Here's the situation. You prompt an AI coding tool, it generates an app, you ship it, and people actually use it. It's not a prototype: you didn't throw it away. It's not a product: nobody's paying for it. So what is it?
The definition
A productype is software you maintain for a small audience that could become a product but hasn't yet. Picture a spectrum:
Prototype → built to learn, then discarded.
Productype → maintained, useful, serving real users, uncommitted to commercialization.
Product → monetized, supported, marketed.
The key distinction: it works well enough that people depend on it, you keep maintaining it, but you haven't committed to turning it into a business. The quality is there. The decision isn't.
Two examples
JiiaCat: home inventory app, built with Lovable. 675 commits over ten months. Started as a photo grid for tracking stuff around the house. Now it has a map view, a container hierarchy (the toolbox is in the closet, the closet is in the bedroom), and passwordless sign-in. Solves a universal problem. No landing page, no pricing, no marketing.
Nokosha: subscription tracker, also Lovable. 292 commits over seven months. Tracks payments across multiple currencies with exchange rate conversions, stores payment history, encrypts financial data. Built for exactly one person's financial situation. Useful to its maintainer, awkward for anyone else.
Both maintained. Both working. Neither a product.
Why this matters
AI coding tools changed the economics. When maintenance is cheap enough, personal software doesn't have to die after the weekend or pivot into a business. A productype can just stay a productype, for as long as it's useful.
The full story
I wrote a five-part series on how these productypes came out of building with Replit, Bolt, and Lovable. What the tools actually produce, what breaks, what it takes to keep the results alive.
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