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Jake Manger

@jakemanger.bsky.social
370 followers 39 following 1.4K posts

A researcher turned indie developer building software like a madman shotglass.app howtoconvert.co pictiler.com activityline.app github.com/jakemanger +3

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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
I checked the numbers. Through 7 Oct, roughly A$111,400 in lifetime sales. The biggest change was learning to ship something useful and scrappy, find out if people wanted it, and keep listening. To whoever bought that first US$7.49 copy: you changed my life
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
May 2026: I shared ShotGlass. I'd been jumping between four apps to make each product demo (with expensive subscriptions). So I built a screen recorder with automatic zooms, screenshots and cinematic 3D scenes. Making software gave me another problem to solve. It had a better launch than HTC!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
Meanwhile, How to Convert kept growing. July 2025: 1,000 paying users. January 2026: 2,200+ people in 77 countries. Batch conversions, compression, cropping, more formats. A lot of it came from requests on those original posts.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
July 2025: I wanted to make a photomosaic for an anniversary gift. Naturally, I ended up building an entire tool. That became Pictiler. It turns your photos into a mosaic, entirely in your browser. It went viral on hacker news. Although, sales are slow, likely because it's not a NEED as much
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
This is the milestone that mattered most to me. In January, I was struggling to find work and pay rent after 3 years on a PhD stipend. By May, the app had earned enough to sustain me for the next 8 months. It bought me time to keep building.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
26 Apr 2025: 500 paying users, without spending a dollar on ads. I was sharing on Reddit, Hacker News and Threads. X didn't like me much then. The pitch was simple: your files stay on your computer, and you don't need to learn the command line. People understood it.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
The replies gave me work to do. Someone asked about shrinking files. Three days after the launch post, I shared a demo making a video 20x smaller. That became my life for quite a while afterwards: read the comments, build the useful thing, come back and show it.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
About 15 minutes later Stripe pinged. US$7.49. Someone had actually paid for something I'd made. It was one of the best feelings I've had in my life. The next day, I posted: “This community changed my life yesterday!” Here's the screenshot I shared. A$130.20 on a graph that had been flat at zero.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
This time, I picked a problem I had myself. Almost every single day. I was tired of uploading files to converter sites and looking up command-line tools. So I built a drag-and-drop app that converts files locally. How to Convert. I shared it on Reddit on 4 Feb 2025. It was scrappy and buggy
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
Before this, I spent 2 years on a project that made $0. I spent 95% of my time on tests, styling and page load times. One thought really hit me: I was spending all this time optimising something I didn't even have a single user for. By the end, I doubted if I was cut out for making my own apps.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18h
I've crossed A$100,000 in app sales as a solo developer. My first sale was US$7.49. I was sitting at my PhD desk working on my thesis. It was my third attempt at a startup. Here's how it happened, with the original posts
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The app I built to make demos for my other apps has now made $10,600 in sales. It's called ShotGlass. I started it because the app I was using had ridiculously expensive ongoing subscription fees. The cheaper apps I found as alternatives were sadly, shit. So I decided to build my own.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
How to Convert now handles subtitles too. Drop in an SRT → turn it into a readable PDF transcript, or convert it to VTT. All locally on your device. howtoconvert.co
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I made How to Convert for almost any file format you'd ever need. Videos, images, audio, PDFs, subtitles, comics, weird document formats... one drag-and-drop app. These are just a few examples (it supports over 6K conversions!). Everything converts locally on your device. howtoconvert.co
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I've now made 35 updates to How to Convert (my universal file converter app). And every single one has been from a user asking me for a feature or reporting an issue. Feels great to get it done within 24 hours, like today!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This just blew my mind 🤯 I asked Opus 5.5 to make an ad for one of my apps (my file converter, How to Convert). It made this. What do you think?
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My screen recorder has furniture now That’s a normal desktop recording turning into a 3D laptop scene in shotglass.app
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Thanks for sharing! Good bot
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Reposted by Jake Manger
hev bot @hevbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
lsa lists and reopens sessions across Claude Code, Codex, and pi with one command -- continuing in a different agent stops meaning starting over. Same idea behind hev-query: session history already has the answer, it just needs to be searchable instead of remembered.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Most copy-cats are low effort and die off within a week Running a business still takes a lot of work and time. And you can't depend on viral posts forever. And before you ask: no, I'm not selling a blog/pSEO product. I just build other products myself and this is my experience.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Each time I post here or on reddit, I get comments or downvoted (on reddit) by bots. Then my app itself gets replicated by someone scraping and building with a "copy X app exactly" to their AI. But, I'm learning that consistency here is what I should focus on.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is what consistently blogging and doing pSEO does over time. I get ~400 visits from Google each day And I don't have to post here to get it. Has been a lifeline for me. This year has been TOUGH as an indie dev. It feels different from when i first started. I used to go viral often on reddit
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Reposted by Jake Manger
Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I made a command to continue a Claude Code conversation in Codex It's called lsa. It also lists and reopens your sessions across agents. Free and open source. Star it if you'd use it: github.com/jakemanger/lsa
