I sent selected text from any webpage to ChatGPT in one click. Here is what 6 weeks of solo dev taught me about distribution.
AI Buddy is a free, open-source Chrome side panel that turns selected page text or annotated screenshots into prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, or Copilot. The source page stays visible while the AI conversation opens next to it.
I shipped the first version 6 weeks ago. Some honest notes for anyone building a similar tool:
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The product is not the hard part. Wiring a side panel and a content script takes a weekend. The hard part is finding the first 10 users who actually need it.
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Distribution channels vary in conversion per post. Posting in r/ChatGPTCoding with a real builder story got me one install. Posting in r/ClaudeAI with a screenshot workflow got me two. Posting in r/LocalLLaMA cost me a karma ratio I had to recover from. I now track every post against a CWS UTM link so I can see which channel actually converts.
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The CWS listing is the conversion node. If your store title is just the project name and the description is generic, people bounce. A listing that says "select text, send to ChatGPT, no copy paste" converts better than a listing that says "AI productivity assistant" with no specifics.
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Open source earns trust in a way paid tools do not. People say "I would not have tried this if I could not read the source" more than they say "the price is right." That is a moat, not a sales line.
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The next thing I am testing is the difference between a weekly build-in-public post and a daily reply-and-upvote grind. The first is harder to write, but I expect it to compound. The second is easy to do and I am not sure it moves installs.
If anyone is shipping a similar tool, the things I would love to compare notes on: side panel vs popup, screenshots vs text-only, and which AI destinations actually drive install clicks.
GitHub: https://github.com/mnbqwe10/ai_buddy
Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-buddy/eigpaeoigklelmfgnkljhbjjbpohenpn
This nails the distribution vs building gap. Most makers spend weeks on the product when the real constraint is finding people who actually need it.
That insight about distribution channels varying wildly in conversion is gold - r/ChatGPTCoding sees different buyer behavior than r/LocalLLaMA because the developer personas aren't the same. And the specificity point on CWS listing hits hard - "select text, send to ChatGPT, no copy paste" is orders of magnitude clearer than "AI productivity assistant."
The question I'd love to see you dig into: with your first 10 users, how did you know they actually "needed" it vs just being curious? What made the difference between the users who tried once and deleted vs the ones who stuck?