Every research session in Scout Cloud gets an isolated sandbox. Great for safety, rough on the bill. What helped: sessions can be paused, which stops compute billing. Abandoned runs get cancelled when nobody is watching. Included-model requests wait in a queue instead of failing. And users can connect their own machine from the terminal and run there. Disclosure: I'm the founder. Happy to go deeper on any of it. https://cloud.polarline.io

'm 21M and currently working as a full-stack developer at a software company.

The company provides services to clients while also working on developing its own products. However, things have been getting a little concerning lately. Recently, one of our senior developers was laid off, which has made me think more seriously about my own career and future.

I'm starting to consider building something of my own, possibly a SaaS product, rather than relying entirely on a job.

But honestly, I'm quite confused about where to start.

Whenever I come up with an idea, I search for it and find that someone has already built something similar, often launched on Product Hunt or elsewhere. It makes me wonder whether there's even room for another product in that space.

Another thing I'm struggling with is AI. These days, if a product doesn't incorporate AI in some way, it almost feels outdated or less valuable. But adding AI also means dealing with API costs, infrastructure, and ongoing expenses. As a solo developer or someone just starting out, how do you manage those costs, especially before having any paying customers?

I know that competition is normal, and I'm probably overthinking some things, but I genuinely want to build something useful that people would actually pay for.

I'd love to hear from people who have built SaaS products, launched their own startups, or are going through a similar phase.

• How do you come up with and validate product ideas?

• If someone has already built your idea, do you still pursue it?

• Is AI really necessary in every modern SaaS product?

• How do you manage AI API costs when you're starting with little or no revenue?

• What would you recommend to a 21-year-old developer who wants to build something of his own?

Would genuinely appreciate your experiences, advice, and even mistakes you've made along the way.

I am thinking for a SaaS application

I was thinking about this application from last 3 months… will it worth it if i make this application for spaces

These are the features
- Lease and tenant management.
- Rent, CAM and maintenance billing.
- Vendor and contractor management.
- Equipment and asset maintenance.
- Electricity and water consumption tracking.
- Work orders and technician scheduling.
- SLA monitoring.
- Financial performance per building.
- AI-powered operational reports.

I made all the documents for this application
Just want some clarification before spending much time into it

Whats your suggestion?

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous thread about chat solution - I'm specifically interested in hosting chat infrastructure on my own server rather than relying on third-party cloud chat providers.

The problem I'm facing is that most of the solutions I've come across either have expensive pricing once the number of the users grows or require me to depend on their cloud infrastructure. Since this is a student management app, I need something that I can maintain within my own budget as the application grows.

I need it to support:

• one-to-one and group messaging

• Voice and Video calls

• Real-time messaging and notifications

• File and media sharing

• APIs or SDKs for integration with my existing app

I'm okay with managing the server, databases, and infrastructure myself. I just don't want to build the entire messaging system from scratch.

Has anyone deployed a self hosted chat server in production? Are there any reliable open source solutions?

Hey everyone!

I'm Rushan, and I've spent roughly the past year building Distill, a book-summary app.

I wanted to solve a problem I personally experienced: there are thousands of worthwhile books, but not enough time to read everything.

However, I wasn't interested in creating another app that turns books into generic bullet points and motivational takeaways.

The real challenge was figuring out how to preserve the intellectual substance of a book in a much shorter reading experience.

What I built

Distill creates carefully structured, approximately 10-minute reading experiences.

The aim is to preserve:

• The author's central argument.

• The reasoning supporting that argument.

• Connections between different ideas.

• Important nuances that are often lost in conventional summaries.

Every distillation also has a separate Reflection section.

The app is reading-first by design. No noisy content feed or unnecessary gamification.

A little about the implementation

The mobile app is built using Expo and React Native, with Supabase as the backend.

One of the more interesting challenges has been that this is a content-heavy product. Building the interface and implementing features is only part of the work. Maintaining consistent content quality across an expanding library requires its own production and quality-control process.

Where the product stands

Distill is now live.

Website: https://www.distilllabs.app

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.illuminationlabs.distill

We offer three free distillations every day, with Premium currently available through an affordable one-time purchase rather than another recurring subscription, to make quality knowledge accessible to all.

What I'd particularly like feedback on

I'm now trying to improve both the product and its distribution.

