Most indie hackers skip validation entirely. They get excited, start coding, and 3 months later realize nobody will pay for what they built.

I did this twice before I created a system to filter ideas before writing a single line of code.

Here's the 4-lens framework:

1. Market Demand — Are people actively searching for a solution? Look at Google Trends, Reddit threads, and competitor review counts. No demand signal = no market.

2. Competition Intensity — Competitors aren't bad. Zero competitors usually means zero market. But if the top 3 players are VC-funded and have 50+ employees, you're fighting uphill as a solo builder.

3. Monetization Clarity — Can you charge $29+/mo from day one? If the value prop requires free-tier hand-holding to convert, it's a trap for indie hackers.

4. Founder-Fit — Do you actually have an edge here? Domain knowledge, distribution, or technical advantage. "I think it's cool" isn't an edge.

I score each lens 1-10 and multiply. Anything below 150 gets killed immediately.

This framework has saved me from at least 3 dead-end projects since. I packaged the whole scoring system into a Notion template — takes about 30 minutes to run through any idea.