Yannick

Literally what the thread is about 😆

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Why I’m Building PixelWatcher In many ways, it is a strange time to be building a SaaS. This article addresses some common concerns and further explains my approach with PixelWatcher.

I expand on these thoughts in this article:

4️⃣ Recent AI progress is both amazing and scary. I do worry about the broader societal impact, but I’m choosing to see these tools as an opportunity. If we’re entering a period of creative destruction on an unprecedented scale, I’d rather be on the creative side

3️⃣ The website-monitoring landscape is competitive. Many established players already occupy the space. But that's how PixelWatcher was born – from the frustration of using them. Too complicated, too expensive. I'm building the product I want

2️⃣ A lot more people are building software right now. But that's still a tiny fraction of the population, and there's a huge gap between running a prototype locally and launching a real product in production. Very few will get there

1️⃣ I don't believe in the SaaSpocalypse. A certain type of SaaS is indeed in trouble – the one with crazy-high margins. But there's room for products that strike the right balance between price and convenience. That's the balance PixelWatcher aims for

On the one hand, the SaaS model is dead. On the other, everyone's building one. Whichever narrative you subscribe to, this might seem like a strange time to build PixelWatcher. So why am I doing it?

A few reasons in this short thread ⬇️

Np! Happy to chat

Oh and I’m using a combination of Claude Code and Cursor (and a sprinkle of ChatGPT for research). I specify and plan, Claude does the leg work, I review and fix in Cursor

To answer your questions though, I verify the output through testing (manual and automated) and I review all code anyway. And yes, I’m mostly prompting and reviewing, and what really surprised me is how quickly I got used to that. I don’t dislike it, it’s just a different approach

But my guess is using Claude in that context wouldn’t have been as beneficial. Building a personal project from the ground up is a different story though. PixelWatcher is AI-first from the get-go, with the documentation and context this warrants

I think it depends on what you’re building. I haven’t used Claude for client work yet (at the end of my last contract, I had started using Cursor, but it was still very much "fancy autocomplete" then, and agents were in their infancy)

For teams, I agree. It’s still very messy out there. But as a solo-builder, I can promise you the productivity gains are here (and yet my setup is pretty rudimentary). The models are already good enough – the real bottleneck is the way we organise work IMO (this will take time and break a few eggs)

Fair enough! I meant sustainable in the sense that I see those tools becoming an integral part of the job in the near future, because ignoring their productivity gains won’t make economic sense. On the other hand, that’s the beauty of personal projects – you can build them however you want 🙂

Oh wow, that much pressure? Genuine question: do you think that stance is sustainable long term? Or is it also your personal belief that these tools shouldn’t be used?

I understand that the Cursor team is moving fast and shipping a lot, but having to constantly restart the IDE to apply updates is really annoying

Escaping the Code Maze, Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup We return in March and we have Yannick giving his talk "Escaping the Code Maze". **Escaping the Code Maze** Yannick Chenot Exploring a code base is like navigating a maze

📢 Bristol! I'm speaking at PHPSW this Wednesday (11 March).

I’ll be giving an extended version of my talk Escaping the Code Maze, introducing the Closed-by-Default Principle.

Are you based in Bristol or in the area? Come say hi!

Screenshot of a terminal running Claude Code. It just completed a body of work – I'm asking it to commit the code and open a PR, which is met with a "You're out of extra usage" message

Goddammit Claude! What am I gonna do, open my own PR like a peasant? 🙄

Note that it's token-intensive though! Ate through my allowance at lightning speed 🙈

Just tested Claude Code's recently-added `/simplify` skill on PixelWatcher's code (Laravel codebase). Pretty impressed with the result – it found some non-trivial things to improve. Definitely adding it to my workflow

Surely some Canadian is going to pick up on that last sentence at some point

🙈

Just wrote my first custom PHPStan rule... except I didn't. Claude did. All I asked was "How can we enforce this rule?" Claude was aware of PHPStan in the project, so went ahead and wrote the rule, and tested it by introducing a temporary violation. What a time to be a developer

It’s on everybody’s mind, for better or for worse

No pressure! Would just love to meet local developers 🙂

Not sure you’re part of that group too, but I’ll be speaking at PHPSW next month 🙂

I’m not there yet! But I foresee something along those lines might be necessary down the line, as I add more and more context

PixelWatcher – Never miss a change We're building a smarter and cheaper way to track what matters on the web. Sign up to get early access.

PixelWatcher's teaser page pixelwatcher.io

Skill to create skills github.com/osteel/.clau...