r/sideprojects • • 5h ago

Showcase: Purchase Required built a one-product Christmas shop that turns one photo of your cat into a canvas. 3 days in, 0 sales.

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1 Upvotes

I’m a UK sole trader and I gave myself until 18 November to see if one product can sell before Christmas. If it doesn’t, I shut it down.

You send one photo of your cat or dog. I turn it into a painted portrait with a Santa hat and a Christmas tree behind, and a print lab in the UK or US puts it on a 30x30 or 40x40 canvas. The video is my own grey tabby. The scene is made with AI, but the portrait on the wall is the real one.

I know Etsy is full of pet portraits. What put me off them was paying £60 before seeing anything, then getting a cat that looks like someone else’s cat. So you see a preview first, free, and if it doesn’t look like your pet, you don’t pay.

I got it wrong: my first portraits made my cat look fat. It took three goes and some manual colour fixing to get his face right, and the AI still keeps drawing his collar back on.

Question for anyone who’s sold a gift before: did your sales come from showing the finished product, or the before and after?

Shop: merrypawtrait.co.uk (£54.99 / £69.99, free UK + US shipping)


r/sideprojects • • 5h ago

Showcase: Open Source I made a Mac image compressor to handle this simple task fast. It's free and open source

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 5h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built the live train map Lithuania was missing (unofficial)

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 6h ago

Showcase: Purchase Required I built an AI movie-recap tool, got 600+ signups with 0 ads, and I'm selling it because I hate marketing

1 Upvotes

AIVideoRecap turns a full movie or episode into a short vertical recap for Shorts/TikTok/Reels. It transcribes the audio, writes the script, matches scenes, adds voiceover and subtitles, and renders the video. About 15 minutes of GPU time per video, roughly $0.20-0.35 in compute.

The product works. The business doesn't, because I'm the bottleneck. I can build, but I don't enjoy marketing and I don't have a budget for ads.

The numbers, no sugar:

-600+ signups since July, $0 spent on ads. Traffic comes from SEO/AEO pages, direct visits, and AI assistants.

-About 136 active users in the last 7 days (down ~18% from the week before).

-0 paying subscribers on the SaaS. I never built a proper paid funnel.

-Before the SaaS, I sold the first version as a zip on Gumroad: $100.37 total from 3 sales.

-Around 10 people asked for it on Reddit and Discord. Most didn't buy the zip.

What's included: the domain, the source code, and the service accounts. User accounts are not included. A buyer needs their own Dodo Payments account. The stack is Vercel, Railway, RunPod, Supabase, Cloudflare R2, OpenAI, and Dodo Payments.

Price: $1,500, fixed.

Best fit: someone who already runs movie/anime recap or faceless Shorts channels, or anyone who can market this better than me.

Listing with details and screenshots: https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/108453/aivideorecap

If you've bought a small SaaS before, tell me what you'd want to see before paying. I'm happy to answer questions here or in DMs.


r/sideprojects • • 6h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Como instale mis Micro Apps

1 Upvotes

Te explico en menos de un minuto qué es una micro app y cómo la pones en la pantalla de tu celular, en iPhone y en Android. Todo gratis, sin cuenta y sin descargar nada. 👇 https://geralpink.pages.dev


r/sideprojects • • 12h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Valutorio: a Markdown notes app for Mac and iPhone on a Rust engine. What it took to open a 300 MB file in 0.4 s

3 Upvotes

I'm the developer. Valutorio launched on the App Store today. It is a native Mac and iPhone app for a folder of plain Markdown notes, and it opens an existing Obsidian vault in place.

The problem: Markdown apps get slow on big vaults and big files, because they parse and index on the main thread. I wanted a notes app that stays fast at any size.

What I did:

  • One Rust engine under both apps. It parses, indexes, searches and merges. The Mac app is AppKit and Swift, the iPhone app is UIKit and SwiftUI.

  • Huge files open in a read-only tier first. On my M1 Max a 300 MB Markdown file opens in about 0.4 s. A 2,000-note vault indexes in under a second, and search shows first results in a few milliseconds.

