Federico Sciuca

I'm a marketer, not an engineer. I build AI-native products solo and post the real numbers — even the failures. Building MonkeyTravel. Italian, in Texas.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

I left Italy for Texas knowing nobody on this continent.
☀️By day: marketing analytics.
🌙 By night: I build AI-native products solo with Claude Code
and I post the real numbers.

The good ones and the embarrassing ones.

What I'm working on right now:
- MonkeyTravel, an AI trip planner: 200+ users, 1M search impressions, zero paid marketing
- a 30B model compressed to 2-bit, running on a 6GB GPU from 2016 (independent research paper)
- an Android-based AI OS that runs commands without reading your screen

Many previous projects got little or no traction. I'll show you why.

If you build, market, or invest in this stuff, say hi.

I reply to everyone.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

vibe coding did not make coding easy. it moved the hard part from writing code to understanding code you did not write. the bill always comes due at debug time.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

how to check if your JS app is secretly invisible to Google, one command. curl your own url with a Googlebot user agent and read the raw HTML it returns. if your content is not in there, Google cannot see it either. i learned this the expensive way.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@borgerntendies I’m wish! Nope!
Open source free for everyone with clear instructions to assemble it, links to the components, providing the setup.

You just get the list and the guide and assemble it with minimum effort. USB in, flash the chip and done. Easier than what it sounds 😂

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

HOLD ON!!

OpenAI's Codex Micro shipped today at $230.

13 keys, a knob, a joystick, RGB. Every bit of that is commodity. I priced the BOM at ~$12:

• RP2040-Zero — $3
• 13× Outemu Crystal — $2.50
• 13× SK6812 MINI-E — $2
• EC11 encoder — $0.40
• Thumbstick — $1
• Wire — $1
• 70g PETG — $1.50

(AliExpress pricing. ~$48 if you buy retail in the US.)

But there's one feature you can't clone with parts: the keys light up to show what your agents are doing.

That isn't hardware. That's ~50 lines of Python and a Claude Code hook:

PreToolUse → amber (waiting on you)
PostToolUse → green
Notification → red
Stop → blue fade

Theirs only speaks Codex.

Mine will speak Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI — whatever ships next.

The $230 is the enclosure. The moat is a shell script.

Building it in public.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@gezimqaili I’m building it and open source it. 15$ of components

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@AIHacksByMK 15$ of actual components… I’m considering to open source the project!

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

I’m considering leveraging on my own Enterprise level boilerplate to build publicly one project per week showing everything.

Maybe starting from mid September.

I’m not thinking about 1 feature tools or website but valuable products that I can build and launch in 1 week (working at night basically)

Anyone interested? Should I do it?

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@J7K_dev I gave up on sleep at this point! 18-20h per day working on several project and my 9-5 (that it is a 9-6 in reality most of the time) 😂

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@DanielSmidstrup It’s all about the process and what you can learn from the failure!! I have a graveyard of failures and half completed projects and an even bigger pool of ideas to tap into if I wanted 😂

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@chooserich What about an open source version that works with anything and not only codex?

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@craigweiss $89 for this. I can send you one of these with the keyboard as well 😂

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@founder_sohan Just posting replying and getting comments and likes improves your karma. In some communities you need a minimum karma level in order to post

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@founder_sohan Changing too many things at the same time add noise, then you wouldn’t know which one of the changes actually worked

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

how i find what is actually broken in my funnel, and it is not the dashboard. open session replay. watch 5 people who bounced. write down the exact second they leave. fix that one thing. repeat. 20 minutes taught me more than a month of guessing.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@founder_sohan It’s a good question but yesterday I was researching online the pieces for a fun prototype to open source and I’m pretty sure you can get it around 15$/20$.

You pay the design, the brand.

But it is more fun if you could buy a kit as well 😂

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

MonkeyTravel impressions are decreasing after the last series of edits with the goal of boosting CTR.

Clicks are still in a good uptrend and new users are flowing.

It might be seasonality considering that we are talking about a trip planning tool. Most people might have already planned their vacations.

Let's see how it evolves in the next 2 weeks.

One of the main Markets right now is Italy and July and August are the two months when people actually travel and get their vacations.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

unpopular take. your AI app does not have a product problem. it has a distribution problem wearing a product costume. mine had 7 minute sessions and 6 signups. the product was never the thing holding it back.

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@shiri_shh 12$ of components (45$ buying them from Amazon) it might going to be my Open Source product actually

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@charles_maddock Activity monitor more than 100M for just checking on what is up and running! I’m sure Codex or Claude code can build the same in a day, run it in 10M and have AI telling you what is the process or application that waste most of the memory!

[Federico Sciuca @federico_sciuca]

@danielkleach @athcanft I keep saying that, distribution is key! And it is even more valuable in a world where anyone can code a simple app!