We don't need more shovel shops. We need people to test the shovels.

AI coding tools made shipping an app easy and cheap, but users stayed exactly as scarce as before, which is why a lot of us, me included, can ship a working product and then cannot find anyone to use it. The usual response is yet another Product Hunt-style directory, most of which are really selling backlinks to builders who are just as stuck, so the shovels are being sold to other shovel salesmen and nobody ends up opening anyone's app. My app email is full of people that found me on betalist or producthunt and want me to post my product on their directory, for free, but at a price if i want a dofollow backlink. No thanks. What actually helped me was joining a testing circle, where builders test each other's apps. Testers found a dark-mode warning box nobody could read and a duration field that showed a six-hour task as "06:00 AM", and one of them told me the onboarding had far too many words. It works because it is a trade of attention, and attention is the one thing indie devs can actually afford to give. In a flooded market polish is how a small product stands out, so instead of selling shovels to shovel salesmen, offer to test their shovels. There may even be some money to be made there... The caveat is that fellow builders are usually not your customers, since they are great at finding friction and bad at telling you whether anyone will pay. The upside I did not expect is that people who helped shape an app tend to stick around and recommend it, so testing quietly doubles as early word of mouth distribution. I now submitted two apps to a testing circle site and I'm super happy with the feedback i got and the changes i made to my apps. It's not more users, but the app has become better for it. Has a testing swap worked for anyone else here? How do you find testers who are actual target users rather than other devs? And is a launch directory still worth it in 2026?