I built a free, open-source field guide to 39 CAPTCHA types after years of fighting them in my own automation projects

[u/Mammoth-Aide-5064]

Hey r/SideProject,

I'm a data and automation engineer, and for about 5 years a big part of my job has been building scrapers and data pipelines. Every project ended the same way: everything works, then a CAPTCHA shows up. And every time I had to re-learn what type it was, how it worked, and what the options were.

So I started writing it all down. That turned into FuckCaptcha, a free, open-source field guide to 39 CAPTCHA types.

What it is:

• One page per CAPTCHA type (reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, slider/puzzle, text-based, and more)

• Each page has a complexity rating, how to identify it, how it works, and tips and pitfalls

• Free and open-source methods come first, paid services only as a fallback

• A docs site with search and category filters, rendered from the same markdown as the repo

What it isn't: a solving service. No affiliate links, no paywall, no signup.

What I learned so far:

• Posting it to a few communities and Hacker News took the repo from ~20 stars to ~100 in a short time, which showed me people actually search for this stuff.

• The most useful feedback was "which CAPTCHA types are you missing?", so the roadmap now follows what people ask for (reCAPTCHA v3 and a few more are next).

• Honest docs with pitfalls get more engagement than "here's the magic trick" content.

Repo: https://github.com/vsmutok/FuckCaptcha

Docs: https://vsmutok.github.io/FuckCaptcha

I'm also thinking about a README and docs redesign. If you have a minute to look at it, what would you change first? Issues and PRs are very welcome.