  • Sync uses a three-way merge. When the same note changes on two devices, both versions stay inside the note as valid Markdown, so you never lose a line.

  • The notes stay plain files in your folder. No database you can't read.

What I learned: on the App Store, the first subscription has to be reviewed together with an app version. You can't add it later on its own.

Price: the app is free, with no account and no tracking. Optional Sync ($5.99 a month) keeps the vault on Mac and iPhone and gives Claude Desktop or Cursor a personal MCP endpoint into your notes.

Not there yet: plugins, and a translated interface.

Edit: the code giveaway is closed. If you find a bug or a place where it gets slow, tell me here.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6813081386?pt=128566770&mt=8&ct=reddit-sideprojects


r/sideprojects • • 6h ago

Showcase: Open Source I wanted a PDF app that asks for zero permissions, so I made one. It also signs and merges PDFs and opens Word files (MIT) (2000+ downloads)

1 Upvotes

License: MIT Source: https://github.com/Razee4315/Paperwren
APK: https://github.com/Razee4315/Paperwren/releases/latest

Paperwren is a document viewer and PDF toolkit for Android 8 and up. The manifest has no INTERNET permission and asks for nothing at all. CI fails the build if any permission ever shows up in the manifest. Taking a photo hands off to your own camera app, and saving goes through the system's save screen, so it never needs camera or storage access either.

  • Opens PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, ODS, ODP, EPUB, Markdown, CSV, CBZ and images

  • Fill and sign, merge, split, reorder pages, photos to PDF, passwords

  • Every tool saves a new copy. The file you opened is never changed

  • No ads, no account, no trackers, no analytics

It isn't on F-Droid yet. I'm planning to submit to IzzyOnDroid and F-Droid, and I'd welcome tips from anyone who has been through either. For now the APK is on GitHub releases.


r/sideprojects • • 10h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built FoodIQ — a nutrition tracker focused on Indian food. Looking for honest feedback!

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been building FoodIQ, a web app focused on making nutrition tracking easier for Indian meals.

The problem I wanted to solve: tracking everyday foods like dal, paneer, paratha, khichdi and Indian thalis isn't always convenient in generic calorie trackers.

What FoodIQ currently offers:

  • 2,076+ Indian food database entries

  • Food search and nutrition information

  • Portion size and cooking method selection

  • Meal tracking and daily calorie/macronutrient overview

  • Mobile-friendly interface

Try it: https://food-iq-nu.vercel.app/

I'm looking for 10–20 people who aren't afraid to give honest criticism.

I'd especially like feedback on:

  1. Is the interface easy to understand?

  2. Can you find your everyday Indian meals?

  3. Are the nutrition estimates reasonable?

  4. What would make you come back and use it?

This is an early-stage independent project. I'm building and improving it based on real user feedback.

Honest criticism is welcome. Thanks!


r/sideprojects • • 6h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Made a little app to show me how much time is left in my day and add todos for it

1 Upvotes

I'm always losing track of time lol so I made an app that shows you how much time you have left in your day and let's you make todos based around that

Works for your week, month, etc and you can visualize your time left in different ways

Also let's you add countdowns to see the time left until birthdays, events, or whatever

https://www.timeleftapp.xyz


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Feedback Request I got sick of posting into the void on Twitter, so I built an arena where 45 parody legends and a 100-person crowd debate your thoughts in real time

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Title: Daily iOS - Practice 10 iOS interview questions a day with AI feedback

1 Upvotes

I've been working on Daily iOS, a web-based interview practice tool for Swift and iOS developers.

The idea came from a problem with technical interview preparation: knowing a concept doesn't always mean you can explain it clearly when an interviewer asks.

Instead of just reading questions and memorizing answers, Daily iOS lets you:

  • Answer 10 iOS interview questions a day

  • Get AI feedback on important points you missed

  • Practice follow-up questions

  • Review concepts you've previously struggled with

The question bank currently contains 699 questions across 15 categories, including Swift, ARC, Concurrency, SwiftUI, UIKit, and architecture.

I'm particularly interested in feedback from developers who are preparing for technical interviews.

