I build repertoire-builder.com solo. It reads your real Lichess game history and finds the specific opening positions costing you rating, by position rather than by opening name, because "you're bad at the Sicilian" is way less useful than "you keep losing from this exact structure on move 7."
The core tool is free. No signup, no paid tier on the analysis. That part isn't changing and this post isn't about it.
This post is about the one page on the site that asks for money, and the fix that shipped today.
The Problem
There's a $9 one-time optional add-on called a pack, one per rating band and color. The pack doesn't measure anything new. Line straight off the page: "Nothing new gets measured for a pack - the difference is what you're holding once you've bought one." It takes the same free analysis and turns it into something you can actually sit down and study: one PGN file pruned to just the lines worth memorizing, a printable study guide, and a file that loads straight into the site's own drill trainer.
The problem was the page itself. Until today, it described all that in words and then asked for $9. You couldn't see a single actual line before paying. I was effectively asking a stranger to trust me blind, on a site they maybe found ten minutes ago, from a builder they've never heard of. I wouldn't pay that. Idk why I expected anyone else to.
What Shipped Today
Two things, both live on the redesigned page now.
1. A real Preview with Real Data. Pick a rating band and the page shows you an actual move-by-move line from that pack, with the usage stats baked in. Not a mockup, not "example data." For one band/color combo it's showing e5 → Nc3, 53.5% score (n=2,404) right now. That's the same kind of line you'd be buying, shown before you've paid anything.
2. A Genuine Free Sample. You can download the first 47 lines of a pack, no payment, no email, nothing. Then decide about the $9 with the actual product partly in hand.
The framing line on the page sums up the whole split: "Free tells you what to play. The pack is what you study."
the honesty stuff, since it matters here
Two lines from the page, quoted because I want to be held to them:
- "Nothing here is gated." The repertoire explorer, the leak report (which openings are costing you rating), the drill trainer, and PGN export are all free and stay free. Forever, no asterisk.
- "These packs don't change the site." Buying a pack doesn't change any ranking or recommendation anywhere. The rule that picks a pack's moves is printed in full on the page so anyone can check it.
I'm allergic to the version of this where the free tool slowly degrades into a demo. That's not this.
honest scale check
This is a small tool with a small audience. I don't have a revenue chart to show you, and this isn't a growth story yet. Today's ship is a conversion fix in the most literal sense: the page used to ask for $9 with nothing to look at, and now it shows real data and hands you 47 free lines first. Whether that actually converts better, idk yet, that's what the next few weeks are for. If it does something interesting either direction I'll write it up.
If you play on Lichess and want to see which openings are quietly bleeding your rating, the free analysis is the place to start. The pack page with the new preview is here:
repertoire-builder.com/repertoire-packs.html
Happy to answer anything in the comments, especially from anyone else selling a small paid add-on next to a free tool. Figuring out that boundary honestly has been harder than the code.
