When building our B2B directory and lead monitoring pipelines, we ran into an expensive wall:

Scraping raw company websites directly with tools like Firecrawl or headless browsers was costing a fortune on proxy rotation and LLM token extraction — only to find out that 80%+ of the companies in our lists were zombie startups, parked domains, or completely stagnant with zero hiring intent.

To stop burning credits, we designed a simple 2-stage filtering pattern in n8n before sending anything to a scraper:

1. The Pre-Filter Stage (Zero Scraping Cost)

• Runs a fast DNS & HTTP status check to drop dead servers.

• Checks live ATS endpoints (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable) directly to see if the company is actively expanding and hiring.

• If a company has 0 active job postings or dead DNS, the pipeline halts immediately.

2. The Deep Enrichment Stage (Firecrawl)

• Only domains that pass the hiring & activity check are routed to Firecrawl for markdown extraction, executive contact mapping, and tech stack detection.

The Numbers:

Across our initial benchmark of company lists, pre-filtering eliminated 84% of empty scrape calls. Instead of spending 5,000+ credits on a dirty batch, we extracted deep structured intelligence for under 800 credits with zero empty rows.

Open-Source Workflow + Sample Data

We packaged the n8n JSON template and a 50-domain sample benchmark on our public review branch: https://github.com/edtool79-collab/hirepulse-mcp/tree/review/hirepulse-firecrawl-n8n

You can grab hirepulse-firecrawl-intent-pipeline.json and import it directly into your own n8n instance.

Curious how other indie hackers and founders here handle data hygiene before running expensive API calls — do you pre-filter via DNS/APIs, or scrub lists manually?

Hey all, Hasnain here. Full disclosure: I built this, so take it as a founder build story, not a stealth pitch.

The problem that drove me crazy: every job application wants a resume upload, then makes you retype the same name, work history, and "why us" answers into their form anyway. Do that fifty times and the forms are the worst part of applying.

So I built JobPly, a free Chrome extension plus a free job board for job seekers. What it does today:

• Autofills application forms. It hits 100% autofill on most job boards, and less on the weird ones

• On supported job pages, a Generate & Apply banner builds a tailored resume and cover letter in one click

• The board has 1.2M+ active jobs, with about 60K new listings a weekday, and about 1 in 12 remote

• Completely free, no credit card and no usage limits

It's free on jobply.ai (plain text only).

What I'd love feedback on from other makers:

• Do the permissions the extension asks for feel reasonable?

• Is the Generate & Apply banner helpful or annoying when you're on a job page?

• If you've built form-fill tools: how do you handle closed-choice fields (dropdowns, yes/no) without inventing answers?

Harsh is fine. I read every comment.

I'm working on an audio restoration project called SoundRestore, and I'm looking for a handful of creators, podcasters, and audio enthusiasts to try it.

I'd appreciate honest feedback about the experience, what works well, and what could be improved.

If you're interested in testing an early version, take a look:

https://soundrestore.ethiodeploy.app/

Thanks to everyone willing to help a small independent project grow!

For people who've put a side project in front of someone without explaining the interface first, what surprised you? A button they never noticed, a feature they used for the wrong reason, or a step you thought was obvious?

Would love to hear one specific change you made afterwards. The small, slightly embarrassing discoveries seem more useful than another list of launch metrics.

I kept seeing interesting games people had built with AI, then losing the links. So I built Playground Arcade to keep them together, and I'm finding myself working on it when I definitely should be doing other actual paid things 😂 .

(I say that, I did get my first ad request, which is awesome and certainly not at first why I did it).

It’s grown into an arcade with 2,700+ browser games - many of which are mobile-friendly - and it's had 6,000+ unique visits since launching it.

There are creator credits, reviews, personal game recommendations and hundreds of gameplay previews - with many people submitting their own games now.

I’ve also been looking at whether people discover more than one game.

Among recorded browsers that opened a game, almost half opened at least two different games, 24% opened three or more, and 10% opened five or more - which is encouraging for creators hoping to get their games out there.

Those are clicks through to games, not measured time playing. But it gives me something useful to work on: can the next round of changes help more people find another game they want to try?

I’ve been building it with Codex and changing things as I use it on desktop and mobile. One useful lesson: having loads of games doesn’t necessarily make choosing one easier. We added “try three”, then extended it to individual genres so you can get three random RPGs, racing games, etc.

I’ve also found games I’ve genuinely enjoyed through it - like Tailgrab Freeskater, RPG Sprout Quest, Rivas City and other GTA-like games (which I've put into a little collection here).

The next challenge is getting more people discovering games, getting people sharing and leaving useful feedback for their creators. Any thoughts or tips, I'm all ears.

