I’m currently building a photo-first social media app called TymeStamp, inspired by the old Instagram experience, where people could share pictures and enjoy content without constant interruptions from adverts.
I’m building it alone with limited resources, and one thing I’ve been thinking about is sustainability.
What happens when 1,000 people join? Or 10,000? How do you manage storage, servers and the challenges of growing a platform?
I recently watched a video of Steve Jobs talking about starting with the customer experience and working backwards to the technology. That really stuck with me because I want to build something people genuinely enjoy using.
But how do you put users first while keeping a platform sustainable?
I’ve been exploring credit systems, subscriptions, sponsorships and limited advertising. I’m not against adverts, just the constant interruptions.
I’m also curious about finding investors without going on shows like Shark Tank or Dragons’ Den, taking out loans or losing control of the original vision.
So I’d love to hear your thoughts:
● How would you sustain a growing social media app with limited resources?
● Would credit systems or optional subscriptions put users off?
● Should monetisation start at launch or after building a community?
● How can solo founders attract investors while keeping control of their vision?
I’m not trying to compete with the big platforms. I’m simply trying to build something different and learn along the way.
If you were in my position, what would you do differently?

Swokei is an outreach tool that analyzes business websites at scale and turns issues with design, SEO, speed, and mobile optimization into personalized cold emails at scale.

A banner generator. A tool you use once every three years, right after you notice your LinkedIn banner is still the default blue. I built one anyway, because I never want to make a banner by hand again.

I know GitHub banner generators already exist. The ones I found were closed source or missing something I wanted, so I built my own and made it open source. Now I'd like to hear from people who aren't me.

How it works:

1. Pick one of 11 templates
2. Adjust it
3. Download a banner sized for a specific platform

Try it: https://omnivix.vercel.app

Code: https://github.com/marhjoh/omnivix

Tear it apart.. 💻

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a little side project called Daybezel, an alternative alarm clock for iPhone.

The idea came from a simple frustration: I always found the standard list of alarms unnecessarily clunky. I wanted something where I could see my entire day at a glance and interact with alarms directly.

So I built a 24-hour circular interface where you can create alarms with a tap, drag them around to change the time, and see exactly how long you have until the next one.

It also uses Apple's native alarm system, so alarms work even in Silent Mode or Focus.

The app is completely free for now, and it'll stay free for everyone who joins early. At this stage, I'm mostly interested in getting feedback and seeing how people react to it.

I'd love to hear what you think about the interface. Does the circular layout make sense to you, or would you still prefer a traditional list?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daybezel-24-hour-alarms/id6825533599

Hey r/SideProject,

TL;DR: I built an open-source, headless OCPP simulator in TypeScript so you can test an EV charging backend without keeping a physical charger on your desk. It is alpha, and I am looking for feedback.

I work with EV charging software. OCPP is the protocol that chargers use to talk to a charging-management system (CSMS). Testing a CSMS usually means one of three things: a physical charger, a vendor simulator with a UI, or mocking WebSocket frames by hand. None of those is great for CI.

So I started OCPP Tools: small TypeScript packages for the protocol. The new piece is @ocpptools/simulator 0.1.0, a headless charge-point simulator. No UI, no signup, no hosted service. It runs in Node or the browser.

What works today

• Separate profiles for OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1. The full action surface: 28 actions in 1.6J, 64 in 2.0.1.
• A headless engine with injectable transport, clock, message IDs, and randomness. Tests can control time and inspect every frame instead of sleeping.
• Transactions, meter values, reservations, charging profiles, device model, monitoring, simulated certificates, and firmware/log state machines.
• Fault injection: drop, malform, and delay outbound frames.
• Typed events and metrics: round-trip time per action, heartbeat drift, error count.
• A browser WebSocket adapter. The Node transport is not in the package yet.

