vdalhambra

For developer tools specifically: distribution.

Building the tool is the easy part now. The hard part is the months of showing up — being in the right directories, answering questions on the right forums, maintaining docs, responding to issues at 2am. That compounds into trust, and trust doesn't copy in days.

I've been building open-source MCP servers for Claude. The technical work took weeks. Getting into 8+ directories, building a community track record, being mentioned in the right places — that part took much longer and a copier would have to start from zero on all of it. By then you're on v2.