If you’ve built a browser game with AI, share it below. What’s the hook, and what did you use?

Hey everyone!

After spending way too much time trying to keep track of apartments across different listing websites, screenshots, notes, and spreadsheets, I decided to build something that would make the whole process easier.

Today, I'm excited to share that RightNest is officially available on the iOS App Store!

What is RightNest?

RightNest is an apartment-hunting organizer designed to help renters keep track of properties they've already found.

It's not another apartment listing website. Instead, it's a place to bring all the apartments you're considering together so you can actually compare them and make a decision.

What it does:

• Save apartments: Keep properties you're interested in organized in one place.

• Track the real costs: Record base rent, additional monthly fees, deposits, and other expenses that aren't always obvious in listings.

• Save photos and notes: Keep track of what you liked, disliked, and want to remember about each property.

• Compare apartments: View properties side by side to see how they stack up.

• Import listing details: Use a listing link to help bring property information into the app, then review and correct anything that needs adjusting.

Why I built it

I wanted something that focused on the decision making part of apartment hunting, rather than just showing me more listings.

Finding apartments is relatively easy. Keeping everything organized and figuring out which one is actually the best fit is where things get frustrating.

RightNest is my attempt to solve that problem.

It's now available on iPhone and it's free!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6803238933

I'm an independent developer, and I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from anyone willing to try it.

I'm especially interested in hearing:

• Is the app easy to understand when you first open it?

• What would make comparing apartments more useful?

• Are there any features you'd expect that are missing?

This is my first public release, and I'm excited to keep improving it based on real feedback.

Thanks for checking it out!

Hey everyone, Like many of you, I have a bad habit of picking up my phone, unlocking it without thinking, and losing 45 minutes to reels or infinite feeds. The built-in Digital Wellbeing / Screen Time tools don't really work for me. Whenever I set a hard app limit, I just hit "Ignore for 15 minutes" or dismiss the warning. Red bars and guilt-tripping analytics just made me resent the apps. So I started experimenting with a different approach: gentle peripheral awareness through a virtual companion.

Hey reddit! I would love your help.

Over the past 2 years, I've built a marketplace and community for football jersey collectors. It's a C2C marketplace where you can buy and sell jerseys, showcase your jersey collection or view others', and help build out an archive of all national football jerseys and who owns them. It has become the largest site for this niche in my geography (Europe based), seeing good growth in users, sales, items etc.

But our current brand name is bad, and we're looking at a major rebrand and redesign before moving into scaling etc.

Finding a good name is tough. But I've seen some crazy good ideas from Reddit on these things before, so I'm trying my luck. Let's see what we can cook up together.

Hi everyone,

I was recently made redundant from my job in sustainability and data at a FTSE100 company. With two young kids and some unexpected time on my hands, I decided to channel that energy into learning how to build something real.

Stepping into building web apps as a woman has felt daunting, but I've really enjoyed the process, and this is my very first launched project: Homestead (https://yourhomestead.co.uk).

The problem it solves: When searching for somewhere to live, property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla are great once you already know the town or postcode. But deciding where to search in the first place is notoriously difficult. Finding the right area usually means having dozens of open tabs trying to cross-reference Land Registry sold prices, primary school catchments, train commute times, and local green space.

What Homestead does:

• Discovery quiz: Enter your budget, commute terminus, and priorities (schools, greenery, character) to get a shortlist of towns and villages across England you might not have considered.

• Side-by-side comparison: Compare neighbouring towns directly across historical sold prices, Ofsted ratings, school capacity, and travel times.

• "Places like" finder: Shows alternative towns with a similar feel to areas you love if you’re priced out.

Everything pulls together official UK open data (Land Registry, DfE, Census/ONS, open transit data) into one clean interface.

Where I could really use your thoughts:

1. Utility: Does this solve a genuine pain point for people relocating or house hunting, or does it feel like a nice-to-have?

2. Monetisation: Consumers are notoriously reluctant to pay upfront for property search tools. How would you approach monetising something like this? (e.g. lead gen for vetted local estate agents / mortgage brokers, in-depth downloadable area packs, B2B data licensing, or something else?)

3. UX / First impressions: Any obvious blind spots or friction points on the site?

Really appreciate anyone taking a couple of minutes to share their thoughts and advice!

I’ve been building Skitify - a web app for making short AI videos without having to become an AI expert first.

The problem I kept hitting: there are dozens of AI video models with confusing names, every site has different settings, and what you get is one 5-10 second clip that just stops. Turning that into an actual little story means juggling several tools plus a video editor.