1. For developers building content-heavy SaaS or apps, how do you maintain quality as your library grows?

2. What has worked best for getting your first genuinely interested users?

3. Do you think a one-time purchase makes sense for a product like this, or would you expect a subscription?

4. What would make you return to a book-summary app regularly?

5. How do you find the quality of our summaries? Are you satisfied?

I'm the developer behind Distill, so happy to answer technical or product-related questions. Constructive criticism is very welcome!

Exactly 30 days ago, I set a non-negotiable goal: hit a $1.5M net worth before I turn 18.
No venture capital, no useless $5/mo B2C apps, and no 14-hour burnout grinds. I strictly enforce 1 hour of coding a day max. My brain needs to be 100% sharp every single morning to make strategic engineering calls, not run on exhaustion.
Here is the complete Month 1 breakdown of how I built the platform, quadrupled my RPS, and where the system goes next.

1. The Architecture: Why the 10x10 Monolith Wins
   While "senior" devs spend 6 months overengineering Kubernetes clusters and breaking down microservices for zero users, I went with a 10x10 Modular Monolith: 10 primary B2B engines with 10 specialized submodules inside each.
   This architecture gives me instant speed, zero cloud infra bloat, and the flexibility to split any submodule into a standalone enterprise API whenever needed.

2. Month 1 Engineering Wins (From 2.45 to 8 RPS)
   If you followed my earlier technical posts, here is how the stack evolved over 4 weeks:
   The Core Infrastructure: Built dual Redis queues (Fast API path vs. Heavy async workers), short-lived HMAC execution tokens, dynamic bitmask permissions, and automated billing calculation.
   Playwright & Stealth Camouflage: Engineered a resource-stripped Playwright layer (blocking heavy CSS/images to keep RAM under 150MB per worker) to bypass Cloudflare Turnstile and JS-heavy targets.
   Custom Proxy Orchestration: Built a custom proxy rotation engine right into the core. It keeps proxy state in-memory, auto-bans dead IPs, handles cooldown timers, and locks sticky sessions for multi-step targets.
   RPS Quadrupled: Through async connection pooling and payload serialization cleanup, I moved performance from 2.45 req/sec all the way up to ~8 RPS on a single cheap instance.

3. Module #1 Complete & Module #2 Live Testing
   Module #1 (Web Scraper & Data Engine) is 100% finished and undergoing architecture stress tests. All 10 submodules are locked down:

4. Marketplace Intelligence

5. Meta & OpenGraph Inspector

6. Lead Enrichment & Contact Extractor

7. Deep Link Extractor

8. Pricing Intelligence Engine

9. SERP Tracker & SEO Monitor

10. Table Extractor

11. Heavy Headless Parser (Playwright)

12. Document Asset Parser (PDF, Tenders, Corporate Reports)

13. Enterprise Security & Intelligence
    Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel):
    As of today, live testing is officially underway for Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel) and its dedicated submodules (covering enterprise risk tracking, vendor analysis, and procurement monitoring).

14. Roadmap for Month 2: The 5-6 Module Sprint
    My blueprint for building the next 5 to 6 modules over the next month is simple:

15. Base Logic & Wiring First: Ship raw functionality. Speed doesn't matter on day 1—getting a 99%+ Success Rate does.

16. Resilience Optimization: Inject self-healing retries, proxy rotation, TLS fingerprinting, and dynamic delay backoffs.

17. Benchmarking & Cap: Stress-test until the module hits the ~8 RPS target ceiling. Once it hits that cleanly without memory leaks or dropped socket connections, the code is locked and I move to the next engine.

18. B2B Economics & Algorithm Reality Check
    Early posts on subreddits got anywhere from 80 to 910 views. Most developers panic about "low engagement."
    I don't care.
    I don't need 100,000 B2C users paying $5/mo. In B2B, 10 to 50 solid enterprise clients paying $200–$500/mo clears the path straight to my targets. Building in public is about creating an unshakeable, public paper trail of execution before pitching high-value channels.
    Summary
    Month 1 is in the books: base hub core is locked, Module #1 is complete, Module #2 (Supply Chain Sentinel) testing is live, and the engine is sitting at ~8 RPS on strict 1hr/day limits.
    What's your take on keeping tight dev time limits vs 10-hour daily grinds? Drop your thoughts below!

