Give some pricing / first launch advice to the greenest of the green (please!)

I am GREEN as can be and cannot parse the absolutely mammoth amount of posts and conversations out there/on here so wanted to ask the void and see if I get any echos of info/advice back :)

When thinking about turning my first "this might actually work" idea into a real tool and thinking about the stack, my AI said to start with building the pricing page with a waitlist in place of a real paywall etc and do this BEFORE the actual technical steps (supabase, stripe etc) to save hours of work before A/B testing if people use vs would pay for the tool.

It said this is "what most successful indie hackers do - launch free first- (3 spins/day) - this tests: do people use it? share it? do they come back tomorrow? low trust friction → you get baseline usage. Then, within weeks, add either: a waitlist paywall (“Unlimited spins coming soon, join waitlist”) or a tiny real purchase option ($3 for 20 spins ..."

Can anyone out there confirm or deny this form of A/B testing the pricing (for first time making/listing a thing)?

I feel like friction (aw man I can't even pay to use more of this / waitlist as a payment gate = users never come back even if the tool is useful)

Aka what is the first step once your happy with your UX, chronology says to me start with front end and auth database etc?

But Im a creative in the least techy and least marketing field known to the god I don't believe in so I have no idea and no way to tell if my intuition is wrong and if the AI is right,