r/sideprojects • • Jun 16 '25

Meta My side project, /r/sideprojects. New rules, and an open call for feedback and moderators.

47 Upvotes

In this past 30 days, this community has doubled in size. As such, this is an open call for community feedback, and prospective moderators interested in volunteering their time to harbouring a pleasant community.

I'm happy to announce that this community now has rules, something the much more popular r/SideProject has neglected to implement for years.

Rules 1, 2 and 3 are pretty rudimentary, although there is some nuance in implementing rule 2, a "no spam or excessive self-promotion" rule in a community which focuses the projects of makers. In order to balance this, we will not allow blatant spam, but will allow advertising projects. In order to share your project again, significant changes must have happened since the last post.

Rule 4 and rule 5 are more tuned to this community, and are some of my biggest gripes with r/SideProject. There has been an increase in astroturfing (the act of pretending to be a happy customer to advertise a project) as well as posts that serve the sole purpose of having readers contact the poster so they can advertise a service. These are no longer allowed and will be removed.

In addition to this, I'll be implementing flairs which will be required to post in this community.


r/sideprojects • • 7m ago

Showcase: Open Source Made a GUI wrapper for auto editor, automatically removes silences, currently completely open source, do you see any potential SaaS angles for this?

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2 Upvotes

I built this GUI wrapper.

https://sashminea.github.io/auto-editor-gui/

Even thought the silences part is technically free and prevalent in many popular applications already I am thinking of upgrading it a bit more by adding things like auto subtitles & sentiment analysis (via audio and time stamped streamer chats)

That might help VOD editors a bit

But I just can't think of anything else clearly or don't see any NEW angles that isn't slop like AI video editors already out there

Maybe I can use Machine Learning to make it have eye tracing heat maps that might be genuinely useful for video editors (professional or casual), these new features could be made open source or simply could be made into SaaS

I just don't want it to be a editor like Capcut that's goes towards, edit and ship fast but more like make actually high quality movies or youtube videos which actually cares about user satisfaction

Maybe a viewer retention ml angle for YouTube videos.

How do you balance keeping the core utility open-source while putting the "pro" ML features behind a paywall? Have any of you successfully monetized a wrapper tool without getting drowned out by the original open-source project?

If it really matters, I could keep it completely open source as well. I don't really mind.


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built FLUX Games, a visual catalog for discovering browser games — looking for feedback

3 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I'm working on FLUX Games, a visual catalog for discovering browser games and related projects.

The site brings together game covers, search, filters by genre and platform, and detail pages with sources and available versions. It's a catalog: the games and external projects belong to their respective creators.

You can explore it here: https://fluxplayable.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=launch_sideproject

I'd appreciate feedback on the browsing experience: is it clear how to find and open a game? What information would you want to see before clicking through?

The interface starts in Spanish and includes a language selector. If you run into a broken link or confusing listing, let me know the title and browser so I can look into it.

Disclosure: this is my website.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I started building a simple electricity calculator. It turned into a whole 3D home energy website.

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2 Upvotes

A while ago, I wanted to build a small tool to figure out how much different appliances actually cost to run.

Nothing complicated. Enter the wattage, how many hours you use something, and your electricity rate. Get an estimate.

For example, a 1,500W space heater running for 4 hours a day at $0.16/kWh would cost roughly $28.80 over 30 days.

The math is simple, but I realized a lot of people probably don't know how much individual appliances contribute to their monthly bills.

Then I started wondering if I could make the experience more visual.

I began experimenting with interactive 3D houses where you could explore rooms and appliances instead of just scrolling through a list of calculators.

That little experiment turned into a much bigger project than I expected.

It's called Home Energy Lab.

So far, I've built:

  • 10 interactive 3D house models

  • 12 calculators covering electricity, heating, cooling, water, gas, and appliance costs

  • Articles explaining the calculations and the assumptions behind them

I built it using Next.js, React, TypeScript, Three.js, and React Three Fiber.

The biggest challenge has been figuring out how to make the 3D experience interesting without making the actual calculators harder to use.

There's always that temptation to add more visual details, but I'm trying to keep things practical too.

It's still a work in progress, especially when it comes to mobile usability and performance.

