Solo dev ships SaaS with 500+ commits in 5 months using AI-assisted development

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A developer with 17 years of experience, including 12 in team leadership, launched RetroPoint, a team management SaaS platform, between April and September 2026 working alone. The project began as a hypothesis: could a working MVP be built in one month using a $20 Cursor subscription at just three to four hours per evening, four days a week. Over five months, development spanned 500+ commits, 61 phases, and seven production modules covering retrospectives, Planning Poker, OKRs, 1-on-1 meetings, Performance Reviews, and more. The tool was built to solve a recurring problem the developer observed as a team lead — context and agreements becoming fragmented across calendars, chats, spreadsheets, and separate notes with no unified workflow. AI models including Claude Design were used to extend an original design created in 2022, enabling solo development that the author says would not have been realistic before recent advances in AI agents.

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