u/NoEffect1189

I'm a solo developer and I've been building TourKit for the past 3 weeks. Here's an honest breakdown of what I built, what broke, what I learned, and whether I should launch on Product Hunt.

What I built:

TourKit — a lightweight product tour SDK. One script tag, dashboard-controlled tours, works on any stack.

The core idea: most onboarding tour tools are either too expensive, too heavy, or require installing a library. I wanted something you could drop into any website in 5 minutes.

Stack I used:

- Next.js (App Router) — dashboard + docs + landing page

- Supabase — auth, database, row level security

- Vanilla JS SDK — no framework dependency, bundled with esbuild

- Vercel — hosting and deployments

- Anthropic API (Claude) — AI tour generator for Pro users

---

Biggest bugs I hit and fixed:

1. React 18 StrictMode double injection — SDK was loading twice causing overlapping tooltips. Fixed with an ID guard on the script tag.

2. localStorage seen flag — completing a tour on / was blocking tours on /dashboard. Fixed by making seen flags path-scoped (tourkit_seen_KEY_dashboard instead of tourkit_seen_KEY).

3. Client-side navigation — Next.js and React change URLs without reloading. SDK wasn't detecting this. Fixed by exposing a window.TourKit global API and calling TourKit.startFor(pathname) on route change.

4. Demo mode — needed tours to replay on every page in the sandbox without affecting real user seen flags. Fixed with a demo flag that skips localStorage writes entirely.

---

What I shipped:

- One script tag SDK (HTML, React, Next.js, Vue compatible)

- Dashboard to build and manage tours without redeploying

- URL-based tour triggers (context-aware tours per page)

- Analytics — starts, completions, skips, step drop-off

- Multi-page demo sandbox for testing

- AI tour step generator (Pro feature, powered by Claude)

---

Current status:

- Fully working and tested across React, Next.js, plain HTML

- Free plan: 1 project, basic analytics

- Pro plan: $19/month — unlimited projects + AI generator

- Live at: tourkit-phi.vercel.app

---

My honest questions:

1. What's missing that would make you actually use this?

2. Is $19/month reasonable or too high for a solo-built tool?

3. Should I launch on Product Hunt now or keep building?

Happy to share more about any part of the build. This community has been super helpful watching others build — figured it was time to share my own journey. 🙏

I'm a solo developer, and I've been building TourKit for the past 3 weeks. Here's an honest breakdown of what I built, what broke, what I learned, and whether I should launch on Product Hunt.

What I built:

TourKit — a lightweight product tour SDK. One script tag, dashboard-controlled tours, works on any stack.

The core idea: most onboarding tour tools are either too expensive, too heavy, or require installing a library. I wanted something you could drop into any website in 5 minutes.

Stack I used:

- Next.js (App Router) — dashboard + docs + landing page

- Supabase — auth, database, row-level security

- Vanilla JS SDK — no framework dependency, bundled with esbuild

- Vercel — hosting and deployments

- Anthropic API (Claude) — AI tour generator for Pro users

**Biggest bugs I hit and fixed:**

1. React 18 StrictMode double injection — SDK was loading twice, causing overlapping tooltips. Fixed with an ID guard on the script tag.

2. localStorage seen flag — completing a tour on / was blocking tours on /dashboard. Fixed by making the seen flags path-scoped (tourkit_seen_KEY_dashboard instead of tourkit_seen_KEY).

3. Client-side navigation — Next.js and React change URLs without reloading. SDK wasn't detecting this. Fixed by exposing a window.TourKit global API and calling TourKit.startFor(pathname) on route change.

4. Demo mode — needed tours to replay on every page in the sandbox without affecting real user seen flags. Fixed with a demo flag that skips localStorage writes entirely.

What I shipped:

- One script tag SDK (HTML, React, Next.js, Vue compatible)

- Dashboard to build and manage tours without redeploying

- URL-based tour triggers (context-aware tours per page)

- Analytics — starts, completions, skips, step drop-off

- Multi-page demo sandbox for testing

- AI tour step generator (Pro feature, powered by Claude)

Current status:

- Fully working and tested across React, Next.js, and plain HTML

- Free plan: 1 project, basic analytics

- Pro plan: $19/month — unlimited projects + AI generator

- Live at: tourkit-phi.vercel.app

My honest questions:

1. What's missing that would make you actually use this?

2. Is $19/month reasonable or too high for a solo-built tool?

3. Should I launch on Product Hunt now or keep building?

Happy to share more about any part of the build. This community has been super helpful watching others build — figured it was time to share my own journey. 🙏

Building a new feature for TourKit and wanted honest feedback from SaaS founders/devs 👀

Most onboarding tools use fixed linear tours:

Step 1 → Step 2 → Step 3

I’m experimenting with something more context-aware.

Example:

If a user lands directly on the settings page, the onboarding starts from settings instead of replaying the full tour.

If they click analytics first, the analytics onboarding appears dynamically.

Basically: adaptive onboarding instead of static onboarding.

Would this actually improve onboarding UX for your product? Or would you still prefer traditional fixed tours?

Trying to understand if this solves a real pain point before fully building it 🚀

Hey everyone 👋

I’ve been working on a small SaaS project called TourKit — a lightweight onboarding/product tour tool for websites and SaaS apps.

The idea started because most onboarding tools I tried felt:

too complex overloaded with enterprise features or visually outdated

So I decided to build something simpler and more developer-friendly.

What TourKit does

- Create step-by-step onboarding tours

- Highlight sections of a website/app

- Customize tooltip styles/themes

- Preview tours live before integration

- Add tours using a simple script

- One feature I’m really happy with The live preview system is dynamic per project, so users can test and customize their onboarding flow before adding it to their actual website.

I’m also adding:

- pre built tooltip UI styles

- customizable tour boxes/themes

Still polishing the runtime engine and overall UX, but it’s getting close to launch.

Would genuinely love feedback:

- What’s the most annoying part about onboarding tools?

- What feature would make you actually switch to a simpler product like this?

Thanks 🙌

Hey r/SaaS,

Been building TourKit for the past few weeks and just got payments working today.

It adds guided onboarding tours to any website via a script tag. Configure steps from a dashboard, and visitors get a walkthrough.

Built it because I kept seeing websites with zero onboarding, and existing tools like Appcues cost $300+/month.

Stack: Next.js, Supabase, vanilla JS SDK, Lemon Squeezy

Pricing: Free tier, $9/mo, $19/mo

Biggest lesson — I spent 3 days on tooltip animations and 1 day on payments. Should have been the other way around.

Curious if anyone here has dealt with the same problem — bad onboarding killing conversion rates?