Open-source my side-husle software tool, or keep it closed and grind alone?

I’ve been building a software tool for a while now.

It’s not a standalone thing or plugin yet, more like a local tool I use for personal / hobby purposes. My background is in finance, and I am a "citizen" developer enjoying coding and doing projects.

I recently shared a short demo with other people and got way more response than expected, aka “I want to test this”, “Will this be available to buy?”, "This should be open source / put it on GitHub”, “Insane / mental / sounds great”

And now I’m stuck.

On one hand, I get the open-source argument: people could contribute, ideas evolve faster, community goodwill, and transparency.

On the other hand, here’s my reality: I’m not technically strong enough to own and maintain an open-source project properly. I can compile it and bring it to a decent beta/MVP stage, and that's that. + I don’t have time to manage PRs, issues, forks, or governance. If it’s open, someone more skilled could very realistically package it better than I do and run with it. I’m fine paying a developer later if this goes somewhere, but I need to validate it first

My current instinct says "keep it closed for now", grind alone and get a decent version out, find some serious beta testers and collect feedback, reiterate, then decide whether to open parts of it later with a lead dev steering this, as early traction will be here.

Some people say ideas don’t matter, execution does, which is true, but execution also takes time, money, and focus. And I’m one person.

So I’m genuinely asking:

• What would be the best approach here?
• If you are a dev, did you regret open-sourcing too early? Did keeping things closed slow you down or protect you?
• Is “closed first, open later” actually viable, or just copium?
• Why would one even want to contribute to something like this without any commercial PoC equity/ownership from day one?

I’m trying to make the least stupid decision and would appreciate honest takes, even uncomfortable ones.

Thank you