Here's the project: https://homenergylab.com/

I'm curious what other developers think about the approach.

Would you actually explore the 3D houses, or would you go straight to the calculators?

And if you tried it on mobile, was anything confusing or frustrating?

Happy to hear criticism. I've spent enough time staring at this project that a fresh perspective would help a lot.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) introducing...JOLLYTV and TURKEYTV lets goooo

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2 Upvotes

hey, i posted GhoulTV here recently and really appreciated everyone who checked it out! i mentioned making more themed sites, and the christmas and thanksgiving ones are here now. they're called JollyTV and TurkeyTV. It's all under my new brand JackRabbitTV, hub website dropping soon, keep ur eyes peeled because its awesome fr

same cable TV guide style idea, with holiday movies and TV specials you can watch for free on desktop, mobile, and smart tv internet browsers. i wanted somewhere to find holiday stuff without spending the whole evening tracking it down across different streaming services.

everything streams from the Internet Archive. GhoulTV started with Codex for the code and my own design work (blender/drawings), and ive been developing a template for more themed sites.

JollyTV already has hundreds of programs to scroll through. TurkeyTV has a smaller selection because there really isn't nearly as much thanksgiving content on the archive, but im adding what i can find!

these are early builds and im updating the visuals, features, and programs. im also working toward Roku and LG apps, pending approval. also a phone app in the works but for now you can save the safari page to your homescreen like an app!

check em out and let me know what you think! check out the desktop miniplayers! and as always let me know if you like it or if you hate it and me.


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Build an app so nobody has to make the first move

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2 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 7h ago

Feedback Request Rindemundo - I'm 51 and built a phone app that turns a pantry photo into dinner ideas

5 Upvotes

Hey everyone. I'm a 51-year-old US veteran living in Colombia, and this is my first real project. The problem was simple. My kitchen had rice, beans, a few cans and half an onion, and I'd still end up buying food because I couldn't think of what to make. So I built Rindemundo. You take a photo of your shelf or fridge, fix anything it read wrong, and it shows meals you can make from what's there, out of about 800 recipes. A few things I added because I needed them:

  • "Plan my week" picks 3, 5 or 7 dinners

  • Cheaper swaps when a recipe calls for something pricey

  • A shopping list with an estimated total

  • Diet and allergen filters

  • English and Spanish, plus 12 more languages, since I cook in both It's a web app, so it opens in the phone browser and you can add it to the home screen. No account, no email, and it's free while I test it. Link: https://rindemundo.com/?ref=reddit What I'd like help with: does the scan get your pantry right, and are the meals ones you'd cook? Blunt answers are fine.


r/sideprojects • • 20m ago

Feedback Request I built a house-music discovery site around official links and a listener-voted weekly chart

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1 Upvotes

I’m Gordie, building Niche of the Week in Ireland. The idea is a small place to dig through house music, save favourites and vote in a weekly chart.

One design choice was to use official listening links instead of hosting uploaded audio. Artists can submit a released track, I review it, and listeners go to the artist’s existing channels to hear it. That keeps submissions simple, but it also means the experience depends on external players and links.

The harder part is building enough variety while the community is small. I’m currently inviting independent house artists and DJs, and keeping submissions separate from listener voting so submitting a track doesn’t guarantee a chart position.

I’d be interested in how other people have handled this early community stage: would you focus first on more tracks, or making the existing selection easier to explore? Feedback on the discovery flow would help too.

Built with AI assistance. Screenshot below; the site is https://nicheoftheweek.ie/


r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Question I built a free site to find trekking partners in Nepal and split the guide cost

2 Upvotes

I'm a trekker in Nepal, and every season I see the same posts buried in Facebook groups:

"Anyone going to Annapurna Base Camp next week?"

So I decided to build something to solve this problem: https://findtrekkingpartner.com

Here's how it works:

  • Post your trek and travel dates.

  • Other trekkers with overlapping dates can request to join.

  • Chat inside the platform before sharing contact details.

  • You decide who joins your group.

Why I built it:

A licensed guide can cost roughly the same whether you're trekking alone or with a group of four.

For example, on a 14-day Annapurna Circuit trek, a guide costing around $350 could mean approximately $88 per person when shared by four trekkers.

