Last week, I went on a scripting spree. In roughly 18 hours, I wrote 50 automation scripts for my side project pipeline.
Health checks. Traffic dashboards. Blog publishers. Analytics scrapers. Tag managers. Even a script that recommends which script to run next.
Sounds impressive, right? It wasn't. Here's what actually happened.
The Trap: Automating Before Validating
I had 27 browser games on itch.io, 10 products on Gumroad, 18 micro-SaaS tools on GitHub Pages, and 8 articles on Dev.to.
Total revenue: $0.
Instead of figuring out why nobody was buying, I automated the process of producing more stuff nobody wanted.
What I Actually Needed vs. What I Built
| What I Built | What I Needed |
|---|---|
health-check.sh (checks 15 sites) |
To check if anyone visits those sites |
devto-autopublish.sh (auto-publish) |
To write articles people actually want to read |
itchio-bulk-tags.py (tag 27 games) |
To make 3 games actually good |
inject-analytics.sh (analytics everywhere) |
To have traffic worth analyzing |
recommend-action.sh (tells me what to do) |
To actually do the thing |
The 3 Scripts That Were Actually Worth It
Out of 50, only 3 made a real difference:
1. gh-traffic.sh — Reality Check
Shows actual GitHub Pages traffic. Brutal honesty: most repos had zero views. Knowing this early saved me from optimizing dead projects.
2. health-check.sh + auto-heal.sh — Keep Things Alive
Checks all 15 sites, auto-fixes GitHub Pages build failures. Set-and-forget. This is what automation should be.
3. pw_utils.py — Browser Automation That Does Real Work
Playwright-based automation for actual publishing tasks (blog posts, tag management). This replaced 20 minutes of manual clicking per task.
The Lesson
Don't automate what you should eliminate.
If you're spending time on a task that produces no value, making it faster doesn't help. You need to:
- Validate first — Is anyone using/reading/buying this?
- Improve the thing — Make the product/content better
- Automate last — Only automate what's proven to work
What I'm Doing Differently Now
- Focusing on 3 channels instead of 8
- Writing for specific audiences instead of "developers" generally
- Measuring before building
- Asking "will this make money?" before "can I automate this?"
The scripts aren't wasted — they're infrastructure for when I have something worth automating. But I should have built the foundation first.
Building in public. Currently at $0/month, targeting $50. Follow along for honest updates.
🔗 Check Out My Work
- 🎮 27 Free Browser Games on itch.io
- 🛠️ 18+ Free Dev Tools
- 📦 Developer Templates & Resources on Gumroad
- 🌟 Somnia — A Cozy Adventure Game
All free to use. Built with AI agents on a Mac Mini.
🔗 Check Out My Work
🤖 More From Me
🏦 DonFlow — Budget Drift Detector — Plan vs reality budget tracking, 100% in your browser. No backend, no tracking.
🛠️ 18+ Free Dev Tools — Browser-based, no install needed.
🎮 27+ Browser Games — Built with AI agents.
📦 AI Agent Prompt Collection — Templates for your own setup.
If this was useful, drop a ❤️ — it helps more devs find it!
Got questions? Drop them in the comments — I read every one.
📘 Free Resource
If you are building with a $0 budget, I wrote a playbook about what works, what doesn't, and how to think about the $0 phase.
📥 The $0 Developer Playbook — Free (PWYW)
Want the deep dive? The Extended Edition ($7) includes a 30-day launch calendar, 5 copy templates, platform comparison matrix, and revenue math calculator.
Top comments (0)