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Indie product logs by Mason

I Paused My Project: Death by Feature Bloat

indie-hacking · product-management · failure · mindgift

My first indie project, Mindgift, is officially paused.

No announcement, no fanfare. I just quietly archived the tasks and moved the repo out of my active workspace. Like a doctor calling time of death, I have to admit the vital signs are gone.

Death by Feature Bloat

Here is the autopsy report.

The Beginning: A Crystal Clear Idea

It started with a Reddit thread: “I never know what to buy for my girlfriend.”

I had a vision for the perfect MVP:

  1. User inputs a scenario (e.g., “Girlfriend, 25, loves hiking”).
  2. AI generates gift ideas.
  3. User clicks an Amazon link to buy.

I built the first version in a weekend. It was simple, ugly, and functional. I felt like a god. I had built a boat that floated.

The Trap: The “More Features” Fallacy

When I launched, the traffic was… zero.

My engineer brain kicked in: “The product must not be good enough yet.” So instead of marketing, I started coding.

  • v2.0: The homepage looked empty, so I added a “Curated Gift Guide” section.
  • v3.0: Users might want to save ideas, so I built a “Favorites” system.
  • v4.0: I needed a way to manage the curated guides, so I built a full Admin CMS.
  • v5.0: Maybe users want to manage their own gift lists? Let’s build a “Gift Dashboard”.

I spent months adding features. My GitHub commit graph was lush and green. I was “productive.”

But the traffic line remained flat.

The Realization: Tool vs. Answer

The epiphany hit me while I was debugging the complex “Gift Dashboard” I was building. I looked at my Google Search Console data.

The few users finding me were searching for:

  • “unique anniversary gift for boyfriend”
  • “birthday gift ideas for mom”

They wanted an Answer. I was building a Tool to manage answers.

There was a fatal mismatch:

  • User Intent: “Tell me what to buy.”
  • My Product: “Here is a complex dashboard for you to organize your own thoughts.”

I was polishing a shovel in the desert, while people were just dying for a cup of water.

The Lesson: Validation > Construction

I stopped coding immediately.

I realized that “Feature Bloat” is a symptom of fear. It’s easier to write code than to face the market. It’s easier to add a button than to ask a stranger “Do you want this?”

SEO is not just keywords; it’s product intent. If your page doesn’t solve the user’s problem in 3 seconds, no amount of React hooks will save you.

What’s Next?

I’m not quitting. I’m just smarter.

My next experiment, codenamed Start Mind, is about “What for Dinner?”. Rule #1: The homepage must give an answer. No dashboards. No logins. Just the answer.

Mindgift is dead. Long live the builder.