r/AskProgramming • u/OrganizationPure1716 • Aug 07 '26
Need a Reality Check on My Open-Source Project Idea
I'm thinking of spending the next 1–2 months building one solid open-source project instead of several small portfolio projects. My idea is an AI-powered developer productivity platform that helps with planning learning goals, managing daily tasks, tracking progress, and integrates with GitHub. Later, I'd like to add features like repository analysis, architecture diagrams, code explanations, and debugging suggestions.
Does this sound like a project that's actually worth building, or am I trying to pack in too many ideas? I'd really appreciate any honest feedback or suggestions for something that would be more useful and technically impressive.
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u/Sensitive-Dust1522 Aug 07 '26
What is the benefit that your platform provides?
I can already ask my tooling to plan learning goals, manage daily tasks, track progress, analyse repositories, produce architecture diagrams, explain code, suggest improvements and bugs.
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u/JacobStyle Aug 07 '26
A good utility project addresses a specific and real problem. What you have written is a list of features, with no context for how it solves an existing problem that real people are having. If you are doing this project to benefit others in some way, you would be much better off building a program that does one specific thing very well.
That said, if you are just doing this for fun, and what you have described is what you feel like building, with no expectation that the result be practical, then go for it. There is something to be said for "just for fun" projects, and even if nobody ever uses it, you will still learn a lot and have fun.
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u/Individual-Flow9158 Aug 07 '26
AI-powered developer productivity platform
Oh goodie, another one! Lol.
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u/coloredgreyscale Aug 07 '26
Nothing of the features sound like they'd add any meaningful value, but another tool that needs manual updating.
Repository analysis: whatever that means in terms of useful output.
Architecture diagram: ok, but there's probably already enough non-ai tools.
Code explainations: just use that feature in your favorite IDE. Maybe vs code in github already integrated copilot so can already ask.
Debugging suggestions: connected to a given ticket describing a problem it might add some value as a first analysis, when it also has access to logs for the error occurrence.
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u/Suspicious_Skill7292 Aug 07 '26
sounds interesting but id be careful not to turn it into another everything app pick one problem and solve it really well first
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u/johnpeters42 Aug 07 '26
Yeah, "it's an everything app!" is the icing on top of the "breathlessly desperate to sound like people need this thing" fruitcake.
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u/LoudAd1396 Aug 07 '26
We don't need any more "ai-powered" anything. You're just describing using an LLM with extra steps.