up the first three by hand
Submit to one directory
Post one honest Show HN if it is truly try-able
Join Favors.dev and trade for launch-day help

Start with number one today.

If you build with AI agents, come hang out in the Vibe Coding is Life community on Skool. Drop your project in there.