I launched today, the site crashed within hours, and here's what I learned
So today was supposed to be the big day.
The Domain Hunter went live on Product Hunt. I'd spent weeks building it — an AI-powered expired domain finder that does in seconds what used to take hours of manual searching.
Then it fell apart.
Within hours of launch, Anthropic flagged that my API key was exposed in the frontend code. The site went down. On launch day. Position 465 on Product Hunt.
Here's what I did:
Rotated all exposed keys immediately
Rebuilt the entire security architecture — API calls now go through a Cloudflare Worker proxy, rate limiting added, server-side free tier tracking implemented
Got the site back up within a few hours
What I learned:
Never put API keys in frontend code. Ever. Even base64 encoded. It's not hidden.
Launch day disasters are actually a story. Own them publicly and people respect it.
Indie Hackers > Product Hunt for genuine early traction in my experience today.
The site is fully working now at thedomainhunter.io — 3 free hunts, no account needed.
If you tried it earlier and hit errors, I'd love for you to give it another shot. And if you've got feedback, brutal honesty welcome.
Day 2 starts now. 🚀Try it free: https://thedomainhunter.io Build Board: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/the-domain-hunter
