A few months ago I was trying to prepare for a cloud certification exam.
I went looking for practice questions - good ones. Not just answer lists, but questions that actually trained the reasoning the exam tests. I found some scattered GitHub repos, a few YouTube playlists, sites with outdated question dumps.
Nothing that felt structured. Nothing that explained why an answer was right, not just what it was.
So I started building my own study tool. Mock questions, practice sets, AI-generated explanations. The kind of thing I wished existed.
Six weeks later that became ArchReady - a certification prep platform for AWS, GCP, and PSM1. It's live now.
What it does
- Practice questions across AWS (CCP, SAA, DVA, SAP), GCP ACE, and PSM1
- Explanations for wrong answers - walks through the reasoning, not just the correct option
- AI-powered explanations coming soon Claude (Anthropic)
- Confidence tracking - shows which topics you're weak on
- Free to practice, no signup required. Pro unlocks full history and tracking.
The stack
- Frontend: Next.js 14 (App Router)
- Backend: FastAPI (Python)
- AI: Claude (Anthropic) - explanations launching soon
- Payments: Dodo
- Hosting: Vercel (web) + Railway (API)
Nothing exotic. I kept it boring on purpose - solo founder, 2-5 hrs/week, I can't afford interesting infrastructure problems.
What I actually learned
Ship before it feels ready. I had a list of 12 features I thought were "required for launch." I launched with 4. Nobody noticed the missing 8.
Questions sourced from open-source + AI is good enough to start. Questions come from curated GitHub repos and AI-generated content built around official exam frameworks. That's enough to be useful. Perfection is a later problem.
The hardest part isn't building - it's the first 10 users. The product exists. Getting people to try it is the actual work now.
Where it is today
Live at archready.io. Early stage. Still building.
If you're prepping for AWS, GCP, or PSM1 - try it free, no account needed. Honest feedback is more valuable than anything right now.
And if you've shipped something solo on a tight schedule, I'd genuinely like to hear how you found your first users.
Top comments (2)
I think one of the hardest lessons for builders is realizing that users don’t see the missing features. They see the problem you’re solving. A lot of us spend months polishing things that nobody would have noticed, while the real challenge is exactly what you mentioned: finding the first people who care enough to use it.
Congrats on shipping it.
Thank you , will keep improving and adding features. Appreciate the encouragement.