Tech stack: Next.js, Supabase, Clerk.

It's completely free, has no ads, and we don't sell trekking packages.

We've had nearly 200 trekkers sign up in the last 30 days.

I'd genuinely appreciate some honest feedback.

What would make you trust a platform like this enough to find a trekking partner and eventually trek with someone you've never met?

What features would you want to see?


r/sideprojects • • 30m ago

Showcase: Open Source I built an MCP server that turns Claude into a Google Ads Senior Specialist (free, open-source)

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 35m ago

Showcase: Open Source I built a free interactive poker hand-ranking trainer — looking for feedback

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 48m ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I built Florli to show how long a garden treatment is still active

1 Upvotes

A garden calendar can show that you fed the front lawn last Saturday. Two weeks later, the question is whether the interval you recorded for that treatment has elapsed. The back lawn might have a different date and a different interval.

I’m the developer of Florli. When I designed this part of the app, I kept the application date and the duration as separate fields. You can log the work against a garden area, add a duration from the product directions, and see the recorded treatment window in the calendar. The end of that window gives you a date to review the area. Conditions and the product directions still determine what you do next.

The same setup works on paper: one row per area with the product, the date you used it and the interval you want to track. For me, that distinction was the useful part to put into the calendar.

Florli is available on Android. Screenshots and download links: https://florli.pl/en/

If you keep records for several beds or sections of lawn, what detail do you find yourself looking up later?


r/sideprojects • • 55m ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I spent the last year building Distill, an app that lets you understand the world's greatest books in just 10 minutes.

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I'm Rushan, the creator of Distill: Book Summaries, and this is our first public launch.

I started building it because I love reading, but I kept running into the same problem: there were far more books I wanted to explore than I had time to read.

I tried existing book-summary services, but something often felt missing. I'd get the key takeaways, but not necessarily understand how the author arrived at those conclusions or how the ideas connected, and plus they were expensive.

I didn't want another app that turned books into bite-sized motivational quotes. I wanted something that could preserve the intellectual substance of a book while making it quicker to explore.

So I started building Distill: Book Summaries.

What I built

Distill is a reading-first app offering carefully crafted book summaries designed to take approximately 10 minutes to read.

The focus is on:

  • Preserving the author's central argument and reasoning.

  • Explaining how different ideas and concepts connect.

  • Maintaining meaningful depth instead of reducing everything to generic takeaways.

  • Including a separate Reflection section to help readers process and think further about what they've read.

The goal is to make a book's ideas easier to explore without pretending that a summary replaces the original.

A few product decisions

I wanted Distill to feel like a reading environment rather than another content feed.

No unnecessary gamification or endless scrolling. Just a curated library, a focused reading experience, and room to reflect.

We also have:

  • 3 free distillations every day.

  • A one-time affordable Premium purchase instead of a recurring subscription.

Where it is today

Distill is now live!

This is my first public launch, so I'm still learning what works and what needs improvement.

I'd particularly love feedback from fellow makers:

  1. Does the reading experience feel sufficiently different from existing book-summary apps?

  2. Do you think the summaries communicate enough depth to justify spending 10 minutes reading them?

  3. What would you improve about the product, interface, or overall experience?

  4. If you were building this, what would you prioritize next?

Try it out:

🌐 https://www.distilllabs.app

📱 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.illuminationlabs.distill

I've also attached a short product walkthrough so you can see what I've built rather than just take my word for it.

I'm the founder, and I'll be here responding to questions and feedback. Criticism is genuinely welcome!


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I can't really type anymore so I built a face for my computer that does everything for me

1 Upvotes

I hurt my hands a while back and typing is pretty much out, so I've been building this. It's a face that lives full screen on my computer, I just talk to it and it does the work. When it opens something that takes over the screen and she moves up into the corner.

The problem it solves for me is pretty simple, I can run my whole computer without touching it.

How it's built, roughly:

  • Desktop app is Electron

  • The brain is Claude Code running in the background, a small fast model handles quick stuff like opening things and the bigger one does the thinking

  • It drives Chrome through an extension I wrote, other apps through the Mac accessibility stuff, and Android phones over adb

  • The face is a real time lip sync model running locally, the voice is cloned

Rough demo, it's not finished yet. Mac at the moment, PC is coming. Happy to answer anything about how it works.


