[Pagerekt](http://pagerekt.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=kiss_post&utm_content=buildinpublic) is a landing page roasting/feedback tool. It was born out of the necessity that I always got yes-men advice, from the internet, my friends. Any person what i asked feedback from about one of my apps would reply: Yeah, it's useful and beautiful. I was tired of that, that's why i came up with Pagerekt. First i released the MVP, when that was working i was able to focus on the "real" reason why i build Pagerekt. Visual feedback, that was backed by facts and statistics. About 4 months ago I started building this feature for the first time, no planning, just straight up building. Pagerekt would take screenshots and I fed that to the AI with parameters based on the facts and statistics. AI would give me an updated version of the screenshot back. Sounds simple right? No, because the AI was hallucinating. It couldn't nail the coordinates, the cutouts were inaccurate, and after a full week of trying different methods I had nothing usable.

Normally when something doesn't work after a timebox I take a step back and rethink. But this time I threw all my principles overboard and kept pushing. I tried having the AI draw boxes around sections that needed improvements. Another 3 days. Didn't work either. At that point I put the feature on hold, the fun was completely gone and these projects I do outside my 9-5 because I want to have fun.

Two weeks later an idea hit me during a brainstorm at my 9-5. Numbered grid overlay on the screenshot, pass that to the AI. Fresh branch, fresh motivation, no plan again. After 4 nights and a weekend it turned out the AI can't understand a grid system either.

2 months later I came back to it. This time I actually explored my options before building. I landed on crawling the website, feeding everything to the AI, and rebuilding the page so the AI could directly implement improvements on the rebuild. "Is there a simpler route?" I asked myself. No, there wasn't. But this time I refined a technical plan before writing a single line of code. After 5 hours I had a proof of concept that was more accurate than anything before. My partner helped me realise the suggestions needed persona's and business context too, which I already had from the textual analysis.

3 failed attempts, about 4 months, and one lesson I should have already known: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. I preach KISS daily at my 9-5, but I didn't apply it to my own product. If I had taken some extra time to think this through from the beginning I could have saved myself months. I tend to choose the hardest way to the finish line and I still haven't figured out why.

It took me 4 months to realise that i need to follow my own advice.