Marinate
A wishlist that makes you wait 14 days before buying
2 followers
A wishlist that makes you wait 14 days before buying
2 followers
You see something you like. You buy it. Three days later you wonder why. Marinate forces you to wait 14 days before buying anything on your wishlist. Most things don't survive the wait. The ones that do? Guilt-free. 🚧 Early build — would love brutal feedback from anyone who tries it.
A bit more context for anyone curious — I had a Notion template called 'The Splurge Buster' that I used for a year before turning it into Marinate. Built out of Jakarta, been live 4 days, already have strangers from 12 countries trying it. Someone marinated a Gucci sneaker at 5am. Someone marinated a Hermès bag.
Free, no account needed, works on any browser. Add to homescreen for the full app experience.
Would genuinely love to know what you think — or what would make you actually use it daily.
An update:
Marinate is a fashion wishlist with a 14-day waiting rule. Add what you want, let it marinate, then decide to buy or pass. The "dodged" counter tracks money you didn't spend on impulse.
4 days live. 158 visitors, 12 countries, 37 items added. No app store, no marketing budget — just posts on Reddit, LinkedIn, and X. However, 158 visitors only 37 items added. Something's dropping off between arriving and actually adding a first item — and that's exactly what we're fixing next.
Until today visitors landed straight in the app — no intro, no context, no explanation of what they were looking at. Not ideal for anyone who didn't already know what Marinate was. So we built a proper website first. It explains the concept, shows how it works, and earns the click into the app rather than demanding it.
Copy iterations: Tagline went through ~15 options before landing on "patience looks good on you." The pitch shifted from "makes you wait" to "helps you find out which things are worth buying." Friction-focused vs outcome-focused. Outcome converts better.
Fashion-first positioning: The app works for anything. But narrow positioning wins early. "Your capsule wardrobe, considered." is a clearer promise to a clearer person.
Also added tab counters — "⏳ Marinating (12)" is more useful than just "⏳ Marinating" when you're managing a real wishlist.
Brutal feedback welcome as always.
Hey PH 👋 Week 1 update:
What shipped:
🪞 Reflection feature — 3 days after any purchase, Marinate asks: how's it wearing? Worth it, Half-baked, or Still deciding. Self-reported, no judgement. Born from buying a limited release shirt before my own 14-day rule said I could.
💱 Multi-currency — set your main currency once, every price converts automatically. USD, IDR, GBP, EUR, AUD, SGD, JPY, MYR supported.
🎨 8 distinct item states — each with a meaningful colour. Gold for Worth it. Blue for pending reflection. Filled amber for Time to decide.
Honest status: Nobody has completed a full organic 14-day loop yet. App is 8 days old. Real proof of concept still coming.
A patience app that needs patience to validate. 🫙
→ marinateit.app
Hey PH 👋
Shipping a meaningful update to Marinate today — the reflection feature.
The backstory: I broke my own 14-day rule. A limited drop from a brand I love. Bought it early. No regrets. But Marinate would've called it "half-baked" — bought too early. That didn't sit right.
The 14-day rule isn't the point. The point is: was it a good purchase?
So now, 3 days after any purchase — early or not — Marinate asks:
🏅 Worth it
👀 Half-baked
One tap. Permanent. No lecture.
Over time you start to see your own patterns — which purchases you stand behind, which ones you knew were impulse the moment you pressed buy. That's the data worth having.
Would love to hear what you think. marinateit.app
Hey PH 👋
Day 9 update on Marinate — the wishlist app with a 14-day waiting rule.
This week I ran a face to face user test. Handed the app, no instructions. She couldn't add a single item.
Best thing that happened all week.
What I learned and shipped:
→ The URL input had no context. Users didn't know what kind of links to paste. Fixed with a clear instruction block — eyebrow + body, one unified component.
→ Scrape errors existed but were invisible. The app auto-scrolled past the error into the form. Users had no idea what went wrong. Fixed: error now sits right below the input, doesn't scroll away, auto-dismisses after 5 seconds with a manual X.
→ Swapped the scraper from ScraperAPI to Firecrawl. Cleaner markdown output, better Claude extraction quality. Some sites block bots entirely — I've accepted that and moved on.
Also shipped this week:
- 3 days left nudge card: when an item has 3 days left, Marinate asks "still excited about this one?"
- Reflection feature: 3 days post-purchase, Marinate asks "was it a good purchase?" 🏅 Worth it or 👀 Half-baked. Permanent. One tap.
- Hypothesis-driven analytics: cleaned up Plausible, added 3 new events tied directly to critical hypotheses.
Still validating: does the 14-day rule change behaviour, do users come back, is impulse restraint a felt pain.
Earliest meaningful data: end of April.
marinateit.app — free, no account needed.
Day 15 update —
3 verified users (one fully organic, found me through LinkedIn). Zero ad spend.
The signal I was hoping for just landed: my first organic user marinated a MacBook for a week and decided not to buy it. He said he felt relieved.
What shipped since launch:
Full sign in/out flow
Supabase backend sync (items now persist across devices)
Confirmation dialogs at every purchase decision
Auto country detection
Resend OTP
50+ timezone mappings
Still one person building this solo with AI assistance. Still free. Still learning.
If you haven't tried it: marinateit.app — would love brutal feedback.