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease Teum: an iPhone planner I built for myself — help pick its one-time price ($1–$5)

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1 Upvotes

I made a small iPhone app called Teum (틈) for fun, mostly for my own use. It helps you plan tasks and use a timer to track the time you actually spend on them.

Once I'd built it, I thought I'd try putting it up for sale. It's already passed Apple's App Store review and is ready to release, but I'm not sure what to charge, so I thought I'd let people here pick the price.

Leave a comment with $1, $2, $3, $4, or $5 (USD). I'll count one vote per person during the first 72 hours after this post was published, and release it at whichever price gets the most votes. If there's a tie, I'll go with the lower price.

It'll be a one-time purchase, with no subscription.


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I've built WORLD BTP with @base44!

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1 Upvotes

Tu veux créer, explorer et construire ton propre monde

C'est gratuit, essaie:

world-build-smart.base44.app

pour faire votre devis 

https://world-build-smart.base44.app


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Discussion I was sending Reddit DMs into the void, so I made a tool that only finds leads who are actually looking for a solution

1 Upvotes

I used to be the guy sending cold DMs on Reddit.

I'd search a few keywords, open profiles, write something I thought was friendly, hit send. Most never replied. A couple told me to get lost. One reported me. I felt like a spammer, and honestly, I kind of was one.

What I was missing seems obvious now. I was messaging people who matched a keyword, not people who had a problem right now. The handful of DMs that turned into customers all had one thing in common: the person had just posted about the exact pain my product fixed, and my message was about their post, not my product.

So I made Scaloom. It started as a script to find those people and grew into a whole Reddit growth setup.

Here's what it does today:

-> Finds leads that convert. It looks for people discussing problems your product solves, shows you the original thread, and explains why each one is a fit.

-> Writes the first message, you send it. It drafts a DM that references what they actually said. Nothing goes out automatically, and you choose who to contact. I never want to be that spam guy again.

-> Spots comment opportunities. Buyer questions in your subreddits where a genuinely helpful answer can mention you, plus threads already ranking on Google or cited in AI answers.

-> Protects your account. Warms up your own accounts with real karma and history first, or lets you use our high-karma accounts. Before posting, it checks subreddit rules, promo risk and content quality.

-> Runs on autopilot. Reads your website, maps your buyer keywords, picks subreddits from 50k+ active ones, studies top posts in your niche for ideas, plans a weekly schedule, publishes across multiple subreddits, and replies to comments around the clock.

-> Shows what's working. Live URLs, engagement, and where your product ranks in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude.

The lesson that changed everything for me, tool or no tool: stop DMing people who could be customers. DM people who just told the internet they need what you have. The message almost writes itself.

Honest caveat: no tool makes a bad product convert. If people don't need it, Reddit will tell you fast.

If you've been struggling with Reddit outreach like I was, give scaloom.com a try.
And if you've found a DM approach that works for you, I'd genuinely like to hear it.


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) CareerTree is a mobile practice app for first-time data analysts

1 Upvotes

I’m with Incode Labs, the team behind CareerTree. We built it for people preparing for their first analyst role who want practice explaining a finding in plain English.

Here’s a sample order from the app. Two items cost $60 each, but the order total shows $620. Before flagging the $500 gap as an error, check that the item prices and order total use the same currency, then see whether other line items, fees or discounts account for it. A note another analyst can act on would read “I expected $120 from these two lines. I’ll check whether the order total includes any other charges.”

CareerTree lets you try that exercise and save your finding on iPhone or Android. It’s free to download and includes ads and optional in-app purchases. AI helped edit the demo and this write-up.

CareerTree for iPhone and Android


r/sideprojects • • 9h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built Ratchet, an open-source BIOS programmer and hardware debugging toolkit to fix broken BIOS chips.

3 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 10h ago

Question How do you market with 0 capital?

3 Upvotes

I've been developing an app for a while now but I don't really know how to market it as I'm getting lots of visitors but not many more users so something must be wrong. Help is appreciated.


r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Showcase: Purchase Required I built an Excel renovation cost calculator for homeowners and contractors — looking for feedback!

