Diagnosing What Kills Indie Projects

You're building something on the side, or you've gone all in on something small. You've shipped before, or you haven't. Either way, you've felt the pull to add one more feature, or spent three weeks picking a name, or avoided pricing your product because you're not sure it's worth anything yet.

That's who this is for. Builders who work mostly alone and need an honest look at what's going wrong — not encouragement.

The site is built around a 12-point diagnostic called the SicknessLabs framework. It's a set of yes/no questions that map to the most common failure modes in indie projects. Ship. Intuitive. Cost. Know. Need. Earn. Space. Soul. Lies. Assumptions. Bullshit. Stripped.

You go through the questions. You find out where the holes are. Then you read about the specific diseases that live in those holes.

Diagnosis before prescription. Most advice skips straight to fixes — ship faster, validate earlier, charge more. That advice isn't wrong, but it lands differently when you understand what's actually broken first.

Sickness Labs doesn't tell you your project is going to make it. It tells you what's currently killing it. What you do with that is up to you.

I started this by writing down a handful of patterns I kept seeing — in my own projects, in other people's. I was waiting for an electrician. By the time he showed up, I had a list that felt like it meant something. I added two letters I don't remember, and the whole thing clicked into place. No plan. No framework session. The electrician was an hour late. Best hour I've wasted.