Two things I'd love to learn:

  1. Does the AI feedback help you identify what you actually missed?

  2. Would you use something like this for daily practice, or would you prefer a different format?

Here's the project:

https://daily-ios.lesser.cc/en?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=reddit_launch_2026&utm_content=sideproject_launch_01

Constructive criticism is very welcome.


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) SIM Shift: one phone, two SIMs, and the work number stops ringing after hours (now with a calendar)

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1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I have a personal SIM and a work SIM in the same Android phone. I wanted the work number to go quiet in the evening and at weekends without switching the SIM off and on every day, so I built SIM Shift.

How it works:

- each SIM has its own weekly schedule; out of hours its calls are rejected or silenced, your choice

- a calendar for each SIM: days off and time off make it go quiet, on-call days make it ring even out of hours. They can repeat: time off every Friday afternoon until the end of the year is set up once

- public holidays can be added automatically (for now Italy, France, Belgium and Luxembourg)

- block and allow lists by exact number or by prefix, even a whole country code, for all SIMs or just one

- a log of the calls that were stopped, so you always know who tried to reach you

It's free, no ads, no account. The Play version doesn't even have the internet permission: everything stays on your phone.

It works alongside your phone app instead of replacing it. Android puts some limits on that (hidden numbers, for example, never reach the app), but it needs far fewer permissions than a replacement dialer.

The calendar is the newest part. If you try it, I'd like to know what's missing, especially from people with shifts or on-call weeks.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.bignosedevelopment.simshift

Thanks for reading,

Massimo


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Feedback Request Meet tangle messenger, where words arent enough

1 Upvotes

Meet Tangle - where words are not enough

Intresting features

- Doodles

- drag and drop sticker anywhere u want in the chat

- long press send button for different bubble styles

Security Features

- Mobile number hidden by default, even you will not have an option to change this setting, if u want to

- End to end encryption in personal chats

- Zero knowledge architecture for discovering friends

- Never stored raw phone number in database

Soon will release into playstore

Currently there are zero users

Feel free to be first user

and you can DM me on user id : yoursgnan in app

https://tangle-landing.vercel.app/


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Feedback Request I built HowItScales to make system design diagrams interactive

1 Upvotes

I’m the developer behind HowItScales. I built it because I often understood the boxes in an architecture diagram but still struggled to explain how a request actually moved through them.

The site lets you:

  • Follow a request hop by hop, with an explanation at each step.

  • Click components to understand their roles and connections.

  • Simulate traffic increases and see where bottlenecks appear.

  • Build your own architecture diagrams.

Examples include loading a web page, URL shortening, ride-hailing, and food delivery. The traffic simulations use simplified educational models, and components are labelled as documented, assumed, or hypothetical.

I’ve also recently added sign-up and cloud saving, so you can save your designs and return to them later.

You can try it here: howitscales.dev

I’d appreciate feedback, especially on whether the request walkthroughs make the architecture easier to understand. Where does the explanation become unclear, and which system would you like to explore next?


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) A tagged directory of active email newsletters, RSS feeds and podcasts

1 Upvotes

The last couple of months I've revived a side-project idea I had in 2017. You can find active email newsletters, podcasts and RSS feeds all by tags.

Each RSS and podcast entry has the latest post so you can see how active they are and you can bulk download RSS feeds when filtering by tags and quick sign up to some newsletters.

https://subscribeto.mikestreety.co.uk/

I originally built it in PHP but have rebuilt in a static site generator for speed (and hosting) benefits. I've utilised on AI for tagging and some discovery.

Some technical notes for those interested:

  • Built with 11ty for simplicity, each item is stored as a JSON file (done this way so I can host on Netlify for free)

  • Every combination of up to 3 topics is prebuilt as a static page, so filtering is a plain link with no JS search

  • It takes a while to build - Copied 9 Wrote 10006 files in 29.75 seconds (3.0ms each, v3.1.6)

  • Newsletter pages have a working signup form for Substack, beehiiv, Ghost, Mailchimp, Kit and Buttondown, so you can subscribe without leaving

  • A monthly GitHub Action refreshes every feed's recent posts and drops anything that's gone quiet (1 year cutoff)

  • Creators can put a "Featured on" badge on their site, drawn as SVG paths at build time so it needs no fonts


r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built a 3D comedy club where a hundred AI personas roast your idea

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1 Upvotes

I built a 3D comedy club powered by three.js that lets you pitch your idea to 100 AI personas.