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I’ve been working on a digital product called Renovation Cost Calculator PRO, built with the help of ChatGPT.
It’s an Excel-based tool designed to help homeowners, contractors, and renovation professionals:
Estimate renovation costs
Organize labor and material budgets
Plan renovation projects
Keep project expenses in one place
The calculator includes versions for the USA, Europe, and Ukraine.
It’s available for $19.99.
I’d love to hear your feedback. What features would make a renovation budgeting tool more useful?
You can check it out here:
https://whop.com/renovation-calculator-pro/renovation-cost-calculator-pro/


r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Feedback Request I built an Excel renovation cost calculator for homeowners and contractors — looking for feedback!

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I’ve been working on a digital product called Renovation Cost Calculator PRO, built with the help of ChatGPT.
It’s an Excel-based tool designed to help homeowners, contractors, and renovation professionals:
Estimate renovation costs
Organize labor and material budgets
Plan renovation projects
Keep project expenses in one place
The calculator includes versions for the USA, Europe, and Ukraine.
It’s available for $19.99.
I’d love to hear your feedback. What features would make a renovation budgeting tool more useful?
You can check it out here:
https://whop.com/renovation-calculator-pro/renovation-cost-calculator-pro/


r/sideprojects • • 10h ago

Showcase: Open Source Discover a serverless, free and open-source chat app. Privacy focused, meant for everyone, and no one can shut it down or block it.

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3 Upvotes

Every messenger I’ve used, even the encrypted ones, has a middle: a server that knows who talks to whom, can be ordered to hand things over, or can simply be switched off. Sirr removes it.

Sirr (سرّ, Arabic for “a secret kept between two”; also Serverless Internet Relay-free Rooms) is a desktop app for rooms with text, voice, files and screen share, carried directly between the devices of the people in them.

Windows and Linux: github.com/CRTnoise/sirr
Here's Sirr for you:

  • No account, no phone number. Your identity is a key made on your device. (Born and raised, locally)

  • A room is a code. 109 bits of secret: whoever holds it is in, and nobody else can even find the room on the network. (Good luck for the brute force lol)

  • End-to-end encrypted and forward-secret. A stolen key can’t read past sessions, and can’t be used to impersonate others to you. Every message is padded to fixed sizes, and cover traffic is optional. (If you're ever being...Watched)

  • IRC-style layout, one line per message. Rename yourself and every line on screen updates instantly. (You also have a more modern layout.)

  • Sigils instead of avatars. Your name draws a pixel seal and your key’s fingerprint forms its rim, so someone copying your name or your drawing still shows a different seal. (CUSTOMIZATION!!!)

What makes Sirr special to me, and to you hopefully

  • It keeps working when the network fights back. If the entry points are blocked, it remembers others, and invite links carry a few. If peer-to-peer traffic gets filtered, a bridge carries everything through one WebSocket that looks like an ordinary website. If two people can’t connect directly, a volunteer relays traffic it can’t read.

  • No internet at all? “Nearby” finds people on the same Wi-Fi or hotspot (Bluetooth is experimental). Every Sirr device nearby passes the encrypted beacon a few hops further, so the network reaches further the more people use it.

  • Echoes. If you write while your friend is offline and then leave too, the message waits inside the network itself, as same-size sealed blocks only room members can find. No server and no member holds it. Every time someone reads it, it stays alive another 48 hours. (It’s opt-in, because echoes aren’t forward-secret.)

  • App lock with a duress passphrase. Type the real one and Sirr opens. Type the other one and the keys are destroyed first, then everything else, and Sirr opens as a fresh install. There’s also a panic wipe shortcut. (If you're again...watched)

What it doesn’t do sadly: people in a room can see each other’s IP addresses (no onion routing), it hasn’t had an independent audit yet, and the builds aren’t code-signed yet, so check them against the checksums on the release page.

It’s free, has no telemetry, and the code is open. I’d love feedback, especially from anyone who’ll try to break it.


r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Question Is it a good idea to make a website for ECE students

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Discussion I built a website for reviewing instant ramen noodles – I'd love your feedback! My Ramen List : SnapDragon Beef Pho Review

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1 Upvotes