The Solo Builder's Direction Filter

AI made execution cheap. Any solo dev can spin up an app in a weekend, ship a landing page in an hour, deploy to production before lunch. The bottleneck shifted. It's not "can I build this?" anymore. It's "should I build this?"

Direction is the only expensive thing left. And most builders skip it entirely because building feels more productive than thinking.

Run every idea through these 3 questions before writing a single line of code.

Question 1: Who is this for? Can you find 10 of them right now?

Not "target market." Not "people who struggle with X." Actual usernames. People on X, Reddit, Discord, Hacker News that you could DM today and say "I'm building this, want to try it?"

If you can't name 10, you're building for a theoretical audience. That's not a startup. That's a hobby with a domain name.

This isn't about validation theater. You don't need a waitlist or a landing page with an email form. You need 10 real humans who have the problem you're solving and are reachable right now.

Question 2: What does "done" look like in 2 weeks?

Not the full vision. Not the roadmap. The smallest shippable version that proves the idea works, built in 14 days or less.

If you can't define it, scope is too big. Cut features until you can.

If the 2-week version doesn't excite you, the idea isn't strong enough. You should be able to look at the stripped-down version and think "yeah, that alone is useful." If you can only get excited about the version that takes 6 months, you're in love with the vision, not the problem.

Question 3: If this works, do you want to maintain it?

Bug reports at 11 PM. Feature requests from users who don't understand your architecture. Support emails. Dependency updates. Server costs. The unsexy middle part that lasts years.

If you just want to build it and move on, be honest about that. Open-source it. Make it a weekend project. Don't pretend it's a product if you're going to ghost it after launch week.

Some people love building. Fewer people love maintaining. Know which one you are before you start.

How to Use This

Run every idea through all 3. If it clears all 3, start immediately. If it fails any, either fix the failure or move on. Don't negotiate with yourself.

Most ideas fail Question 1. That's fine. Better to find out before you've spent 3 weeks building something nobody asked for.