How are you all discovering new web apps lately?
One thing I’ve been questioning lately is how I actually find the tools I end up using in my projects.
For years, it’s been the usual stack: Google when I have a specific need, Product Hunt when I feel like browsing, or Twitter/X when something happens to go viral.
But none of those really feel optimized for builders. It’s either too noisy, too trend-driven, or too SEO-heavy.
What I’ve been missing is something closer to the app store experience, but for web tools. Not downloads, not hype launches, just a clean way to explore what’s out there and evaluate quickly.
I recently came across this idea implemented in a simple way via https://unstore.io. It’s basically structured like a store, but for web apps. What I found interesting wasn’t just the listing itself, but the mental model shift: browsing instead of searching, comparing instead of digging, and discovering tools you didn’t know you needed.
As indie hackers, I feel like we’re constantly stitching together stacks of tools (auth, analytics, emails, AI, etc.), and yet discovery is still kind of chaotic and fragmented.
Curious how others here approach this. Do you have a “system” for finding tools? Do you rely on communities, directories, or mostly search? Have you found anything that actually saves you time vs the usual trial-and-error?
Feels like a small problem, but one we hit almost every week while building.
I think there's a distinction worth drawing between "discovery intent" and "adoption path."
Most directories optimize for discovery — here's a tool, here's what it does. But the tools I've actually kept using long-term didn't come from browsing. They came from seeing someone's explicit workflow breakdown where the tool is contextualized within a stack solving a real problem.
For example, I didn't adopt Notion because I found it on a directory. I adopted it because three separate founders described their exact project management workflow and Notion was central to it. The tool became meaningful because I understood the broader system it fit into.
The app store model you mentioned is interesting, but app stores optimize for downloads (impulse), not retention (context). What I'd love to see more of is "stack snapshots" — a founder says "here's my full tool stack for [specific outcome]" with the context of how they all connect. Communities like IH do this naturally in comments, but it's not structured or searchable.
That gap — contextual discovery vs catalog discovery — is the real unsolved problem.
The highest-signal discovery channel I've found isn't directories or Product Hunt — it's comment sections.
When someone posts 'I built X' and the comments are full of real questions from other builders, that's where you find tools worth actually trying. A directory entry tells you what the tool does. A comment thread tells you whether it actually works, what breaks, and who it's for.
Product Hunt is launch-day hype. IH and HN comment sections are long-term signal.
The problem is nobody archives that signal. It's scattered across thousands of threads.
Mostly IH threads and HN Show HN for me — the signal-to-noise is better than directories because someone already vetted it enough to post it. Google only when I have a specific problem name.
As someone building on the other side — we make Kumiko (kumiko.rocks), an open-source SaaS framework that bundles auth, multi-tenancy, email, billing — we've found the same thing: a relevant IH comment or HN thread drives more qualified users than any directory listing.
The "browsing instead of searching" idea stood out to me.
Search works when you already know the problem you're trying to solve. Discovery is harder because you often don't know the tool exists until you see it.
Feels like those are two completely different user behaviors, and most directories try to treat them as the same thing.