A question about AI tool setups earned a score of 504 and 631 comments on a developer community, so I looked into whether AI setup could be a paid service.
Free official guides already exist. Selling a setup worksheet alone looks difficult, but doing the setup for someone could be an opportunity.
Here is a comparison of free official guides and setup service prices in Korea and abroad that I found on November 6, 2026.
I collect posts from developer communities every day to look for ideas that could make money. As new AI tools arrive, I keep seeing posts asking how to use them together. Would people pay for help setting them up? I wanted to weigh selling a setup worksheet, or template, against doing the setup for someone.
Why are developers curious about other people's AI setups?
What caught my attention was a question on Hacker News along the lines of How are you putting your AI tools together right now?. It reached the popular posts with a score of 504 and 631 comments. A question about how other people configure their AI tools drew hundreds of responses. I only looked at the title and numbers; I did not read the comments.
Which words appeared more often over two days?
I counted posts containing the words below in the material collected on November 5 and 6. A post appearing in several places may be counted more than once, and a change over a single day cannot tell us what comes next.
| Word | 11/5 | 11/6 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| ai | 36 | 38 | +2 |
| agent | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| agents | 4 | 8 | +4 |
| openssh | 1 | 7 | +6 |
| youtube | 5 | 7 | +2 |
The counts for agents and openssh rose. Here, agents refers to AI agents that work through tasks in several steps, and I counted it separately from agent. OpenSSH is software used to connect to servers remotely.
Could a setup worksheet sell on its own?
I started by considering whether I could sell a worksheet, or template, for recording AI tool settings. I searched for guides to AI agents and MCP setup. MCP is a way to connect AI tools to other services. There are already official setup guides that anyone can read for free, including GitHub's MCP server setup guide and Anthropic's agent setup guide. With official guides freely available, I think it would be hard to charge for a worksheet alone.
What about doing the setup for someone?
Services already have price tags for people who find it a hassle to follow the instructions themselves. An AI tool and MCP setup service on Kmong, a Korean freelance marketplace, lists packages at 99,000 won (about $73), 199,000 won (about $147), and 399,000 won (about $294). I converted at roughly 1,357 won to the dollar, the rate on November 7, 2026. The listing had 1 review and a rating of 5.0. UK company Digital Jumpstart also lists personal AI assistant setup starting at £295 (about $395). AI platform subscriptions cost extra.
Could a server security checklist make money?
As a side idea, I also considered selling a security advisory checklist to people running small servers. Ubuntu already has official documentation, and SysWard offers a checking tool that is free for up to 5 servers, so I think this would also be difficult to charge for. I plan to cover the remaining ideas in another post.
Could setup services offer more opportunity than worksheets?
After looking into these options, I think a worksheet alone would be hard to sell, while doing the setup for someone could have potential. The Kmong listing has only 1 review, so I still do not know its actual sales volume or how much demand there is for setup services. Would you pay someone to finish setting up AI tools for your own environment?
AI helped with data collection and drafting this post.
Translated from the Korean original: Korean original.
