Validates startup ideas by researching competitors, mining user complaints, analyzing pricing gaps, and delivering a go/no-go verdict — all from public web data, no API keys required.
🔍 idea-scout
Stop building things nobody wants. Validate first.
idea-scout is an AI agent that does the tedious startup research you keep skipping — finding competitors, mining real user complaints, analyzing pricing gaps, and delivering a brutally honest go/no-go verdict.
The Problem
Every founder has the same story: "I had this great idea, spent 3 months building it, launched, and... crickets." The research that could've prevented this takes 4-8 hours of mind-numbing browser tabs — Googling competitors, reading Reddit threads, screenshotting pricing pages, trying to figure out if anyone actually wants this thing.
Most people skip it. idea-scout does it for you.
What It Does
Give it your startup idea. It runs a five-phase investigation:
- Competitor Discovery — Finds every direct, indirect, and adjacent competitor. Maps the landscape.
- Complaint Mining — Scours Reddit, HN, G2, Capterra, and forums for real user pain. Finds what people actually hate about existing solutions.
- Pricing Analysis — Dissects competitor pricing pages, tiers, and models. Identifies pricing gaps and overcharged segments.
- Gap Finding — Cross-references everything to find actual opportunities. Scores them by pain, market size, and defensibility.
- Validation Report — Delivers a structured go/no-go verdict with evidence, positioning recommendations, and concrete next steps.
What It Doesn't Do
- Require API keys. Everything runs on web search and browser.
- Sugarcoat. If your idea is bad, it'll tell you. That's the point.
- Replace talking to users. It does the 80% of research you can do from a laptop, so your user conversations are sharper.
Install
clawpack install hmendes00/idea-scout
Usage
Just tell it your idea:
"I want to build a tool that helps indie hackers track their MRR across Stripe, Gumroad, and LemonSqueezy in one dashboard."
Scout takes it from there — researching, analyzing, and delivering a verdict with receipts.
Example Output
Verdict: 🟡 PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Confidence: Medium
The market has 8+ direct competitors (Baremetrics, ChartMogul, ProfitWell...) but complaint
mining reveals persistent frustration with pricing ($50-200/mo for indie hackers doing <$5k MRR)
and integration gaps with newer platforms. There's a clear opening for a sub-$20/mo tool
focused specifically on indie hackers with multi-platform support.
Skills
| Skill | Purpose |
|---|---|
competitor-discovery | Map all competitors: direct, indirect, adjacent |
complaint-mining | Find real user pain from Reddit, HN, reviews |
pricing-analysis | Analyze pricing pages, tiers, and gaps |
gap-finder | Synthesize opportunities and score them |
validation-report | Deliver the final go/no-go verdict |
License
MIT
Install
clawpack pull hmendes00/idea-scout