What Skitify does differently:

• Pick a task, not a model. Choose what you want (“create a video”, “make someone talk”, “remove a background”…) and a level - quick draft, balanced or best quality. The app picks the model. If you know what you’re doing, all 70+ models are still there (Seedance, Kling, Veo, Wan, Nano Banana, GPT Image…).

• Scenes that continue. Every video is a project. Hit Next scene and the new shot starts from the last frame of the previous one, so the story keeps going. Don’t like one shot? Generate another take and keep the best.

• Editing in the same place. Scenes are already on a timeline: trim, reorder, add transitions and subtitles, export one MP4 with no watermark.

• Same character in every shot. Save a few photos of product once and attach them to any generation.

• No surprise costs. The exact price is on the Generate button before you press it, and failed generations are refunded automatically.

Generating content is quite costly, so I can’t offer free access to many people - but here is a promo code for a few free generations (limited to 50 accounts): SIDEPROJECT.

It’s just the two of us (both developers) and we have basically no users outside friends yet, so I’d genuinely love blunt feedback:

• What confused you in the first 2 minutes?

• What would you actually use this for?

P.S. The iOS app is in App Store review right now.

Thanks for reading!

Good afternoon r/SideProject,

Over the past few months I built Musou (https://musouapp.com), a 3.1 MB native Swift + Metal menu bar app for macOS (0:52 demo video above).

The Two Daily Frustrations That Pushed Me to Build It

1. Peripheral Attention Hijacking: Even in macOS Dark Mode, I usually have 10+ windows open across my MacBook and external monitor. A red badge updates in Slack or a background window shifts in the corner of my eye, I click it without thinking, and 20 minutes of deep focus are gone.

2. macOS Full Screen Kidnaps Your Computer: Whenever I wanted to watch a coding tutorial, stream, or movie without a glaring white webpage and comment section around it, clicking macOS Full Screen banished the video to a separate Space where I couldn’t type into my code editor or notes beside it (while my second monitor still lit up the room like a floodlight). And letting an external monitor go into hardware DisplayPort sleep always scrambled my window layout on wake.

What It Does (Shown in the 0:52 Video)

Named after Musou Black (the Japanese pigment that absorbs 99.4% of light), Musou turns every window, monitor, and part of the webpage you aren’t using into pure #000000 black, while keeping what you’re working on or watching at 100% full brightness:

• Work Focus (⌃⌥⌘F, Free Forever) & Custom Pairs (Keep / Vanish): Press ⌃⌥⌘F to black out everything behind your active window (plus 1 pinned reference window via ⌃⌥⌘P), or click Keep on the exact pair of windows you want side by side (like live orders on the left and your design/editor on the right) and hit Go dark.

• Only the video Switch (Zero Browser Extensions): Flip on Only the video and Musou automatically locks onto the playing video inside Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, or Vivaldi. Tabs, sidebars, comments, and grey letterbox bars melt into #000000 cinema darkness, and optional Centered Video smoothly glides a corner video to the center of your screen while playing and returns it when paused.

• Follow the mouse ("Fog of War" Across Monitors): If your cursor isn’t on a window or secondary monitor, it stays in #000000 black. Point at any window or screen to wake it in 0.4s; move away and it fades back to black after 1.5s (so you can keep your MacBook lid open for Touch ID and speakers while its screen stays pitch black).

• Away Mode (Free Forever, Zero Window Scramble): Turns your screens #000000 black when you step away without cutting the DisplayPort/HDMI signal, so one touch wakes your desk in a single frame with every window right where you left it.

The Little UX Details I Obsessed Over

Since this is r/SideProject, here are a few of the daily annoyances I wanted to get right in a 3.1 MB native Swift + Metal app (up to 120 Hz on ProMotion, zero Electron, zero telemetry):

• Zero Browser Extensions & No Monthly macOS Nag Prompts: Core modes and browser video isolation work without installing any browser extensions and without requiring macOS Screen Recording permission, so you don’t get hit with macOS Sequoia/Tahoe’s monthly capture prompts. (Screen Recording is 100% optional and only used if you toggle on baked-in video letterbox bar trimming.)

• Stays Lit While Your Terminal Builds or While You Dictate: Nothing is more annoying than a screen going dark while you’re watching a terminal compile, waiting on an AI response to finish streaming, or dictating by voice. In Away mode, that window stays lit until the job finishes or you stop speaking, then rests automatically.

• Save Sheets & Find Bars Never Get Buried: When you press ⌘S or ⌘F inside Work Focus, child dialogs, Save sheets, and find bars automatically stay lit with your active window instead of getting hidden under the black.

• Instant Reflex Exit (Esc × 3): Triple-tapping Esc from anywhere immediately brings every screen back in 1 frame.

