In the spring of 2025, an anonymous developer known only as “Alex” turned a lazy weekend frustration into a seven-figure empire. The weapon? A 47-line Python script that solved one of the internet’s most overlooked pain points: prompt fatigue. While millions hammered ChatGPT with one-off instructions, Alex built a dead-simple web app that let users create, save, and share custom AI personas in seconds. The result: $2 million in annualized revenue within six months, zero employees, and a product so sticky that churn hovered below 5%. This is the story of how a micro-SaaS built on Streamlit and OpenAI’s API became the poster child for the AI-first gold rush.
The Spark: Death by Copy-Paste
Late 2024. Alex, a freelance prompt engineer, was tired of re-typing the same 300-word system prompts for every client. “Sassy marketing coach,” “ruthless VC investor,” “pirate chef with a PhD in thermodynamics”—each persona required meticulous setup. Copy, paste, tweak, repeat. One Sunday, fueled by cold brew and righteous annoyance, Alex sketched a solution: a persona library where users could generate, name, and one-click-load any AI character. The MVP took three hours. The script? Forty-seven lines of Python, including imports and whitespace.
The Stack: Minimalism on Steroids
No Kubernetes, no microservices, no $500K seed round. The tech stack was gloriously spartan:
- Backend : Python + OpenAI API (GPT-4 for prompt generation, GPT-4-turbo for chat).
- Frontend: Streamlit (one file, instant deployment).
- Storage: A single `personas.json` file (later swapped for SQLite at 5K users).
- Hosting: A $10/month VPS; later Render.com when traffic spiked.
- Payments: Stripe Checkout embedded in 12 lines.
Total lines of code at launch: 47. Total monthly burn: $37 .
The Magic Loop: Meta-Prompting Meets UX
The script’s genius lay in its recursive prompt engineering . Users typed a short description—“A stoic Roman emperor who gives startup advice”—and the app fired a meta-prompt to GPT-4:
> “You are a world-class prompt engineer. Craft a vivid, reusable system prompt for an AI persona based on this description. Include tone, expertise, quirks, and response constraints.”
The output became the persona’s DNA. Users named it (“Marcus_Aurelius_CEO”), hit save, and instantly chatted with their new alter ego. A JSON dictionary stored every creation, turning ephemeral prompts into persistent IP .
Virality Engine: Shareability Baked In
Alex shipped v0.1 to GitHub with a README that read like a dare: “Stop copy-pasting your AI souls. Build them once, summon them forever.” Early adopters—writers, coaches, D&D dungeon masters—went feral. A “Share Persona” button exported prompts as markdown. TikTok exploded with demos: “Watch GPT become a 1920s detective in 3 clicks.” Hacker News front-paged it. Reddit’s r/SideProject crowned it “the Notion for AI characters.”
By month three, 10,000 users had generated 47,000 personas. The top-shared? “Midwest Mom Explains Tech” (87K uses). Organic growth outpaced any ad spend Alex never made.
Monetization: Freemium Done Right
The pricing page was one Carrd landing with two buttons:
- Free: 3 personas, local storage.
- Pro ($9/month) : Unlimited personas, cloud sync, export, private sharing.
Conversion rate: 22% . LTV: $180 . CAC: $0 . The math was obscene. At 15K Pro users, monthly recurring revenue hit $135K . By Q2 2025, $166K/month flowed in like clockwork.
The 47-Line Blueprint (Reconstructed)
Here’s the core script, line-for-line, as dissected from the original repo:
```python
import streamlit as st, openai, json, os
openai.api_key = st.secrets.get("OPENAI_API_KEY", os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"))
PERSONAS_FILE = "personas.json"
if not os.path.exists(PERSONAS_FILE): json.dump({}, open(PERSONAS_FILE, "w"))
def load_personas(): return json.load(open(PERSONAS_FILE))
def save_persona(n,p): d=load_personas(); d[n]=p; json.dump(d, open(PERSONAS_FILE,"w"), indent=2)
def generate_persona(d):
r = openai.ChatCompletion.create(model="gpt-4", messages=[
{"role":"system","content":"You are a prompt engineer. Write a rich system prompt for this persona."},
{"role":"user","content":d}
], max_tokens=300)
return r.choices[0].message.content.strip()
st.title("AI Persona Builder")
t1, t2 = st.tabs(["Create","Chat"])
with t1:
desc = st.text_area("Describe persona")
if st.button("Generate") and desc:
with st.spinner("Crafting..."):
prompt = generate_persona(desc)
name = st.text_input("Name", desc.split()[0].title())
if st.button("Save"): save_persona(name, prompt); st.success(f"Saved {name}")
with t2:
p = load_personas()
sel = st.selectbox("Pick", list(p.keys()))
if sel and (msg:=st.text_input("Message")) and st.button("Send"):
r = openai.ChatCompletion.create(model="gpt-4", messages=[
{"role":"system","content":p[sel]},
{"role":"user","content":msg}
])
st.write("**AI:**", r.choices[0].message.content)
```
Run `streamlit run app.py`. Deploy. Profit
Your Move
The 47-line script is public. Fork it. Swap the meta-prompt for legal contracts, fitness plans, or alien linguists. The AI gold rush isn’t about models—it’s about **micro-monopolies on workflow friction**. Find your annoyance. Code the antidote. Ship before Sunday ends.
