Small tech hacks that save you an hour, tested before they're published.

Kip Cronin

Kip Cronin is the pen name of the person who runs HackHourHQ. I write every post, run and test every command, and built the tools sold here. There is no team: where older guides say “we”, it's me.

What HackHourHQ is

A one-person publication of small tech hacks that save you an hour: Linux, homelab, AI tools, dev, productivity and creator automation. Each one is a short, specific fix you can run today. There's also a weekly email, HackHour Weekly, that goes out on Wednesdays.

How it's tested

Every command is run on my own machine before it goes up: a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 running Ubuntu 24.04. Each hack is dated and says which versions it was tested with. When something is a platform fact, I link the platform's own docs. When it's my opinion, I say so. No fabricated stats, and affiliate links are disclosed where they appear.

What I've built

• This site: Next.js 16, Tailwind 4 and MDX, exported as static files. It started from the codebase sold as the Cornerstone Site Starter.
• A pin renderer that turns HTML templates into 1000 × 1500 PNGs with Playwright.
• A Python publisher on the Pinterest API v5, with Standard access since May 2026. How it dedups and why it needs a daily cap is in the bulk-publish guide.
• Guides on Pinterest, Etsy SEO, email and blog traffic, from before the site's current focus.

The numbers, honestly

I'd rather show these than hide them:

• Sales: 0 across all four paid products since launch, checked on Gumroad on October 14, 2026.
• Site traffic: 30 pageviews in 90 days, from the site's own pageview counter as of October 9, 2026.
• Pinterest, 30 days to May 31, 2026: 1,177 impressions, 22 pin clicks, 7 outbound clicks to the site.

Seven clicks a month can't produce sales, so the zero isn't a mystery. The bigger mistake was the audience: I built developer tools and marketed them on Pinterest to Etsy sellers and bloggers, who mostly don't want to run a Python script. The site now covers small tech hacks for people who are comfortable in a terminal, which is who the tools were for all along.