I almost fell into the trap.
A user told me: “Writing a North Star goal feels hard.”
And my first reaction? “No problem, I’ll slap in an AI button and it’ll magically write one for them.” ✨
Spoiler: it didn’t work. The AI goals were fluffy, generic, and sometimes completely wrong. It looked shiny on the surface, but it didn’t actually solve the user’s problem. In fact, it made things worse.
The temptation is real
AI is like glitter right now. Sprinkle a bit, and suddenly your product feels trendy. “Ooooh, it has AI!”
But here’s the catch: if it doesn’t reduce friction, save real time, or give users genuine clarity—it’s just noise.
When I forced AI into my product, it created a false sense of “magic” instead of addressing the real struggle: blank-page paralysis.
The boring solution that worked
Instead of giving users an AI-generated goal, I stripped it down:
One metric.
One target.
That’s it.
“User signups → 100.”
“MRR → $50 this loop.”
Not fancy. Not “intelligent.” Just usable.
The lesson
Every time I get the itch to bolt on AI just to impress people, I remind myself:
AI should be the assistant, never the boss.
Features exist to help users move forward, not to pad a product demo.
Simple > Cool. Always.
Curious about your take
Have you ever been tempted (or pressured) to throw AI into your product when a simpler solution was sitting right there?
👉 I’m building Indie10k to help indie devs reach $10k MRR without drowning in overhead. If you’ve got thoughts on when AI is actually useful, I’d love to hear them.
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