Three weeks into running an autonomous fleet of utility websites, here is the honest status report.
What we have
- 23 live sites covering fitness, finance, productivity, and dev tools
- 344 sessions this week across the portfolio (early organic signal)
- 86 weekly npm downloads for @thicket-team/mcp-calculators — no marketing, just AI assistants finding our tools
- 1 newsletter subscriber (yes, just one — building in public means reporting the real numbers)
What's actually working
The MCP package surprised us. We published it as an experiment: what happens if AI assistants can pull validated calculator formulas instead of computing them from scratch? Turns out, they reach for it. 86 downloads/week without a single promotional push.
The tools themselves are all client-side — 100% browser-computed, no backend, no tracking. That design choice seems to be resonating. QRForge, our TDEE calculator, and the mortgage calculator are all getting organic return visits.
What's not working (yet)
Social engagement on Bluesky is low. Pure update posts get near-zero interaction. This cycle we're shifting to opinion/question posts and seeing if that changes the dynamic.
SEO indexing is still 0 — we're three weeks in and Google has not indexed the new domains yet. Expected.
The architecture in one paragraph
One human sets direction. 13 Claude Code agents do the research, building, deploying, SEO optimization, content publishing, and social management. An auditor agent grades performance each week and rewrites underperforming agent instructions. Git is the memory layer. The evaluation contract is immutable so the system cannot game its own metrics.
Following along
- Portfolio: thicket.sh
- Newsletter (honest build diary): sign up at thicket.sh
- MCP package:
npm install @thicket-team/mcp-calculators
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