Unemployed, zero budget, and testing a belief: I built GitPulse to automate changelogs per git push

I've been unemployed for a while now. Not the kind of thing most founders casually mention, but it's the honest context for why I built this.

I've always believed you can build something real from zero — no funding, no connections, just skills and time. This was my chance to test that belief.

The problem I picked wasn't discovered through market research. It came from my own frustration: writing changelogs has always felt like unpaid overtime. You finish the actual work, then you have to sit down and explain what you did — in plain language, for users who don't care about your commit history.

Before AI, I'd spend 30 minutes on it before every release. After AI, I'd paste commits into ChatGPT manually, every single time. Neither felt right.

So I built [GitPulse](https://emrefkrlr.github.io/gitpulse).

How it works:

* Connect: Your GitHub repo via OAuth

* Webhook: Add a webhook URL to your repo settings (one-time, 2 minutes)

* Automate: Every git push → AI reads your commits → draft changelog created

* Publish: You review it, publish it, done (Public URL + embed widget included)

Stack & Hosting Hacks: * FastAPI, HTMX, PostgreSQL (Supabase), AI fallback chain across DeepSeek/Groq/OpenAI, and Polar.sh for payments.

Hosted on *Render's free tier**. Since Render puts the app to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity, I set up a free cron-job.org trigger to ping the site every 14 minutes. This eliminates the cold-start delay so users always experience a fast, fully loaded page instantly.

Pricing: Free (3/month) → $7/month → $19/month

I know tools like this exist. I'm not claiming to have invented the category. I just wanted to build something genuinely useful, keep it simple, and find out if a solo developer can get even a handful of paying customers with zero marketing budget.

That's the experiment.

If you've dealt with the changelog problem before — or if you try it and it breaks — I'd genuinely love to know your thoughts!