Shipping a desktop AI app is 20% app, 80% distribution. What I learned with Local Waifu

I built Local Waifu, an AI companion that runs entirely on your own machine. Nothing leaves the device, no cloud inference, no subscription. You pay once. macOS and Windows.

Writing the app took weeks. Getting it into people's hands has taken months, and I am still not done. Here is what actually ate the time.

Every store is a different product, not a different download link

I thought I would build once and put the same binary on the Mac App Store, itch.io and Steam. That was wrong.

The Mac App Store wants sandboxing, entitlements and a review process that cares about things no user will ever notice. itch.io wants a zip and a page you write yourself. Steam wants a build pipeline, a store page, depots and a review of its own. Each one has a different idea of what "an app" is, and each one needed its own packaging path.

If you are planning multi-store distribution, budget a full week per store. Not a day.

Windows code signing is a tax nobody warns you about

On macOS you pay Apple $99/year and notarization mostly works. On Windows, an unsigned app gets a full screen SmartScreen warning that says, in plain language, do not run this. That warning kills conversion from strangers, which is exactly who you are trying to reach at launch.

Getting a certificate means a company identity check, a hardware token, and a price that is hard to justify before you have revenue. There is no clean answer here. I mention it because every guide about "just ship your Electron app" skips this part.

Local means you inherit the hardware problem

Cloud apps have one runtime. Local apps have thousands.

I tested on an RTX 3060 because that is what a real user is likely to own, not a 4090. On-device inference behaves differently across VRAM sizes, driver versions and Apple Silicon generations. A bug report that says "it is slow" now means five questions before you know anything.

That is the real cost of privacy-first. I still think it is the right trade, but I did not price it correctly when I started.

Traffic came from places I did not plan for

About 1,600 visits, roughly 500 unique visitors so far. The two biggest sources were AlternativeTo and Product Hunt.

AlternativeTo surprised me. It is a directory I submitted to once and forgot about. It has been sending steady traffic since, from people actively looking to replace something. That is much warmer intent than a Reddit post that gets 40 upvotes and disappears in a day.

Reddit (r/LocalLLaMA, r/SillyTavernAI) sent people who care deeply about local models and ask sharp technical questions. Good for product feedback. Weak for volume.

What I would do differently

Submit to directories on day one, not after launch. They compound.

Pick one store, finish it properly, then add the next. Running three half-finished store listings gave me three half-finished funnels.

Test on the hardware your users actually have before you write the system requirements, not after the first refund request.

I am still working on the distribution side, so if you have shipped a paid desktop app and solved the Windows signing problem in a way that does not cost more than your monthly revenue, I want to hear it.

https://localwaifu.com