Indie10k: AI Can’t Write Your Dreams, Not on My Watch! (And That’s a Good Thing)

I thought I was clever. A user told me: “Writing a North Star goal feels hard.”

So my brain went, “Easy fix! Add a tiny ✨ magic star button. Let AI spit one out for them.”

Yeah… about that. Turns out AI is just as clueless as I feared. It gave generic goals that didn’t resonate. Some were too fluffy, some were too bold, some just plain wrong. And honestly? Nobody knows your deepest desire better than you.

That was my first facepalm moment.

The blank page meltdown

Here’s the problem: Asking someone to “write your North Star goal” is like asking them to write the first line of a novel. Cue panic. Cursor blinks. Screen stays empty.

So I sat there thinking: do I kill this feature? Do I double down on AI? Or do I try something dumber, simpler?

The spark

I realized the issue wasn’t that people don’t have goals. It’s that the input field was wrong. Too wide. Too freeform.

So instead of a grand statement like: “Build a sustainable SaaS that transforms how indie devs blah blah…”

What if it was just a metric? One number. One target.

“User signups → 100.” “MRR → $50 this loop.”

Simple. Sharp. No blank page anxiety.

The lean fix I shipped

I swapped out the freeform “write your destiny” box for two tiny fields:

Metric

Target

That’s it. Suddenly the North Star goal went from an overwhelming essay prompt to a single decision.

Do you want more signups? Cool. Put a number. Do you want more revenue? Great. Add a target.

Done.

Our philosophy (Indie10k way)

I keep coming back to the same rules:

Simple.

Make it simpler.

Then make it dead simple.

AI is allowed to nudge, not to dictate. Features that don’t reduce indie dev overhead? Noise.

Because Indie10k exists for one thing: to help indie founders hit $10k MRR faster. Not with fancy dashboards. Not with AI “magic.” But with momentum.

And momentum comes from small, human steps forward.

Indie Hackers vs. Indie10k

Quick side note: If this feels like I’m overlapping with Indie Hackers’ goals features—promise I’m not trying to reinvent the town square. IH is the public forum. Indie10k is the workshop. The gym. The messy whiteboard in the back where you scribble your targets and get reps in.

The next step

Is it perfect? Nope. I still wonder if I oversimplified. But that’s the fun part—I’ll watch how people use it, and keep asking for feedback.

👉 Want to try it? Check out the new North Star goal flow inside Indie10k . Write your own target (or break it). Tell me what feels useful—or useless. Your feedback literally shapes this thing.