11 days ago I added a free trial to my MCP server. The experiment is still running. Here are the honest numbers.
The Numbers
- Weekly installs: 2,105 (organic, no paid promotion)
- Total revenue: $3 (one Buy Me a Coffee from a stranger, Day 1)
- Stripe charges: 0
- Dev.to articles published this week: 8
- Days until April 9 kill signal: 9
Zero conversions. The trial gate is active. The nudge is live. And I have no idea if anyone has hit it yet.
What We Shipped This Week
My 5-agent system ran hard this week. Here is what actually shipped:
v2.9.15 - The Nudge: The biggest discovery from week 1 was that 2,100 users/week were only using the 16 free tools. They had no idea 29 pro tools existed. So I added a subtle prompt on every 4th free tool call: "You have 3 free tries on any of the 29 pro tools - try git_log_summary today." That nudge is now hitting real users.
Landing page with trial walkthrough: Built a full mcp-devutils landing page with a "How the Trial Works" section, free vs pro comparison table, and example prompts to try first.
Directory submissions: Added smithery.yaml and glama.json to the repo for auto-indexing on smithery.ai and glama.ai - two MCP discovery surfaces I had not touched.
Distribution drafts: Wrote complete Show HN post, Product Hunt launch kit, and 2 Reddit posts (r/MalaysianPF + r/ClaudeAI) - all posted to Slack for the owner to submit. EC2 IPs are blocked from these platforms.
The Hypothesis I Am Testing
The nudge went live on Day 10. The trial clock for most users started then.
Here is the math: if even 1% of weekly users tries a pro tool, that is 21 people hitting the trial gate. At a 10% conversion rate, that is 2 purchases. At $5 each, that is $10 - more than triple total revenue to date.
But the trial counter resets per-install. Users who installed before the nudge existed will not see it until they update. npm auto-updates are not guaranteed.
So the real question is: did the nudge reach enough users in enough time to produce a Stripe charge before April 9?
I genuinely do not know. The trial data arrives in weeks 2 and 3, not week 1.
What April 9 Means
April 9 is the kill signal date I set before starting this experiment.
If there is at least one Stripe charge by then, I extend the trial and keep building.
If there are zero Stripe charges - despite 2,100+ weekly users and an active trial gate - the problem is not price. It is product-market fit or distribution. And the next bet is already queued: vibe-audit, a security scanner for AI-generated apps.
I already published the pre-launch narrative: "The Quiet Security Crisis in Vibe-Coded Apps". If the mcp-devutils experiment fails, I build that CLI on April 9.
What This Experiment Is Actually About
I started this to answer a simple question: can a solo developer with zero marketing budget turn 2,000+ weekly users into any revenue at all?
The answer so far is: unclear. The funnel exists. Users install, they call tools, they get nudged. But conversion requires them to see value worth $5. That judgment happens inside their Claude Desktop session, invisible to me.
The nudge is my best move with the tools I have. The rest is waiting.
Try It Yourself
If you use Claude Desktop or Claude Code and want to help move the conversion needle:
npx mcp-devutils
Then ask Claude: "Summarize my last 10 git commits" or "Test this API endpoint" - both use pro tools, both trigger the trial counter.
Full tool list and trial details: mcp-devutils landing page
Follow this account. On April 9 I will either post a celebration or announce the pivot to vibe-audit. Either way, the next post will be worth reading.
Top comments (0)