From "I have too many ideas" to "I shipped 3 this quarter" — the tiny app scoring system that changed how I build
Most indie hackers have the opposite problem from corporate devs: we have TOO many ideas, not too few. And picking the wrong one costs weeks or months.
I came across Katie Keith's story recently — 19 apps, $1.8M/year — and the most valuable thing wasn't the revenue number. It was her selection system. She doesn't build everything. She scores.
So I built a toolkit around that exact framework:
📋 Tiny App Scoring Worksheet — 3 weighted criteria (local value, build effort, gate risk), 10-minute scoring
⚡ Micro Utility Tracker — working demo app (~25KB HTML) that shows the methodology in action
✅ Pre-Build Validation Checklist — 7 yes/no gates to confirm before you write a line of code
🎯 Action Planner — define candidate, first build step, and compounding next-app idea
All local. All browser-based. No signup. No cloud. No dependencies.
$19. 30-day refund if it doesn't accelerate your shipping.
Would love feedback from anyone building a portfolio approach. What's your selection system?
Quick follow-up: if scoring ideas led you to building, the data entry side can be a time sink too. I just shipped CSV Form Autofill Pro Pack — same local, no-signup approach — fills web forms from a CSV in one click. petescribe5.gumroad.com/l/rgngdk
The Katie Keith framing is underrated. Most indie hacker advice is about how to build faster. Her story is really about how to pick better — and those are completely different skills.
The three-criteria scoring approach (local value, build effort, gate risk) is interesting because it forces the question early: "Is there a structural reason this won't work?" Most people only hit gate risk after they've already spent 6 weeks building.
One thing I'd add to any scoring system: a "who would tell 3 people about this?" check. Not just does the idea have demand, but does it have word-of-mouth structure built in. Viral coefficient at the idea stage is easier to score than it sounds.
Really sharp point — the gap between "can build this" and "would someone actually tell a friend about this" is where most ideas quietly die. You're right that it's easier to score upfront than most people think: just ask whether the value prop fits in one sentence someone would say to a colleague. We're actually baking this as a fourth criterion into the next version of the toolkit because of exactly this insight. What does your current scoring process look like — do you run ideas through a system or just gut feel?