I built a Chrome Extension for a Year. Here's Everything that Surprised Me About Building in a Crowded Category.
About a year ago, I started building Ashdeck, a Chrome extension that replaces your new tab page with a Pomodoro timer, site blocker, and task list.
I want to share what I've learned, because some of it I've never seen written down anywhere on IH, and I wish someone had told me before I started.
Why I built it
Not for the market opportunity. I built it because I had the problem. I was using the Pomodoro technique and still losing two hours a day to distraction. After watching myself work for a few days, I realized the leak wasn't the social media apps; it was the new tab page. That blank half-second before you type anything is where the bad decision happens. I built Ashdeck to eliminate that moment.
What I got right
Solving my own problem first was the right call. I didn't do any market research. I didn't validate with a landing page. I just built the thing I needed and then showed it to people who described the same problem. The people who resonated with it immediately were the people who had the exact experience I had, not a version of it, not an adjacent problem. The exact one.
What I got wrong
I underestimated how viscerally people feel about their new tab page. The split is clean: some users install it and immediately feel at home. Others react like I'm taking something from them. There is almost no middle ground. This tells me the positioning matters more than I originally thought. I'm not for everyone, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time.
I also built the blocker and the timer as separate systems first. That was a mistake. They only work because they're on the same surface. The blocker without the timer feels punishing. The timer without the blocker is ignorable. Together, on the new tab itself, they create a closed loop that doesn't require willpower. It took me four months to figure out what should have been obvious from the start.
What surprised me most
Two user groups I didn't design for became my most engaged users.
The first is people with ADHD. I didn't set out to build an ADHD tool. But the architecture of automatic enforcement, no manual activation, and a visual reminder every time you open a tab, functions as external scaffolding for executive dysfunction in a way that none of the existing tools do. These users don't just use Ashdeck; they evangelize it. They tag other people. They write long reviews explaining why it works for them when nothing else did.
The second is students. The Pomodoro technique has a massive following in study communities, Study Together Discord, r/GetStudying, and "study with me" YouTube. Students who use Pomodoro are obsessive about their setup. They convert fast, and they share freely. I wish I had targeted them deliberately from day one.
The hardest part nobody talks about
Distribution is harder than the build. I knew this intellectually. I didn't feel it until I had a working product with zero users. The Chrome extension category is crowded, but it's not competitive in the way that makes distribution impossible; it's competitive in the way that makes standing out require precision.
What's worked: Reddit communities with genuine pain (r/nosurf, r/ADHD, r/GetStudying), personal storytelling that doesn't lead with the product, and building in public on X where the indie dev community will amplify things the algorithm ignores.
What hasn't worked: generic productivity communities where everyone is already using five tools and isn't looking for a sixth. Being in a community isn't the same as being the right product for that community.
Where it is now
Ashdeck is free on the Chrome Web Store. I added an AI notepad recently because I kept wanting to capture thoughts mid-session without opening a new app, which would have required opening a new tab, which would have surfaced my timer, which felt recursive in a satisfying way.
I'm working on the site blocking mechanism. The declarativeNetRequest API has edge cases I haven't fully solved. If anyone has experience with Chrome extension blocking APIs, I'd genuinely love to talk.
And if you're in the "built something in a crowded category" situation, happy to share more about what's worked for distribution. It's not as bleak as it looks from the outside.
Try it: ashdeck.com
This is a strong breakdown because the real insight is not just “new tab productivity.” It is that the decision leak happens before the user consciously chooses to get distracted. That makes the product more interesting than a normal Pomodoro/blocker extension.
The ADHD and student angle also feels important. Those users are not just looking for another productivity tool. They need external structure, automatic enforcement, and a work surface that catches them before the drift starts.
One thing I would pressure-test is whether Ashdeck is the right long-term frame if the product keeps expanding beyond a new-tab extension. It works for the current Chrome surface, but if this becomes a broader focus system for students, ADHD users, sessions, blockers, notes, and AI-assisted work capture, the name may start feeling a little too tied to the “deck/tab” layer.
Xevoa .com would fit that wider direction well because it feels more like a modern productivity/workflow brand than a Chrome extension name, while still leaving room for focus sessions, blocking, notes, AI capture, and daily work routines under one cleaner product shell.
I appreciate the points that you have highlighted and your suggestion
Glad it was useful.
I’d mainly keep an eye on whether users describe Ashdeck as a “new tab tool” or as a focus system. That wording will tell you pretty quickly whether the current frame is big enough as the product expands.