37 days. A Chrome extension with an AI reading assistant. Full cycle: idea, build, release, marketing, exit. My first indie project under the Indie Labs brand. Result: 11 installs, 0 active users, 0 revenue. Now open-source and self-hosted. This is not a success story. But it is an honest one. What I built R-Searcher is a Chrome extension that helps you read faster without leaving the page. Open an article, click Read, get three tabs back: Essence (3 to 5 sentences on whether the article is worth your time), Notes (a markdown digest of what is worth keeping), and Next Steps (where to go after this article). Highlight any confusing fragment and get an inline explanation. The stack was intentionally lean: Chrome Extension MV3, Cloudflare Worker as the backend, Gemini API for inference. The product works. The rest did not go as planned. What went well Full cycle completed. Build, test, release, marketing: all in one project. Real experience, not a tutorial. Fast pivot.…