Welcome to the indie-hacker-playbook — a collection of Claude skills that guide you through the complete journey of building an independent business, from your first idea to sustainable growth. This isn't theoretical advice; these are practical, actionable frameworks designed to be used directly in your workflow as you build.
What's included: 9 distinct skills covering the entire indie hacker journey — validate-idea, mvp, pricing, first-customers, company-values, find-community, grow-sustainably, marketing-plan, and minimalist-review.
The indie-hacker-playbook is built on the philosophy of The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia. It rejects the traditional startup playbook of raising money, building complex products, and hoping for traction. Instead, it focuses on validation through selling, not building.
Most founders spend months building products nobody wants. The indie-hacker-playbook flips this script: before writing a single line of code, you'll learn how to validate your idea by selling a manual version first. This approach has been proven by successful indie hackers who've built profitable businesses with minimal resources.
This isn't just a collection of random tips — it's a cohesive framework that guides you through each critical stage of your journey:
The validate-idea skill helps you determine if your business concept is worth pursuing before investing significant time or money. It asks you to define the problem (not the solution), identify who specifically has this problem, understand how they're solving it today, and most importantly — determine if they'd pay to make this problem go away.
Key insight: Validation happens through selling, not building. If you can't sell a manual version of your solution, you shouldn't build an automated one.
The mvp skill guides you through building your minimum viable product using the three-stage approach: manual → processized → productized. First, solve the problem by hand for each customer. Then document every step to create your "magic piece of paper." Finally, automate only what you've already proven works manually.
This eliminates the risk of building features nobody wants while helping you ship something valuable in a weekend rather than months.
The pricing skill helps you determine the right price point for your offering. It teaches you to avoid the common trap of underpricing your work and instead focus on the value you deliver to customers. You'll learn how to test different price points, understand price sensitivity, and position your offering in the market.
The first-customers skill provides a systematic approach to finding and converting your earliest users. Rather than chasing broad audiences, it focuses on identifying specific communities where your ideal customers already gather and engaging with them authentically.
The company-values skill helps you articulate the core principles that will guide your business decisions. These aren't abstract mission statements — they're practical guidelines that help you make consistent choices about who to serve, what to build, and how to grow.
The find-community skill teaches you how to identify and engage with the specific groups where your ideal customers already gather. It emphasizes authenticity over promotion and provides frameworks for adding value before asking for anything in return.
The grow-sustainably skill focuses on building a business that generates consistent revenue without requiring constant new customer acquisition. It covers topics like retention, lifetime value, and creating systems that scale with your time investment.
The marketing-plan skill helps you develop a realistic marketing strategy that fits your resources and goals. It moves beyond vague concepts like "social media" to specific, actionable tactics that have been proven to work for indie hackers.
The minimalist-review skill provides a framework for regularly assessing your progress and making adjustments. It helps you avoid analysis paralysis while ensuring you're consistently moving toward your goals.
These skills are designed to be used directly within Claude Code or other compatible AI coding assistants. To install:
/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/clickaround/marketplace
/plugin install indie-hacker-playbook@clickaroundOnce installed, you can access each skill by typing its name followed by your specific context. For example, when you have a business idea you want to validate, simply type /validate-idea and describe your concept.
Note: All skills are MIT licensed and completely free to use. They're part of the ClickAround Creator Pro ecosystem, which brings together the best practices from successful indie hackers into practical, usable tools.
⭐ Star this skill on GitHub — if this framework saves you time or helps you avoid costly mistakes, give it a star. That's the only marketing budget I have.
Pro Bundle (₩59,000 lifetime, all 7 packs): Get ClickAround Creator Pro — includes all 7 skill packs plus Discord community access and monthly Q&A sessions.