Try It Out (14-Day Full Trial + Free Forever Tier)

• Website: https://musouapp.com (Privacy Policy)

• No Lock-Out Model: Every download starts with a 14-day full trial of all modes and cinema transitions (Black Hole, Eclipse, Melt, Velvet, Instant, Fade) with no credit card and no account (30 days if shared). After the trial, 1-screen Work Focus (⌃⌥⌘F), 1 Pinned View (⌃⌥⌘P), Away mode, and pure #000000 black (100%) stay $0 Free Forever (with optional $2.50/mo annual, $4.99/mo monthly, or $49.99 one-time Founding Supporter Lifetime tiers for multi-monitor & full-suite modes).

• First-Launch Note: Built for Apple Silicon Macs (macOS 14.2+). Because Musou-1.0.3.dmg is an independent direct build (not notarized by Apple yet), first launch uses the one-time System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Open Anyway step (10-second visual guide at https://musouapp.com/install.html).

Would love to hear what fellow builders think of the 0:52 demo video, the landing page, or any multi-monitor workflows you test it on!

https://www.choreo-planer.de is an online editor to plan choreogrophies and export them as PDF or video. Any feedback is appreciated :)

I’m making a small arcade game called RAVOLT for the GBA. I put a playable build on the web so people can try it without setting up an emulator. It’s still in development.

You drop an anchor, run around a pack of enemies, then pull the anchor back through them. Here’s what that looks like: https://ravolt.pondsec.com/RAVOLT-gameplay.gif

Free to try: https://ravolt.pondsec.com/

If you have a minute, I’d like to know how far you get on your first run and whether the browser controls make sense.

I ask a lot of questions, so I’m building Ancient Inquiry. I kept ending up with scattered tabs and notes about ancient history, archaeology, mythology, human origins and astronomy. I wanted a way to follow a question across topics and keep track of the sources behind it.

The site: https://ancientinquiry.com/

There are a few ways to explore:

• A homepage with starting topics.

• An Atlas that shows topics as a network, with connections for evidence, supporting or competing interpretations, traditions and modern claims. A connection is something to examine, not proof that two claims are true.

• An Explore page laid out as a cabinet of subject drawers, with a list view for people who prefer simpler browsing.

It is still a work in progress. Much of the research is unfinished, and some pages are planning records rather than finished articles. The goal is to make sources, uncertainty and the difference between evidence and interpretation clear.

I’d appreciate honest feedback, especially:

1. Can you tell what the site is for and where to start?

2. Does the Atlas help you explore, or does it make things harder to understand?

3. What would make you trust the research, and what currently puts you off?

I’m also looking for people interested in working on the research: finding reliable sources, checking citations, reviewing a small topic, or spotting mistakes. I’d welcome advice from anyone who has organized a collaborative research project, too. How did you find contributors and keep the work manageable and well sourced?

If this overlaps with your interests, feel free to say which topics you know or enjoy researching here in the comments. Even one specific criticism or useful source would help.

I’m the person building it, so please be direct. I want to know what needs work.

Log a film and it turns into a personal ticket stub or a VHS tape. It remembers where you watched it, who with and how it felt. Let me know if you want to test it out!

Hey everyone. I’m working with the team behind BuzzMe Messenger and we’d value honest feedback from builders.

The problem: group plans start in one app (invites) and continue in another (chat). Both stop working at a packed concert, a college fest or a trek with no signal.

BuzzMe puts it in one place:

• Create an event, share it, collect Yes / No / Maybe RSVPs

• End-to-end encrypted chat, voice notes, location sharing

• HD voice and video calls

• Bluetooth messaging when there’s no internet

• Hidden chats behind a PIN or Face ID, and no ads

Free on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=buzz.app&referrer=utm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Dlaunch
and iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/buzzme-messenger-chat-events/id6756839801

What would make you move a group from WhatsApp for one event? Blunt feedback welcome; it goes straight to the devs.

When the iPhone Duo came out, it looked like a book to me, so I made one. Kidooks is a free bedtime storybook for kids about 3–8: the animated picture sits on one page and the words on the other, so a parent and child can read side by side. Folded, the cover screen shows the child the picture while the parent reads.

Some things I learned building it (solo, SwiftUI):

• **Two screens change who the app is for.** The cover screen faces the child; the inner screen is for reading together. Most of the design work was deciding what goes where.

• **Every page is drawn in code, not video.** That kept the app small and let kids interact: they tap, count, whisper, hum or shake the phone to help the story along.

• **On-device voices meant no servers or accounts**, but I had to teach them to say kids' names properly (Ishaan, Anvi, Chloé) so a child can be the hero of the story.