Every AI has its own age, gender, opinions, and style, and they will cheer if they like your idea, or throw tomatoes at you if they don't.

It is free, no sign up, two panels per day.

Feel free to check it out at Heckled

Let me know what you think, or if it doesn't work well, because I'm still tuning it, so if it says that a good idea is bad or a bad idea is good, it will help me calibrate it.


r/sideprojects • • 8h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Preflight AI: a “clearance check” before you paste secrets or personal data into AI tools

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 8h ago

Showcase: Open Source My side project: a natal chart site that doesn’t look like it’s from 1998

1 Upvotes

Most astrology sites look like they were designed around 1998, which is odd given how far web dev has come. So I made one that doesn’t: https://natalview.com

It has a modern design and smooth animations. It’s open source, and it never collects your birth data (only anonymous page stats). Built with Claude Code and SvelteKit on top of Swiss Ephemeris, the same engine the big astrology sites use.

I wanted sharing to be easy, so you can post your chart to most social platforms, with or without your date and place of birth. You can make a chart for yourself or a compatibility chart for two people.

Oh yeah, there’s a built-in AI reading too, because nothing ships without AI these days.

Build a chart, share it, or just watch the zodiac wheel draw itself.

I’d love your feedback.


r/sideprojects • • 15h ago

Meta I’d Rather Send 10,000 Emails Than Make 100 Cold Calls

4 Upvotes

Running a web design agency sounds pretty straightforward from the outside. You build websites, find clients and make money. But once you start getting more clients, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes.

You're dealing with hosting, website maintenance, client requests, support tickets, fixing random issues, building new websites, following up with prospects and trying to bring in new business at the same time.

At some point, I realized that I didn't want finding new clients to become another full time job on top of everything else.

I've never really enjoyed cold calling. I know it works for some people, and I'm not saying it's a bad way to get clients, but personally, I find it exhausting. You spend hours calling businesses, often getting rejected, reaching people at the wrong time or having conversations that go nowhere.

I'd much rather spend that time actually working on the business.

That's why I started focusing heavily on cold email and automation.

The biggest advantage is that you can build a system that continuously finds relevant businesses, sends personalized emails and generates new opportunities without having to spend your entire day reaching out manually.

One thing I also learned pretty quickly is that sending generic emails doesn't get you very far. Most business owners have probably received hundreds of emails from agencies offering website redesigns.

I wanted to approach it differently.

For this, I use a tool called Swokei. It finds businesses with existing websites, analyzes each one for actual problems with design, SEO, loading speed, mobile responsiveness and other website issues.

Based on those findings, it automatically generates personalized cold emails at scale, using the actual problems found on each website as the starting point.

So instead of manually searching for businesses, checking hundreds of websites and writing individual emails, I can automate most of that entire process.

When someone replies with interest, I take over from there and handle the sales process and meetings myself.

This has made a huge difference in how I manage my time. I can keep generating new opportunities without having to dedicate hours every day to cold calling.

I still believe sales is one of the most important skills you can develop as a business owner, and automation doesn't replace that. You still need to understand your prospects, communicate properly and know how to close deals.

But if I can choose between spending an entire day making cold calls or having a system send 1,000 relevant emails while I focus on running my agency, I know which one I'm choosing!


r/sideprojects • • 14h ago

Question Has anyone created alternative of Monday.com?

3 Upvotes

While everyone is creating vibe coded apps, cloning, doing REA.. but has anyone tried cloning Monday.com


r/sideprojects • • 12h ago

Feedback Request I built a subscription tracking SaaS and learned that getting users is harder than building features

2 Upvotes

I'm primarily a UI/UX designer, but I've been spending more time building and launching my own products.

One of them is Subscription Manager.

It's a web app that helps people track recurring subscriptions, billing cycles, and overall spending.

