Hi all, I was wondering if anyone tried to sell these services as a service in form of an agency? Do any of them exist out there, are they successfull? Could this be a one man band (non developer) or not AT ALL?
I got tired of my new tab being either blank or a feed I don't care about, so I built Caroluma.
Also my girlfriend and I kept sending each other photos on WhatsApp that got buried in five minutes. I wanted something passive, just a quiet way of staying close to the people who matter.
Been live now for 2 months and must say the adoption did not reach my expectations, started to think I have chosen a wrong market or I just dont do marketing well.
I would appreacite any keen eye to test it and give me honest feedback if this is something you would use with your friends and loved ones. Thank you
The extension is called Caroluma.
It's been 2 month since I pusblished my extension and I managed to get only 13 users, starting to think I might have build a wrong thing for the wrong market. Most of the users come from my circle being asked politelly to try it and provide feedback. Some of it is helpful and they asked for new features and they are using it however I see no excitemet really and no new users are coming in. So here I am, asking for an advice, I have a feeling I should aim for 100 users just to get a clear idea if this will work in the long term.
Will take any advice how to scale this further and will have an immence gratitude if you try it and give me your honest feedback.
Chrome extension is called Caroluma, its a platform allowing to share photos with a selective group of people in a new tab.
A while ago I started using Claude Code, prompting my way into building software with no formal coding background. Driven by plain curiosity about what these tools could actually do.
Somewhere along the way that turned into building a real product. Caroluma was born, and it's the best proof I have that there's no better way to learn than to do.
It's not a one-time lesson, it's an ongoing experience, and the more I stay in it, the more it keeps pulling me deeper into engineering concepts. A few things I'm noticing along the way:
Systems thinking keeps growing on me. I find myself paying more and more attention to how real engineering teams actually produce code, how they build in quality assurance, and how to compress those processes down to something a one-person team can run without dropping the ball.
Skill production is becoming my main productivity lever, not writing more code faster, but building reusable skills and workflows that compound over time.
As a PM I already thought in trade-offs and failure modes. What's different is the daily hands-on coding, it keeps pulling me into a rabbit hole where I have to actually understand what's behind a problem and how to fix it, not just describe it.
Security and privacy are turning into a real design constraint for me, not an afterthought or a checkbox before launch.
Cost optimization is becoming a real discipline. How the database is set up and how much traffic it handles directly hits the bill, so I keep learning to make it efficient, not just functional.
The net effect: I keep spending more time hardening and optimizing the platform than writing new features, and I keep caring more about technical quality than I expected to going in.
Building with AI didn't just help me ship faster. It keeps pulling me deeper into the engineering side than I planned to go, and that's the real education, still very much in progress.
So here I am with a working product that might lighten your day if you give it a chance and share it with your friends and loved ones. You can do me a favor: try it out and give me your honest feedback. Would love to find reasons to improve it if it proved useful.
A while ago I started using Claude Code, prompting my way into building software with no formal coding background. Driven by plain curiosity about what these tools could actually do.
Somewhere along the way that turned into building a real product. Caroluma (caroluma.com) was born, and it's the best proof I have that there's no better way to learn than to do.
It's not a one-time lesson, it's an ongoing experience, and the more I stay in it, the more it keeps pulling me deeper into engineering concepts. A few things I'm noticing along the way:
- Systems thinking keeps growing on me. I find myself paying more and more attention to how real engineering teams actually produce code, how they build in quality assurance, and how to compress those processes down to something a one-person team can run without dropping the ball.
- Skill production is becoming my main productivity lever, not writing more code faster, but building reusable skills and workflows that compound over time.
- As a PM I already thought in trade-offs and failure modes. What's different is the daily hands-on coding, it keeps pulling me into a rabbit hole where I have to actually understand what's behind a problem and how to fix it, not just describe it.
- Security and privacy are turning into a real design constraint for me, not an afterthought or a checkbox before launch.
- Cost optimization is becoming a real discipline. How the database is set up and how much traffic it handles directly hits the bill, so I keep learning to make it efficient, not just functional.
The net effect: I keep spending more time hardening and optimizing the platform than writing new features, and I keep caring more about technical quality than I expected to going in.
Building with AI didn't just help me ship faster. It keeps pulling me deeper into the engineering side than I planned to go, and that's the real education, still very much in progress.
So here I am with a working product that might lighten your day if you give it a chance and share it with your friends and loved ones. You can do me a favor: try it out and give me your honest feedback. Would love to find reasons to improve it if it proved useful.
Every day I open a new tab and stare at... a search bar and a grid of icons. Same thing, every single time.
So I built Caroluma, a Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a full-screen photo frame. Drop in your own photos, or share an album with friends and family, and every new tab becomes a little moment instead of a blank slate.
Here's a personal album I made, photos from Lutry, the small Swiss village I currenlty live in: \[https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49\\\](https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49)
Would love feedback, happy to answer questions.
Every day I open a new tab and stare at... a search bar and a grid of icons. Same thing, every single time.
So I built Caroluma, a Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a full-screen photo frame. Drop in your own photos, or share an album with friends and family, and every new tab becomes a little moment instead of a blank slate.
Here's a personal album I made, photos from Lutry, the small Swiss village I currenlty live in: [https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49\](https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49)
Would love feedback, happy to answer questions.
Every day I open a new tab and stare at... a search bar and a grid of icons. Same thing, every single time.
So I built Caroluma, a Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a full-screen photo frame. Drop in your own photos, or share an album with friends and family, and every new tab becomes a little moment instead of a blank slate.
Here's a personal album I made, photos from Lutry, the small Swiss village on Lake Geneva where I live: https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49
Would love feedback, happy to answer questions.
Every day I open a new tab and stare at... a search bar and a grid of icons. Same thing, every single time.
So I built Caroluma, a Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a full-screen photo frame. Drop in your own photos, or share an album with friends and family, and every new tab becomes a little moment instead of a blank slate.
Here's a personal album I made, photos from Lutry, the small Swiss village I currenlty live in: https://app.caroluma.com/invite?token=d83f015b-0f49-47d6-8f37-5b7be5b6ca49
Would love feedback, happy to answer questions.
Every new tab used to be seconds of nothing. Now it's a photo of my girlfriend and me, or frineds and family, whatever the shared album we're all in decided to show.
Caroluma replaces your new tab with your own photos. You can keep a personal album just for yourself, or create a shared album with anyone (screenshot above shows one I made with my girlfriend, she can add photos too and they show up on my new tab automatically).
Also has a clock, weather, Spotify controls, and a like counter on each photo so you know which ones people actually enjoy.
No account required for personal use, nothing gets uploaded anywhere for your private photos.
Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/caroluma-photo-new-tab-sh/hlhehpieahmocabpdimofplllpgchanl
Would love feedback, especially on what would make the shared album feature more useful for couples/families.
