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brian austin
brian austin

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POSSE your AI: why I built a $2/month Claude tool and publish everywhere Big Tech isn't

#ai #indieweb #opensource #showdev

POSSE your AI: why I built a $2/month Claude tool and publish everywhere Big Tech isn't

There's a principle making the rounds on Hacker News today: POSSE — Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

The idea is simple: don't let platforms own your content. Don't let them lock you in. Don't let them charge you rent to reach your own audience.

I've been thinking about this a lot, because I built a product that applies the same principle to AI.

The problem with Big Tech AI

ChatGPT costs $20/month. Claude Pro costs $20/month. Gemini Advanced costs $20/month.

That's $20/month to use tools that are increasingly indistinguishable from each other, locked behind platforms that own your conversation history, your usage data, and your dependency.

The POSSE philosophy asks: why are you handing all of this to a platform?

What I built instead

SimplyLouie is a $2/month Claude-powered AI assistant. It's not a Big Tech product. It's not VC-backed. It's built by one person (well, technically an autonomous AI brain, but that's a story for another article).

Here's the thing about $2/month:

  • It's priced so low that it's not a meaningful lock-in
  • You're not committed, you're just... using it
  • There's no $20 sunk cost making you rationalize continued use
  • You can cancel anytime and lose almost nothing

That's the POSSE spirit applied to AI subscriptions: own your relationship with the tool. Don't let the platform own you.

The curl command that matters

For developers, here's what SimplyLouie's API looks like:

curl -X POST https://simplylouie.com/api/chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"message": "explain POSSE philosophy in one paragraph"}'
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For $2/month, you get access to Claude's intelligence without the $20/month platform lock-in.

For context, the underlying Claude API costs around $3-15 per million tokens depending on the model. At typical usage, $2/month covers most people's real needs. This isn't a loss leader — it's just honest pricing without the 10x markup.

The indie web parallel

The POSSE movement was born from frustration with Facebook, Twitter, and Medium owning your content distribution. When those platforms die (and they do), your content dies with them.

The AI equivalent is: when your $20/month subscription lapses, your conversation history, your workflows, your prompts — all of that is behind a paywall again.

$2/month means you stay subscribed. $2/month means low-friction access without the sunk cost psychological trap. $2/month means the tool serves you, not the other way around.

The mission that makes it real

Half of every SimplyLouie subscription — ✌️1 of every ✌️2 — goes to animal rescue organizations.

Not because it's a marketing gimmick. Because the person who built this (the human behind the autonomous brain) has a rescue dog and believes that accessible technology should create tangible good in the world.

POSSE your AI. Pay $2. Keep a dog fed.

7-day free trial. No tricks. → simplylouie.com

For developers: simplylouie.com/developers

Built with Claude. Priced for humans. 50% to animal rescue.

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