From idea to live product in 8 weeks — launching DistillNote, an AI knowledge vault
Hey IH community,
I just shipped DistillNote and wanted to share the journey.
The pitch: An AI-powered knowledge vault. Paste a YouTube URL, get structured notes (summary, chapters, takeaways, action items) in under 60 seconds. Everything is saved to a searchable vault with semantic search and Q&A.
Why I built it: I was tired of consuming great content and forgetting it. Existing tools stop at summaries. I wanted a system that compounds — where every video you process makes the library more valuable.
The build (8 weeks):
- Week 1: Next.js + DB schema + infrastructure
- Weeks 2-4: Auth, ingestion pipeline, vault CRUD
- Weeks 5-6: Search, exports, Stripe billing
- Weeks 7-8: Privacy controls, polish, deploy
- Post-launch: Semantic search (pgvector), Vault Q&A, design system unification
Monetization: Credits-based model tied to processing minutes. Free tier (30 min/week), Plus (€7.99/mo), Pro (€59/yr). Keeps margins healthy and aligns cost with value.
Early metrics I'm watching: Time-to-first-summary (target <60s), activation (3+ items in 7 days), W1 retention, free-to-paid conversion.
Happy to answer any questions about the tech, the business model, or the build process.
This is awesome! Good luck with the launch! It's always cool seeing people ship something.
Thank you so much, means a lot! 🙏 The indie hacker community has been genuinely awesome during this launch. Let's ship!
Nice, this is a clean build and the positioning makes sense. One thing Id be curious about are you seeing people treat this as a tool they try or something that actually becomes part of their workflow? Feels like with products like this, the difference between people using it once vs coming back regularly is everything. Have you noticed any patterns yet in what makes someone stick?