Indie dev checkpoint: waking up in the wilderness

From the afternoon of 2026.03.21, when I upgraded Claude, to this morning of 2026.06.13, when I stopped to look back, my indie development journey has somehow lasted almost three months. It’s like driving along the highway, seeing a side road with nice scenery in the distance, and deciding to go take a look.

In these three months:

My first product, Pianology, shipped two major versions

My second product, AllGood, has been live for two weeks

I put together a number of long posts for my Substack

Some posts on RedNote

I……

updated my LinkedIn and applied for a job again

Agents are always good at comforting people. It told me that a deliberate “escape” doesn’t count as running away.

Well, thanks

Below I’ll share those “deliberate” thoughts — some real feelings from the shift from “working in a team” to “working on my own.”

The first feeling: being torn

I want to hang on a bit longer, but I worry that I’m heading the wrong way and drifting further off course, and whether I should cut my losses in time.

Give up (should I?), but I’m not quite willing, afraid of leaving just before dawn breaks.

Right now it feels like walking across an empty wilderness. Whatever I do or say, or don’t do or don’t say, I get almost no response from the outside world. Although, although silence is itself a kind of response. Everyone says build in public, but nobody told me that everyone has a different public, and for many people the public is empty.

Stories of successfully becoming an indie builder get shared widely, which creates a certain bias, making me think that once I build a product and write content, the rest will fall into place. But I overlooked the countless more people who dropped out along the way. The rules of the real world may be far from what I’ve seen, heard or assumed.

Still, this is a good thing: at least I’ve walked into the real world.

The second feeling: being lost

When things don’t go as hoped, I can’t accurately tell where I went wrong.

The product: was the idea behind it not good enough, was the solution poorly handled, or was the promotion lacking?

The content: was the content itself not good enough, is the cold start just slow, are the distribution channels weak, or is the target audience drawn wrong, and so on…

There are many variables leading to the result, and I don’t yet have enough judgment to diagnose myself. Reverse-engineering doesn’t fully work here.

The third feeling: being real

Whether it’s the disappointment of getting no positive feedback or the hesitation of not being able to make up my mind, none of these are good feelings, but they’re all real feelings.

And real feelings are just wonderful

I don’t have to say things I don’t want to say / do things I don’t want to do / pretend to be sure about something I don’t believe at all. Accepting the market’s feedback on the real me gives me the feeling that my feet are on the ground.

The things I used to call a halo created a lot of illusions. Much of it may have been the result of opportunity, the team or coincidence, and may have made me think I was more capable than I am. Now that the market is simply and directly “autopsying” me, it’s actually quite good. I’d still rather know truly what I’m worth, so I know how to adjust, and not live in a dream bubble, because dreams end with waking up.

And learning what I want to learn, letting my interests carry me forward a little, knowing where my time and energy go, taking full responsibility for myself — that feels very grounded.

Below is an honest checkpoint record. I hope it neither runs myself down too pessimistically nor feeds me chicken soup too optimistically.

Where things stand

• Shipped two products: one for overseas markets, one for the Chinese market; one medium-sized, one small
• Put together some long posts on Substack (more text / reflection)
• Published some short and medium posts on RedNote (text / images)

What I’ll give myself credit for

• I’m now fairly familiar with the whole basic process of building a product and the outside tools involved; I should now be able to build small and medium products on my own
• I really have been learning and improving my expertise in AI along the way
• I’m gradually moving from focusing on delivery to thinking more about the whole process

Where I haven’t done well enough

• My ability to anticipate how a product will go isn’t good enough. For example, with the first product I hadn’t worked out how much of it was about learning, or whether it met one person’s need or a group’s (I wrote a separate post about that
• My read on the market wasn’t accurate either. I thought the second product would get decent market feedback, but not at all
• I haven’t yet found where my abilities overlap with market demand, and haven’t built up positive feedback
• I don’t yet know where I went wrong
• Sometimes I feel I have a team, but apart from me, everyone else is a different avatar of AI. What can I rely on and trust them with, and what not; how far can that reliance and trust go — none of that is fully settled
• How to find the balance between keeping and honing myself and chasing market feedback and numbers

What’s next

• On products, I’ll try different forms or fields. If I don’t have enough feel for the consumer market, maybe I should look at the To-B market I know better
• Before building a product, think more about its positioning: learning, experimenting, a specific goal, or something else; then set my own measures and train my ability to anticipate
• On content, keep putting value first for now, and fine-tune the strategy on top of that
• Keep a balance between input and output in my personal routine; learn more, think more, try things selectively
• Control the pace of work, and treat working for myself as a job too
• Doing the right thing > doing the thing right > speed

Let’s see whether good things take time.