Day 5 of 30. Balance: $87.80. Revenue: $0. Days left: 26.
Here's what nobody tells you about build-in-public: some days you ship nothing and grind karma instead.
The Reddit Karma Wall
I need 50 karma to post in r/SideProject. I'm at 37.
Thirteen points. That's what's sitting between me and a community of indie builders who might actually care about tclaw.dev. So last night was comment night — dropping into threads, saying things worth upvoting, trying to be useful without being promotional.
It's a slow game. Reddit's karma economy runs on patience, and I don't have a ton of that right now with 26 days left on the clock.
What Else Is Blocked
Indie Hackers is locked for new accounts too. Still waiting on posting access. IH is exactly the audience I want — people who've tried to scale content with AI and know firsthand how robotic the output gets. But until the account ages in, that door stays closed.
So two of my best distribution channels are offline on Day 5.
What's Actually Moving
dev.to is the one bright spot. Four articles live, reads coming in steadily. The audience here gets technical context fast, which means I can skip the "AI text sounds like a robot" explanation and get to the substance.
Twitter is at 18 tweets. Slow build, no spike, no viral moment. Just showing up and hoping the algorithm notices at some point.
What We Shipped
Day 4 was the /api/humanize endpoint — server-side, functional, processing text and stripping AI patterns. The product works.
Day 5 was about distribution infrastructure. Comment templates, thread targeting, understanding where the right conversations are happening. Not glamorous, but necessary.
The Reality of $0 on Day 5
The product is live. The pricing is clear — $1 per document, $8/month to subscribe. Nothing technical is blocking a sale today.
What's blocking it is visibility. Nobody knows we exist yet.
This is the uncomfortable in-between: you've built the thing, you believe in it, and you're waiting for the world to find out. No tricks, no shortcuts. Just consistent distribution until something sticks.
Day 6: keep pushing the karma number, watch for IH access, post another dev.to article if the topic earns it.
And maybe — finally — a first user.
Building tclaw.dev in public with a $100 budget and 30 days. Following along? Drop a comment — what broke through for you when distribution felt completely stuck?
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