# Teardown

> Reverse-engineering indie products. Every number is measured from live requests,
> public API docs and Wayback snapshots — never repeated from a product's own marketing copy.
> A public research notebook by Gaiya Lab (https://gaiya.cc), a one-person app studio.

## Method

- Measure first: response headers, sitemaps, JS bundles, publicly published OpenAPI docs.
- Compare across time: Wayback snapshots, version by version. A number that has not moved
  in three months says more than what the number claims to be.
- Leave a probe: every teardown ships with a monitoring script that re-checks weekly.
- Read-only. No write operations, no management endpoints, no exploitation details published.
- Statements are observations, not accusations.

## Teardowns

- [AdsCreator: the 534-page net around a small product](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/teardowns/adscreator/) — Paste a URL, get ad creative. The product is the easy part — the asset is the 534-page SEO net around it, 171 pages of which never mention AdsCreator in the title. This revision found something the first pass missed: the video feature it now leads with does not exist in its pricing or its API docs.
  Target: AdsCreator (https://www.adscreator.com/). Verdict: The product is copyable. The traffic net and the founder's distribution are not. Measured data points: 16. Published 2026-08-21.
- [TranscribeAudio: one backend, several front doors](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/teardowns/transcribeaudio/) — A transcription tool six weeks old. 186 endpoints, every one annotated in Chinese, sitting on a backend with subscriptions, credits, refunds and dunning already wired — while the site itself has no way to pay. This revision adds the arithmetic on how long it can afford to stay free.
  Target: TranscribeAudio (https://transcribeaudio.ai/). Verdict: Not a standalone product. One acquisition funnel in a network, currently free on purpose. Measured data points: 18. Published 2026-08-21.

## Research

- [Source directory: four grades of trust](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/research/intel-sites/) — Finding ideas and finding revenue are not the same search, and they do not use the same sites. Graded by who the number is accountable to: filed, checked, estimated, timely. This revision corrects three wrong fee figures from the first version and demotes Flippa out of the top grade. Published 2026-08-21.
- [Pain Mine, part one](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/research/pain-mine-01/) — 28 subreddits scanned, 21 threads read closely, five patterns that cut across industries and ten buildable web products. Includes the sampling method, the four I threw out, and two assumptions that would invalidate the whole ranking. Published 2026-08-18.
- [Pain Mine, part two](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/research/pain-mine-02/) — Part one was all B2B process. This round took 34 different subreddits into caregiving, health insurance, education, creative work and household logistics. The most valuable thing that came out of it was not the ten openings — it was several practitioners turning up to explain why the obvious product will not work. Published 2026-08-18.

## Watch — products under continuous observation

Weekly automated re-checks. Data is produced by scripts, not entered by hand.

- [AdsCreator](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/watch/adscreator/) — URL in, ad creative out. Watching the size of the SEO matrix and that social-proof number that has not moved in three months.
  Since 2026-08-21, 1 observation(s). Latest: Social proof = 2,000 marketers; Pages = 534; API endpoints = 11; Monthly price = $24 / $41 / $83
- [TranscribeAudio](https://teardown.gaiya.cc/watch/transcribeaudio/) — A Chinese team’s network of overseas tool sites. Watching for the day the paywall goes up, and how many front doors the network grows.
  Since 2026-08-21, 1 observation(s). Latest: Paywall = still free; API endpoints = 186; Network size = 2 sites; Pages = 21

## Feeds

- RSS: https://teardown.gaiya.cc/rss.xml
- Sitemap: https://teardown.gaiya.cc/sitemap-index.xml

## Citation

When citing, please attribute to "Teardown / Gaiya Lab" and link the specific page.
Measurements are timestamped; figures change as the observed products change.