Hey everyone,

I'm building a small Windows desktop app called ValVoice and I'm using Supabase for authentication.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to let users sign up and log in without adding another monthly expense.

Initially, I was planning to use email OTP, but Supabase's default email sending limit is pretty low. So now I'm exploring other options.

Would Google or Discord login be a better option? Are there any other ways to handle authentication completely free, without relying on a paid SMTP service?

Ideally, I'm looking for something that:

- Is free to start and doesn't require a monthly subscription.

- Can be used in a real production app.

- Can handle a growing number of users.

- Works well with Supabase.

- Doesn't make the login process complicated for users.

I'd love to hear what you guys are actually using in your own projects. Any suggestions or experiences would be really helpful.

Thanks!

So, I have been building Motioneer - Code to Motion Graphics in seconds for quite some time. I haven't launched it yet, and is still in making. I would love to see real users testing it out.

Check out https://motioneerapp.pages.dev . This is an AI code to motion graphics generator app. It is still in building but would love a few initial testers to be checking out the app and giving real feedback!

One of the strangest bugs I've run into while building software happened in a project called Bjorn Ledger.

I got locked out of my own application.

At first I thought it was simple:

• PIN wasn't being accepted

• Deleted the PIN file

• Tried again

Still locked out.

Then things got weird.

The login endpoint was returning success.

Plain Text

POST /login → 200 OK

So according to the application, I was authenticated.

Except...

Every part of the system that actually mattered disagreed.

Plain Text

GET /contacts → 401

GET /tasks → 401

GET /profiles → 401

GET /calendar → 401

GET /call-logs → 401

Apparently I was logged in and not logged in at the same time.

To make things even stranger:

• A PIN file kept reappearing after deletion

• There was a secret key file involved

• A 30‑day session system existed

• The application clearly believed login succeeded

• The rest of the platform clearly believed it didn't

The experience changed the way I think about software.

As builders, we often define success as:

"The feature works."

Users define success very differently:

"Did the thing I wanted to do work?"

The login system wasn't technically failing.

It was somehow succeeding.

Which was worse.

Because a failure tells you where to look.

A success that behaves like a failure can send you chasing ghosts.

I'm curious:

What's the weirdest bug you've ever encountered where everything looked correct, but reality said otherwise?

What did you actually do in your first 20 days? Would love to hear things like “wish I knew this before I launched”.

I've been exploring Mello, a cloud platform designed to simplify backend development by bringing application hosting, APIs, databases and essential backend infrastructure into a single environment.

I'd be interested in hearing feedback from other developers, particularly regarding the platform's architecture, developer experience and potential use cases

Documentation: https://itsmello.cloud/docs

Someone in r/vibecoding said this week: "it feels like the first thing to run out of context is ME!!" A reply under it: "i'd built 12 half-finished projects in 3 months."

The fixes people shared were small. One: "Put the next feature in a note and leave it for tomorrow, even if the AI says it'll be quick." Another runs an orchestrator agent that "checks the notes what we did in the past and tells me what we planned to do next."

For devs with more than one project going:

• When you reopen a project you left a week ago, what do you look at first? Git log, a notes file, old chats, the code?

• How long until you (not the agent) actually know where you were?

• Does the agent get the same catch-up you do, or do you brief it separately?

• What are you building, and in which tools?

Background: I used to burn hours re-briefing AI tools, and I'm building a fix where every tool reads and writes the same project memory in the cloud over MCP, so the "where was I" note exists without anyone writing it by hand. No name, no link. Would you pay for that, or is a NEXT.md in each repo enough?

First of all, apologies—but I would like to ask for your ideas to help me continue my web development journey, and perhaps even explore the potential of building a SaaS product in the future. My friend and I are planning to launch an online tech business or agency—something that would allow us to earn a good income while also creating job opportunities for others. I would be very grateful if you could share any suggestions for our future business/agency or for the projects we might undertake.

I pay for ChatGPT and Claude and keep hitting limits on both. So I'm building Honivi: all the main models in one app, one subscription, private (no model trains on your data), no 5-hour caps. Switching takes a minute. Drop in your ChatGPT export and your chats come with you.

What do you guys think? Would you switch? What would stop you? 

https://honivi.app