You have to distinguish between two different versions of "indie" software. What the author is describing, small business products really heavily reliant on marketing and traffic to me don't even fall under that label. That's not indie software, that's just software.
I had a CS teacher in school who spent a lot of his free time on software for people who take part in pidgeon racing competitions. He spent a whole decade on this because he was interested in it and it did even net him enough money eventually to pay part of his house off. That kind of thing to me is indie software and whether that is viable has nothing to do with LLMs or the web or what have you, because it's genuinely niche and serves an authentic community of people and enthusiasts that no company cares about anyway.
If you're in that kind of space and you don't care about attention next week desperately you don't need to be worried about some random technology because it's about people anyway, you're just the guy or girl who happens to be able to write software to help out.
I had a CS teacher in school who spent a lot of his free time on software for people who take part in pidgeon racing competitions. He spent a whole decade on this because he was interested in it and it did even net him enough money eventually to pay part of his house off. That kind of thing to me is indie software and whether that is viable has nothing to do with LLMs or the web or what have you, because it's genuinely niche and serves an authentic community of people and enthusiasts that no company cares about anyway.
If you're in that kind of space and you don't care about attention next week desperately you don't need to be worried about some random technology because it's about people anyway, you're just the guy or girl who happens to be able to write software to help out.