Shieldly

It has been 5 days since launch. Here is an honest update. **What happened:** - 0 paying users - Free demo has been used (can not share exact count yet) - Submitted to G2, SaaS Hub (approved), AlternativeTo (pending account age), CloudSecList newsletter, Screaming in the Cloud podcast - Published 8 articles on dev.to (aws/iam/security content) - Posted on X, Reddit karma building, 5 GitHub PRs to awesome-aws lists **What I learned:** Distribution is slower than I expected. Getting in front of AWS engineers who care about IAM means going to where they already are: r/devops, dev.to AWS tag, HN (pending). The spray-and-pray approach does not work. Every channel needs a specific angle. The "no signup" demo was the right call. When people share it on Reddit they say "just paste it and try it" — that frictionless entry point gets more organic shares than anything else I have done. **What is working:** - Dev.to articles are getting organic traffic from search - Reddit karma building (u/shieldlyio) — slow but genuine conversations **What is not working:** - HN account too new to post Show HN (blocked by karma gate) - X engagement is low — security founders seem to follow but not engage - LinkedIn company page blocked on mobile ID verification **Next week:** - Product Hunt launch (different week from Show HN) - Post remaining dev.to articles (posts 9-11) - Fix the HN problem (personal account with karma needed) Revenue target for end of month: 1 paying user. That is the only number that matters right now. Code 90Off2M still live — 90% off first 2 months, Pro from $1.90/mo if anyone here wants to try the paid tier and give feedback.

IAM security is one of the hardest problems in AWS. I spent years reviewing IAM policies and watching teams make the same mistakes — wildcards in Action and Resource, unscoped trust policies, PassRole chains that nobody had audited since the role was created.

Every tool I found either required an enterprise contract, needed an agent installed before showing a single finding, or was so noisy it was ignored. So I built Shieldly.

What it does:
- Analyzes IAM policies, CloudFormation templates, and AWS costs using AI
- Flags over-privileged roles, privilege escalation paths, wildcard policy risks, and trust policy misconfigurations
- Explains each finding in plain English with a prioritized remediation step
- Ships as web app + CLI + VS Code extension + GitHub Action + CDK Guard (@shieldly/cdk-guard on npm)

The design decision I'm most proud of:
The free IAM Advisor demo requires no signup, no credit card, and no AWS credentials. Paste a policy, get full analysis. I made it this way because the people who will catch policy bugs are the engineers writing them — not the security team that gets assigned a $100k enterprise license. The tool has to be in the hands of the person with the keyboard.

Stack: Next.js, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, AWS CDK. AI runs on Gemini and Claude Haiku. Auth via Clerk, payments via Polar.sh.

Launch offer: Code 90Off2M — 90% off for the first 2 months. Pro starts at $1.90/mo. Free tier has no paywall at all — just shieldly.io/app/iam.

What I'm working on next: LinkedIn presence, newsletter placements, Product Hunt launch.

Would love feedback on the pricing tiers and the demo experience. What's missing?

— Jeff, jeff@shieldly.io