built a free Chrome extension for Bolt that's got 1500+ users in 3 weeks, and I can’t even code.

I've been using Bolt a lot recently, and while it's already obviously powerful, I found myself wanting a few extra features to save tokens and improve results. So I built a Chrome extension that adds some handy tools on top of Bolt.

Some highlights:

Component Selector – easily reference specific parts of your project when prompting.

Prompt & component libraries – grab pre-built prompts and 1000+ UI components with a quick command.

Voice prompting - for that pure vibe coding experience

Recreate any web page – type `/copy`, enter a URL, and get React code for Bolt to work with.

Instant API text docs – type `/api` to pull in relevant docs without wasting tokens.

Go-Live checklist – a built-in list to make sure you don’t forget key steps before launch.

here’s what I learned

1/ identify your audience first. make sure the Total Addressable Audience is meaningful enough to target.

I chose bolt users as there are 3 million, and I myself was a heavy user and early adopter.

I also wanted to avoid the cold-start problem where I would have to educate people about why they need this product.

2/ research before building to pre-validate. find where your audience is active and note down all the relevant posts.

chuck them into chatgpt and identify painpoint categories, and narrow down the scope for your v1

I trawled reddit, X, discord and youtube and discovered some quick wins that would solve some painful issues people were having.

3/ study up on how chrome extensions are architected.

I asked chatgpt for a breakdown, and started Supercharge using Bolt, and knowing the basic schema to use from the outset saved a lot of time.

4/ take the time to plan first, and upload those docs to Bolt etc.

it honestly makes such a difference to get consistent results. you need a PRD, user flow, API docs, implementation guide at least. Especially important as this wasn’t a standard web (or mobile) app that Bolt is hard-wired to build.

5/ respect the mothership.

by which I mean, if you’re building a permissionless project like mine, whereby your product is directly dependent on another, this impacts your strategy and roadmap.

I call this “feature colinization”.

be prepared to iterate super fast and spread your bets on how your adding value. The Bolt team is amazing at shipping high quality features and updates at speed, so I have to account for that.

it means I don’t have complete control over my own roadmap, but it’s a trade off that pays off:

as Bolt improves their product, this should bring in more users to Supercharge too - so long as I’m thinking ahead.

6/ think about monetisation from the beginning, even if you launch as a free product.

I wanted Supercharge to always be free, as that’s how I can grow my customer base as quickly as possible in a fast-moving sector where anything can be copied.

there are costs I’ve chosen to incur, with APIs and Bolt and now Windsurf tokens.

but charging for features is tough when I don’t know which ones will still be exclusive to Supercharge and which ones will be shipped by Bolt.

I had some ideas on how to monetise, but brainstorming with Greg Isenberg’s Stattup Empire community, has made me realise I wasn’t thinking big enough. highly recommend joining!

7) community building is critical when you don’t have any email addresses with chrome extensions, you don’t get any access from Google as to the details of your customers.

so I’ve made a deliberate effort here on X and in the Supercharge discord, to reach them that way

8) get your ‘user permission’ reasons from the AI coding tool you use -Chrome store requires every extension to submit reasons why they need particular data and access permissions. get these wrong and you might not get approved for weeks!