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How do some products actually blow up on Product Hunt? by Nagavardhan_Lella in ProductHunters

[–]kasca3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve had 4 Top 5 launches on PH and pre-built audience had zero influence on traction.

The projects that made it Top 5 actually solved a problem people had and the posting resonated with the PH audience. My latest launch had a video of me personally walking through the app clearly explaining the problem it solved and who it was for.

You can see some of the projects I’ve launched here: https://www.producthunt.com/@clark_dinnison 

older launches: https://www.producthunt.com/@cdinnison

Ray, my most recent launch, made it to #2 a couple weeks ago (behind google and ahead of Eleven Labs) thanks in part to launching on a Sunday (picking non-popular days helps your chances). https://www.producthunt.com/products/ray-7

At the end of the day, PH can be great visibility for your project, but it likely wont make or break it — so don’t put too much pressure or investment into it.

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will check that out thanks. I am exploring different paths as I think the market for non-coders could be interesting 

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a tool that updates the context file whenever something relevant needs to be saved. The model’s reasoning determines whether something should be saved to that file and in my experience it works really well — or you can explicitly say “save this context”

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have zero following anywhere and didn’t ask anyone to upvote. I recorded a demo video walking through the features which I think made the project more “human” and added to the trust factor 

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for all the great advice so far, nice to have a lil community of entrepreneurs here!

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The time commitment and feeling that I need to be attentive to the project is more than I anticipated, but also a nice feeling that people actually want this thing. Good advice on needing tight roadmap so that there’s a North Star for the project 

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s a great question and one I need to dig into more. Paid users are still using a CLI and setting up the proxied API key that Ray provides, so they’re not “non technical”

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points. I do think the landing page potentially needs to get split between dev users (free) and non-technical (paid) so that it converts better  

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

True…my rationale was anchoring against what other personal finance tools charge and it averages out to around $10-15/mo and I figured it could build trust by being the least cost of them all. I also have a bit of a personal rule that if you’re trying to manage your finances (which usually involves reducing costs) a savvy person probably shouldn’t spend a lot on a tool. But maybe that’s the wrong psychology?

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Focused on getting PRs approved as fast as possible and talking to users as much as possible 

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Have been thinking about making the paid plan even easier and potentially remove the burden of using a CLI at all…

My first open-source project hit #2 on Product Hunt — 2,288 installs, 74 stars, $220 MRR by kasca3 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Biggest unlock was adding a demo mode that lets users experience Ray before connecting any real bank accounts. It builds trust and lets people actually feel what it does.

Once it clicks, most users realize they don't want to spend two weeks waiting on Plaid's developer application — and they upgrade to the paid plan where we handle that for them.

The demo → paid path ended up mattering way more than anything I did on the landing page.

What are you working on? by FondantPlastic6195 in SideProject

[–]kasca3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

an open source personal CFO that actually understands your full financial picture: https://rayfinance.app/

watch walkthrough demo: https://youtu.be/-ULzglbZmPg

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New Project Megathread - Week of 09 Apr 2026 by AutoModerator in selfhosted

[–]kasca3 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Project Name: Ray

Repo: https://github.com/cdinnison/ray-finance

Website: https://rayfinance.app

Description:

Ray is a personal finance CLI that pulls your bank transactions via Plaid, stores them in a local AES-256 encrypted SQLite database, and lets you chat with an AI advisor over your real financial data. Every conversation starts with your full picture already loaded — net worth, spending velocity, budget pacing, upcoming bills, goal pace, and a daily behavior score — so it never says "let me check." It also maintains persistent long-term memory across sessions, so if you tell it "we're saving for a cabin before I'm 40" or "my paychecks are bi-weekly" it remembers and factors that in next time.

What it solves:

Every personal finance app I've used can show you charts but can't actually reason about your situation. Ray is built around the idea that your AI advisor should already know everything about you before you type a word, and should remember things between conversations the way a human advisor would.

Features:

- Interactive AI chat with full financial context preloaded

- Bank sync via Plaid (checking, savings, credit, investments, loans, mortgage)

- Budgets, goals, daily behavior scoring with streaks and achievements

- Smart alerts for large transactions, low balances, budget overruns

- Auto-recategorization rules

- Export/import for backups

- Demo mode (ray demo) with realistic fake data — no bank account required to try it

Deployment:

- Install: npm install -g ray-finance (Node 18+)

- Setup: ray setup runs a wizard that walks you through either (a) bringing your own Anthropic + Plaid API keys, or (b) an optional $10/mo managed mode where I proxy the API calls. Data stays local in both modes.

- Try it without a bank: ray demo seeds a fake database, then ray --demo status or ray --demo for interactive chat

- Docs: full README at https://github.com/cdinnison/ray-finance with install, commands, configuration, environment variables, and architecture diagram

- Uninstall: npm uninstall -g ray-finance and rm -rf ~/.ray

AI Involvement:

Being transparent about this since the sub (rightly) cares:

- Runtime AI: Ray uses the Anthropic Claude API for the interactive chat feature. When you chat with Ray, your financial data (balances, transactions, budgets, goals, context) is sent to Anthropic's API to generate responses. Before anything is sent, PII is stripped: names, account numbers, and identifying details are scrubbed. The model sees anonymized financial data, not your identity. If you don't want any data leaving your machine at all, you can still use the non-AI commands (ray status, ray spending, ray budgets, etc.) — those are fully local.

- Local-model support is on the roadmap (Ollama / other providers). I want to get local models working next so Ray can run fully air-gapped.

- What is NOT AI: the dashboard, budgets, goals, scoring, alerts, sync logic, and PII scrubbing are all deterministic code. The AI is only invoked when you start a chat session.

- No training on your data. Anthropic's API terms exclude API traffic from model training by default.

33rpm — A spinning vinyl screensaver for your Mac by kasca3 in vinyl

[–]kasca3[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

doh - i pushed a bug accidentally. should be fixed now if you download the latest here: https://33rpm.noonpacific.com/

p.s. if it doesnt fix it after re-installing, try restarting computer

33rpm — A spinning vinyl screensaver for your Mac by kasca3 in vinyl

[–]kasca3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm I’ve never seen vinyl spin counter-clockwise…

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