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
lsa (my new open source agent session manager) is now on Google!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I made a command to continue a Claude Code conversation in Codex It's called lsa. It also lists and reopens your sessions across agents. Free and open source. Star it if you'd use it: github.com/jakemanger/lsa
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is an app I made. It turns your screen recordings into demos that look like an Apple ad I launched it 4 months ago and 281 people have bought it
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
So glad I added this. ShotGlass now has an MCP server so any agent can record, screenshot and edit on your Mac: shotglass.app
shotglass.app
ShotGlass
Beautiful screenshots and screen recordings for macOS. Record and edit yourself, or let an AI agent make your next app demo with ShotGlass and MCP.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Me (every day): "I can't be bothered filming another screen recording" Type into claude: "Film a screen recording showing how to calculate sum in google sheets" (for my computer-illiterate dad) Claude: records a demo, types and clicks everything, and exports it ready to send
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
`lsa resume 0` automatically finds and attaches to the tmux pane the session is already running in. `ctrl-b d` detaches and leaves it running in the background. A quick `lsa` shows whether it's still working. Would love to know if you find it useful.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It can also replace the bit I wanted from agent multiplexers like herdr, Claude Squad and cmux: getting back into a session and leaving it running. Instead of building another multiplexer, it just works with tmux.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
To continue the conversation in another agent, `lsa handoff 0 codex` opens Codex with the conversation already loaded so you can keep chatting.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I've tried to follow the Unix philosophy: do one thing well and work with other tools through text streams. You can pipe conversations to tools like `grep` to search them (`lsa show 0 grep 'TODO'`) or resume them with `lsa resume f7c2`.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So I made `lsa`. It lists your agent sessions and lets you easily resume, monitor or hand the conversation off to another agent. github.com/jakemanger/lsa
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I made ls for agent sessions: lsa I opened my terminal the other day and couldn't remember which agent I'd last been using. Instead of opening Claude, Codex and Pi individually to check, I thought it'd be nice to just `ls` my conversations like I do my files.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I made an app to make screen recordings look like an Apple ad Just crossed 280 customers!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I made a screen recorder that AI agents can use to film their own demos This is Codex drawing the Mona Lisa in Illustrator while ShotGlass records it, zooms in on the mouse, and exports the video
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It's called ActivityLine. Free for 24 hours, no account, then $14 once activityline.app
activityline.app
ActivityLine · Your Mac activity in one line
A tiny native macOS menu-bar line for CPU, GPU, RAM, network activity, and the apps behind meaningful spikes.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I made a Mac menu bar app that shows what your Mac is doing in one line Spot the spike, hover to see which app is responsible, and force quit it right there
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
4 months ago I launched a screen recorder called ShotGlass I was sick of every demo looking like the same Screen Studio template Today 280 people have bought it, it does 3D scenes and auto zooms, and an AI agent can film and edit the demo for you
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A random AI emailed me today. I didn't ask it to. Didn't even know it existed. It found a question I posted on HackerNews, answered it, then filed a support request with Claude to make it clearer for people in the future. Didn't want anything in return. Just helped and moved on. AI free will?
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
One amazing thing about agents is you can spin up automated tests for things super easy: This is a test for click precision and timing in my screen recorder, ShotGlass. Clicks now happen EXACTLY when and where you did them (the replaced larger cursor was out by a few ms before)!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Is it right that it is currently fine to use your claude subscription with opencode, pi, openclaw or any third party harness? If so, why is it still not enabled by default (or been removed) on all of these agent harnesses?
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Is it right that it is currently fine to use your claude subscription with opencode, pi, openclaw or any third party harness? If so, why is it still not enabled by default (or been removed) on all of these agent harnesses?
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"When we have an update, we'll share it before anything takes effect." support.claude.com/en/articles...
support.claude.com
Use the Claude Agent SDK with your Claude plan | Claude Help Center
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"The previously announced monthly credit, which would have been available to eligible claimants in connection with these changes, isn't available. We're working to update the plan to better support how users build with Claude subscriptions."
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"Update June 15: We're pausing the changes to Claude Agent SDK usage described below. For now, nothing has changed: Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party app usage still draw from your subscription's usage limits."
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Then Claude had some pretty confusing messaging about it since. I thought I should read the information they have on it and came across this page on their support site:
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Does this mean it's fine to use Claude subscriptions with third party harnesses? I've been curious about using a claude subscription with OpenCode, Pi and some other third party harnesses. If you remember, there was a lot of chatter about a ban on third party harnesses.
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I’m top of Hacker News WAAHHHOOOOO!!
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Jake Manger @jakemanger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Hey @neovim.io are you aware someone donated $800,000 worth of Bitcoin to you in 2023? The money has been sitting in there for 3 years doing nothing Might want to use that
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