I lost my dev job in March. 6 weeks later I had a Chrome extension with 15 users. Here is what those 6 weeks taught me about distribution.

This is not a "I built a thing, please try it" post. This is what I wish someone had written for me before I started.

The backstory, briefly: I was a backend engineer at a mid-size SaaS company. The team got cut to half in March, I was in the half that went. The official reason was "AI efficiency gains" but I am skeptical it was really about AI efficiency. Either way, I had 4 weeks of severance and a stack of CVs I did not want to send.

I had been tinkering on a side panel AI extension on evenings and weekends for about 3 months before the layoff. The night of the layoff I opened the code, looked at it, and decided to spend the severance finishing it instead of applying to jobs. The math was: 4 weeks of full-time focus on a thing I already had a working prototype of, vs. 4 weeks of interviewing for the same kind of role I had just been cut from. The first option had a chance of being different.

What I built

A Chrome side panel that lets you select text on any page, hit a keyboard shortcut, and the text goes to ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini / DeepSeek (whatever you have set as default). The reply streams into the side panel. The original page never moves. You can keep reading while the AI is answering.

The reason I built it: I was copying code snippets from Stack Overflow into ChatGPT 30 times a day. The context switch was killing me. The existing "AI sidebar" extensions I tried either locked me to one model or sent my selected text to a backend server. I wanted both: any model, and my text never leaving the browser.

It is open source on GitHub. API key lives in Chrome local storage. The selected text is sent directly from your browser to the AI provider. No backend, no analytics.

What 6 weeks taught me about distribution

1. Shipping is faster than I thought. Distribution is slower.

The extension itself took 2 weekends. Polish took another 2 weekends. Shipping was the easy part.

The next 5 weeks were spent trying to make sure anyone knew the thing existed. That is the actual hard game.

2. CWS listing is the conversion node, not the destination.

I thought people would find the extension through Reddit, X, or Indie Hackers posts. Some did. But the Chrome Web Store page is where they decide whether to install or leave. My first version had a generic first line in the description. Conversion was bad. The fix was rewriting that one line.

Before: "Scenario-based AI sidebar actions for selected browser text."
After: "Highlight any text → send it straight to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. No copy-paste. No tab switching."

Same product. Different conversion rate.

3. UTM tracking is the only thing that tells you the truth.

I used to think Reddit comments were "working" because I posted a lot of them. I did not know which ones brought installs until I started putting ?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=comment in the Chrome Web Store link. Then I found out: my most-upvoted Reddit comment brought 0 installs. My least-upvoted comment brought 4. The content I was proud of did nothing. The content I wrote in 20 minutes between meetings did most of the work.

Stop guessing. Tag the links.

4. The audience that already knows about AI tools is the wrong audience.

r/ChatGPTCoding, r/ClaudeAI, r/LocalLLaMA. These are the AI tool power users. They have already tried 12 sidebar extensions. They are not impressed by a 13th.

r/SideProject, r/SoloDeveloper, r/IndieHackers. These are the people who actually want a new tool because they are building things and need to save time. They install things. They tell their friends.

Same content, different sub, different outcome.

5. Follow-up matters more than launch.

I had 4 users email me in the first month. I replied to 2 within 24 hours and to the other 2 within a week. The first 2 turned into people who left reviews and recommended the extension to others. The latter 2 just said "thanks."

If someone bothers to email you about a thing you made, reply within the hour. That is the whole growth loop.

6. The thing I wish I had done earlier

I waited 4 weeks to launch the first version. The reason was "it is not polished enough." The polish took another 4 weeks and brought maybe 2 extra users. If I had launched on day 1, I would have had 4 weeks of distribution work done by the time the polish was finished.

Ship the ugly version. Polish in public.

What is next

I have about 15 daily users right now. The plan is to get to 50 by end of July and 150 by end of August. I do not know if those numbers are realistic. I am going to find out.

The thing I am doing differently in week 7 is writing more long-form content (this post is part of it) instead of more comments. Long-form posts keep showing up in search results. Comments disappear in 24 hours.

If you want to follow along, the GitHub repo is below. The Chrome Web Store link is also below. If you install it and it does not work for you, please email me. I read every email.

What did your post-layoff project look like? Are you in the "ship a thing" camp or the "interview fast" camp?