Output of: post i-built-a-tool-to-find-demand-it-has-none
I built a tool to find demand. It has none.
Here are the numbers, flat, no spin.
ThreadLens has 548 commits. 23 releases. The latest, v0.17.0, shipped three days ago. It scouts Reddit, Bluesky, and Google Search, scores conversations for pain signals, and tells you where the real demand is.
It has 0 stars. 0 forks. 0 users I did not personally introduce it to.
I built a tool whose entire job is to find demand, and it has none of its own.
I did try
I want to be honest, because the easy version of this post is "I never marketed it." That is not true.
I DM'd people who looked like they had the problem. I left comments where the topic came up. I put it where I thought the right eyes were.
Nothing landed. No replies, or polite ones that went nowhere. No stars showed up the next morning. The graph stayed at zero.
So I did what felt natural. I went back to building.
building talks back. promoting goes quiet.
That is the whole problem, and it took me a while to see it clearly.
Building gives me a feedback loop I can feel. I write code, it compiles, the feature works, I cut a release. v0.16, v0.17. Every commit is a small, certain, immediate yes. The work talks back to me the same day.
Promoting gives me the opposite loop. I write the message, I send it, and then I wait in silence that might never break. Slow, uncertain, and most of the time it just ignores me.
So of course I drift back to the side that rewards me. Of course v0.17.0 exists. Each commit feels like progress. Every one of them is me choosing the work that will not get me a single user.
I put everything else on rails
Here is the part I am least proud of.
I do not run my life on willpower. I gave that up years ago. My habits sit on rails in Todoist. My water sits on a 300ml cup that runs dry and forces me to stand. My blog sits on a Friday slot. My whole philosophy, the one I keep writing about, is that willpower loses and a system wins. Build the rail, then the right thing happens on its own.
Then there is marketing ThreadLens, which I am running entirely on motivation. I promote it when I feel like it. I send a DM when I remember. I comment when the moment happens to show up in front of me.
That is exactly the approach my very first post says does not work. I diagnosed this in April. I even have a tool for it. I just never pointed the tool at myself.
I know this, and I still haven't done it
Knowing the shape of a problem is not the same as fixing it. I kept telling myself I would promote it properly after the next release. That is the same lie that stalled KeepGoing, the last project I let go quiet, almost word for word.
So writing this is the rail going down. Not a feeling, not a resolution. A system, the same kind I trust everywhere else.
the rule
Promotion goes on rails, exactly like the habits did. A fixed weekly slot in Todoist that is not optional and does not move. A short list of communities decided in advance, so I am never staring at a blank "where do I post" decision. A DM template, so each message costs near-zero friction and I cannot use friction as an excuse.
Not "market more." Market on a schedule I do not get a vote on each week, the way I do not get a vote on whether I drink water or post on Friday.
The number might stay at zero for a while. Promoting still goes quiet, and the rail does not change that. But the rail changes whether I show up when it does. That was always the only part I controlled.
I built a tool to find demand. It turns out the first product that needed a system was me.