I launched toui.io in early April as a solo side project — a URL shortener I built because I wanted something cleaner and faster than what I was using. The name comes from Taiwanese dialect: "佗位" (tó-uī) means "where to?" which felt right for a service that takes you from A to B.
It worked. People signed up, shortened links, liked the name. But every time someone asked "what makes this different from Bitly, Short.io, Dub, or any of the other shorteners?" — I'd list feature differences and feel a bit dishonest. I knew those were differences, not a positioning.
That gap nagged at me for two months.
The "differentiator" trap
When you build in a mature market, you naturally look at the incumbents and try to find gaps. Better free tier? Cleaner API? No interstitial ads? More generous limits?
But none of those are a reason to exist. They're table stakes with a slightly different arrangement. I could list them all day and still not answer "why should I switch?"
I was reading a book by the founder of Tsutaya (Japan's largest bookstore chain). His argument: in an era of product surplus, the only thing that creates desire is a lifestyle proposition — not features, but a point of view about how the customer should live. I realized my product had features but no point of view.
The moment it clicked
I spend most of my working hours inside Claude Code CLI. It's where I write code, manage infrastructure, draft emails, review PRs — essentially my entire working environment is a terminal with an AI conversation.
One afternoon I wanted to check click stats on a short link. The thought of switching to a browser, logging in, navigating to the dashboard... it felt like friction. I caught myself thinking: why can't I just ask Claude?
That was it.
toui was built around my past habits — visiting a website to manage links. It wasn't woven into how I actually work now, which is mostly inside AI conversations. The product needed to live where I live.
What I did about it
I spent several weeks on three things:
Built an MCP Server (
mcp.toui.io) so the shortener plugs directly into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, and Cline. Say "shorten this link" or "show me stats" and it works without leaving the conversation.Redesigned the entire site to communicate this positioning clearly — not "another URL shortener" but "the short-link service embedded in your AI workflow."
Restructured the API and data model so AI tools can do more than just shorten — they can query analytics, group links into campaigns, and report on performance.
The recursive part: Claude Code built the MCP feature that brings the product back into Claude. The tool built the thing that makes the tool more useful.
What positioning actually gave me
Before: I was staring at competitors' feature lists wondering what to copy next.
After: I know exactly where to invest — deeper AI integration, campaign analysis inside the chat, making every link operation something you'd never need to leave your workflow for. I stopped chasing feature parity with giants and started building toward a thesis.
The product is the same under the hood. Same short links. But it has a direction now.
The takeaway for builders
If you're stuck in the "what's my differentiator" loop, here's what worked for me: look at where you actually spend your hours today, not where your product assumes you do.
My shortener assumed I'd visit a website. I don't visit websites anymore — I talk to AI. Once I saw that gap between the product's assumption and my actual behavior, the positioning wrote itself.
Your product might have the same blind spot. Where do your users actually spend their time — and is your product meeting them there?
toui.io — the short-link service embedded in your AI workflow
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