u/vibehidar

Every new feature on a new Next.js project followed the same pattern. Claude reads the codebase. Claude asks where my auth helpers live. Claude picks a state management approach that is different from the one I used last week. By the time it actually writes any code I have already burned a few thousand tokens teaching it the project. Again.

The thing that broke me was realizing I had explained my Stripe webhook pattern to Claude probably forty times across different repos. Same explanation, same code, different session.

So I tested a hypothesis. The problem is not Claude. The problem is that most stacks give the AI too many choices, and every choice costs tokens to deliberate. I built the same feature twice. Once on a default Next.js setup. Once on a stack where I picked one way to do everything and documented it.

The opinionated version finished in roughly 60% fewer back-and-forths. Not because the AI got smarter. Because there was nothing to decide.

That stack is what I packaged into LaunchPaid (launchpaid.app). Next.js, TS, Prisma, Supabase, Tailwind, shadcn. One auth pattern. One way to fetch data. One Stripe setup. Plus 16 skills in .claude/ for the recurring stuff and copy-paste templates for new routes, server actions, forms. Also I added a memory layer that keeps track of all the files so the AI coding agent know all 16k lines of code just from a single JSON file.

Average session on a new feature is around 20k tokens now. Before 20k tokens was just to discover what I am using in this repo.

Curious if you have tried something simillar.

If your are a coffee shop owner are you fine with people with laptops working from there?

As I am one of those guys and I am pretty curious as an owner what is your opinion for me? First thing I always choose a location that is made for such thing - I am not working in a small family owned cafe where they serve only espresso for 1.5 bucks. I choose overpriced locations, with bigger tables, charging outlets and some food, also I try to make at least 20 bucks per day so the owner has a reason to keep me for 5-6 hours per day. It is a personal rule to buy something every 1.5 hours as I researched this is the average table seat for 2 people.

But what about your opinion? How do you feel about the macbook guys siting whole day?

Yesterday I was checking the web analytics and saw someone went through the whole signup process. Then it clicked — someone should have bought the product, but when I checked the Stripe dashboard I saw just errors. My heart dropped. Is this the end?

I immediately searched the logs and it turned out I'd messed up the Stripe product key in the env variables. Started on the fix while emailing the user to offer him a 20% discount if he'd "give us a second chance."

Thankfully we're now good and the user is testing the app. Sometimes you've tested everything, and something as small as an env key brings it all down.

A few weeks ago, I started digging into Claude Code skills. Then it happened — I found one that was quietly telling Claude to fire off a curl request and ship data to some unknown server. (I'd link the repo, but it got pulled right after I reached out to the owner.)

That's when it hit me: skills are an attack vector. If you blindly copy-paste them into your projects, your API keys, your bearer tokens, your .env — all of it is exposed. And it's not just you. People trust us with their emails, phone numbers, and personal data.

Before you install any skill, open the file and read it. If you see curl requests, third-party API calls, or unfamiliar library installs — don't use it.

Stay paranoid.

I have been tracking ProductHunt for the past two months and here is what I found:

1. The better the UI, the more upvotes. AI slop frontends are not getting any votes (even though sometimes their idea is actually pretty useful). Users who are voting are usually only checking your landing page, so they will literally judge the book by its cover — in particular, they will judge your product by your landing page.

2. You can get unlucky if OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic are launching on the same day — they get the most upvotes. Sorry.

3. If you have a hardware product, you will most likely be product of the day. I am not sure why, but it is always the cool hardware product with a parallax landing page that ends up on top of the daily leaderboard.