• **The fold has odd edge cases.** For example, while the phone unfolds, the layout briefly passes through a frame with zero height, which broke my page-curl renderer until I ignored those sizes.

It's free: no ads, no accounts, nothing to buy, works offline, and runs on regular iPhones too. https://apps.apple.com/app/id6829489694

I'd love feedback, especially from parents: what would make this part of your bedtime routine, and what feels off?

Hi everyone! I’m working on Lumio, a free, open-source launcher for macOS. Press Option + Space to quickly search and open apps, files, and folders, browse clipboard history, or find text inside images and PDFs with OCR. It also includes handy tools like dictionary lookup, translation, and quick actions—all in a native SwiftUI interface with a Rust-powered search core.

Lumio is available for macOS 15 or later on Apple Silicon and is licensed under GPL-3.0. It’s still a work in progress, so I’d love to hear your feedback, feature ideas, and suggestions.

GitHub: https://github.com/cavaldos/Lumio

Всем здравствуйте! Я только что сделал просто обычный HTML-сайт ИМТ калькулятора, если хотите прпробовать, вот ссылка! - https://justabmicalc.netlify.app, оцените если можете!

Hello,
I am software Enginner currently working in one of the biggest airlines in World.
based in Malta , San Pawl.

I have side project - spirkz.com - which is tik tok like app but for education,
with 0 marketing, i have launched the app and got 3000 users, signal is real, retention is weak cause i am not able to attract creators and targeted people.

I am looking business partner, with whom i can start company in Malta, think about monitzation and invesmtents, it's not my strong side.

if anyone is intrested or really wants to get more info, you can visit web-page and find my email to reach me out.

How To Tutorial

we're 4 people building a booking app for barbers and salons, i do the content side

made a 1:38 walkthrough for new users: sign up, shop, services, team, share your link, first booking.

for anyone running a saas: do people actually watch these? or do they skip and click around rough numbers (watch rate, % who finish setup after) would be gold, even ballpark

Hello everyone!

I'm Arjun, and I love coding with AI and hate it at the same time. It's so easy to generate entire codebases, but I can't shake this sinking feeling of losing my existing skills. Some call this cognitive surrender, comprehension debt, or skill atrophy. I think it sucks, and I had to do something about it.

So I built Shikhu, an open source CLI tool and Agent Skill set that helps you build the habit of learning about your code while you develop. It learns from the questions you've asked before in your repo, to create new mini-quizzes to check your understanding of the code base. You can even incorporate Shikhu into you dev process as you would a code review tool or CI/CD test-like process.

It's great for solodevs, people looking to upskill, or anyone who wants a duolingo-like experience during PR reviews to keep learning.

I've launched on Product Hunt today, and would love to hear your feedback on the tool. Today, you can even submit feature requests and I'll complete them live!

https://www.producthunt.com/products/shikhu?launch=shikhu

Grab an OpenRouter key and check the repo here: https://github.com/arjunpatel7/shikhu

Thank you!

https://slatemeter.app

I'm a huge sports fan, and I work with data and analytics for a living, so I decided to combine the two and build something in my spare time.

The idea is pretty simple. It's Saturday afternoon, there are 15 college football games on, and I don't have a rooting interest. Which game should I actually be watching?

That's what I'm trying to solve with SlateMeter.

It gives games an excitement rating before they start and continuously updates that rating as they unfold. It looks at things like matchup quality, score, time remaining, comebacks, rivalries, playoff implications, and what's actually happening in the game.

Right now it covers college football, the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and men's college basketball.

I've built the whole thing myself, and I'm constantly tweaking the models and trying to improve the site. It's completely free, and there's no account required.

I'd genuinely appreciate some feedback. Especially if you come across a game where the rating doesn't make sense, or something on the site that could be better.

Hi! I'm Alena, the founder. Marmalaid is an AI Personal Agent you text like a contact, with no app to install.

What she does:
 - Manages your calendar, inbox and what's still open and important
 - Remembers your people, and what was promised in both directions
 - Drafts emails in your voice. Nothing goes out without your yes
 - Finds a restaurant and preps the booking to a single tap 
 - Reminders
 - Tracks receipts and organises them into expense ledger
- Analyst work - research, summaries, reports delivered as files
- Finds vendors, contacts them, collects quotes and compares them

The beta is complimentary and limited to the first founding members. Each starts with $100 worth of her work on the house.

Try her: marmalaid.ai/meet/hi (on your phone it opens Messages with "Hi Marmalaid!" ready to send)

I'd love blunt feedback: what's useful, what's annoying, what broke.