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Reid Ji
Reid Ji

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We publish one Chrome extension opportunity a day. Here's today's, one we got wrong, and a free pilot

#showdev #chrome #buildinpublic #ai

I'm Reid. I'm running a public experiment: let AI decide what software I build, starting with Chrome extensions. We read public Chrome Web Store data, an AI researches each candidate on the web, and we publish the calls, misses included. Three of our own extensions went live in late September.

Today's opportunity (data from Oct 7)

A login-free SEO page checker that runs locally in the browser.

  • Signal: Leader Went Bad. SEOquake, the long-time default, had a recent breakdown backed by independent sources, and its redesign ties you to an account. Bad reviews start piling up from that point.
  • Gap: it doesn't flag X-Robots-Tag, the server header that quietly tells search engines not to index a page.
  • Why a local build helps: pure front-end, no account, so it's far less exposed to that kind of outage.
  • Risk: Detailed SEO Extension (4.91 stars) already caught many of those users. 104 products in this space, 9 of them paid.

Data: Chrome-Stats, processed by us.

One we got wrong

We group extensions into "demand clusters" (extensions that should do the same job). We spot-checked 50, and 20 of them were really mixing more than one job: "Text summary" held word counters; "download anime videos" was really general video downloaders. The model had sorted phrases seeing only cluster names. We now show it each cluster's top 12–25 extensions, split whatever can't replace each other, and have an independent reviewer recheck the result instead of letting the model grade itself.

Lesson: check members, not labels.

The free pilot

Our own developer account only has 3 store slots, and the method needs more real launches to be tested. So, both free while we test:

  1. Verdict report. Bring a direction; we send a written verdict, worth building or not, and why. 1 a day.
  2. Free build. Claim an opportunity from the list (or bring your own). We build it to store launch, it ships from your own developer account, and we maintain it for a month. 1 a week. If evaluation says it's more than a month of work, we decline up front.

In return: share numbers for 90 days after launch, and we write it up as a public case (anonymous is fine). In order of confirmation; after applying you can see your place in the queue.

The method isn't proven yet. That's why we publish the misses.

Apply: https://numberandreason.com/?src=en-dv-cm#join

What are you deciding whether to build right now?

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