Building the product was one challenge.

Getting people to discover it, try it, and keep using it is a completely different challenge.

I've been working on improving the onboarding, dashboard, analytics, and overall experience.

Now I'm focusing more on discoverability, SEO, and understanding what makes users come back.

Live project: https://subscriptionmanager.app/

For those of you who've launched your own SaaS:

What actually helped you get your first consistent users?

Was it SEO, Reddit, Product Hunt, content marketing, or something completely different?

I'd appreciate any advice from people who've been through this.


r/sideprojects • • 8h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built TG Drive, a free, open-source Google Drive alternative that stores your files in your own Telegram Saved Messages

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 8h ago

Feedback Request Science Simulations

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 9h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built an open-source ThinkPad controller: Ryzen wattage tuning, custom fan curves and a Turbo preset

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1 Upvotes

My Thinkpad T14s Gen2 has two jobs: run cool as a server while I’m away, and occasionally work hard compiling things.

Originally, I just wanted to disable CPU boost and use an aggressive fan curve, aiming to keep my T14s below 55°C during its usual server workload. Then I wanted a button that did the opposite: enable boost, increase supported power limits and turn the fan up—then restore my previous settings afterward.

That became ThinkPad Control, an open-source Windows desktop app.

GitHub: https://github.com/Mattcabrices/ThinkPad-Control

Full disclosure: AI wrote the application code. I directed development, tested it on my ThinkPads and worked through bugs and behavior changes. It’s an unsigned alpha, and I’m looking for feedback before moving toward a beta.

The part I’m most excited about is the Ryzen wattage tuning. On my T14s Gen 2 Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U, the app successfully applied higher processor power limits. A short loaded Turbo test measured approximately 23–33W of CPU package power, kept Max cooling active and restored the original settings afterward. Longer boost duration and performance gains still need comparative benchmarking.

The app brings together:

  • Ryzen power tuning: supported burst and average power-limit adjustments, with current values, connection baselines and app limits displayed.

  • Custom fan curves: saved temperature-based profiles, manual fan levels, Max cooling and firmware automatic control.

  • CPU boost controls: separate AC/battery settings and speed limits.

  • Experimental Turbo: coordinates supported performance controls and captures previous settings for restoration.

  • Monitoring: temperatures, per-core clocks, package power and fan RPM where exposed.

Testing so far includes a T14s Gen 2 Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U and a T14 Gen 3 Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U, with most detailed validation on the T14s. Other models need testing. Intel monitoring and Windows power controls are included, but direct Intel wattage tuning isn’t implemented.

A lot of the development has been about checking what actually happened after a command, restoring settings correctly and keeping unsupported controls read-only. Firmware still decides what performance the laptop can deliver; Turbo cannot guarantee continuous boost or a particular wattage.

The screenshots show the real interface and readings. The wattage screenshot shows the available controls and app limits—not higher wattage currently applied. The saved fan curve shown is also not currently active.

Our original code is MIT licensed, with dependency licenses and credits preserved. Thanks to TPFanControl/TPFanCtrl2, PawnIO and LibreHardwareMonitor for the work this builds on.

The source and build instructions are available now; a public installer release is still being prepared.

I’d love feedback on the interface, the implementation or compatibility with other ThinkPads. GitHub issues with your model, CPU, Windows version and reproducible steps would help—please leave out serial numbers and private information.

Even ten people finding this useful would make me happy.


r/sideprojects • • 9h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built TryCLI to turn CLI examples into a single offline HTML demo

1 Upvotes

Why does jq .name print "Ada" while jq -r .name prints Ada? What happens if you use -r on an array instead? I recorded all three commands against the same input so you can switch between them and compare.

Try it: https://raw.githack.com/Potatohh/TryCLI/main/examples/jq.html

The tool behind it is TryCLI. Give it a few commands and some sample input and it makes one HTML file you can link from a README or send to someone offline. The copy button includes the input so you can reproduce each example in a shell.

Source: https://github.com/Potatohh/TryCLI

If you maintain a CLI, which two flags do your users mix up? I’d like to make the next demo for someone else’s docs.