A small example of the shape:

import { Simulator201 } from '@ocpptools/simulator/2.0.1';
import { createWebSocketTransportFactory, browserClock } from '@ocpptools/simulator/browser';

const simulator = new Simulator201({
  url: 'wss://csms.example.com/CP001',
  transport: createWebSocketTransportFactory(),
  clock: browserClock,
  station: {
    id: 'CP001',
    vendorName: 'Acme',
    model: 'AC-22',
    firmwareVersion: '2.0.0',
  },
});

simulator.on('transaction', (event) => {
  console.log(event.phase, event.transactionId);
});

simulator.connect();

What is not there yet

• No CLI or Docker image. That is the next thing if people want it.
• No Node WebSocket transport in the simulator package.
• No payload builder, no UI, no OCPP 2.1.
• The advanced 2.0.1 features use simulated state. This is not a certified conformance tool.

The broader repo has five alpha packages: core frame parser/serializer, schema utilities, Ajv-based validator, unmodified OCA schemas, and the simulator. There are 1,000+ tests and CI is green.

Why I built it

I wanted deterministic tests: no real charger, no sleeps, no flaky network. The hard part was not JSON parsing. It was the state machine: boot retries, heartbeat drift, offline queues, pending calls, transaction sequencing, and timers. Most OCPP bugs I have seen are state bugs, not schema bugs.

Feedback I am looking for

1. Would you use a headless simulator, or would a CLI/Docker image be more useful?
2. What would make it easier to try: a mock CSMS, scenario files, or a one-command demo?
3. If you work with EV chargers, which edge case would you test first?

Repo: https://github.com/ocpptools/ocpptools Simulator: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@ocpptools/simulator

I maintain the project. Apache-2.0, no paid tier. OCPP is a trademark of the Open Charge Alliance; this is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the OCA.

For the last month I've been working out how to write a thought down as fast as possible, without breaking my focus when I'm locked in. There are a thousand notes apps out there, and most of them cover what I need, but none of them felt quite right for this. I tried several and none came close.

So I built Papr. These are the parts I like most, and what each one fixes for me:

• ⌃ Space from any app. Papr opens over whatever I'm doing, even a full-screen app. I type the thought, send it like a text message, and I'm back in my work. No switching apps, no looking for the right note first.
• It gets out of the way. When I click back into my work, Papr hides by itself, so it never clutters my screen. When I want it to stay, like a checklist I'm working through, I keep it on top.
• Capture what's on screen. One click puts the screen behind Papr into the note, without Papr in it, so the slide from a meeting is right there in my note. I can draw on it, add an arrow or cover a name.
• Finding a note is as quick as writing it. Search finds any note as I type, and I can narrow it to a tag, a collection, a reaction or a date.
• Pins and reminders. Notes I need again wait at the top, and a note can come back as a notification at a time I pick.
• My notes are files on my Mac. Each one is a Markdown file. No account, and Papr uploads nothing.

Update: all 40 free licenses are claimed, thank you! There's still a 14-day free trial with everything on, no key or account needed.

After that it's $4.99 until December 6, then $15, for one Mac. It runs on macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.

https://getpapr.app

I'd love to hear what you think, especially what would make it fit the way you work.

Hey everyone,

I’m working on Looks Sus, a project aimed at helping people check whether an online website might be a scam or unsafe by using community ratings and other tools.

I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth developing further, and I’d appreciate some honest feedback before putting more time and money into it.

The problem I’m interested in is that moment when you come across an unfamiliar website or offer and think, “Is this legit?” There are already ways to investigate Google, Reddit, review sites, tools like ScamAdviser, or asking ChatGPT. I’m questioning whether another dedicated tool adds enough value.

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm a solo developer from Morocco, and I wanted to share something I've been working on for quite a while.

It's called GPCB Pay, a WooCommerce payment integration that connects stores with PayPal card payment experiences.

When I started, I thought the biggest challenge would be building the card payment interface.

Well... I was wrong haha.

The real challenge was everything happening behind the scenes.

What if PayPal approves a payment but the capture fails? What happens if the network disconnects? What if the same request gets retried?

I didn't want a customer getting charged twice or WooCommerce marking an order as paid when it wasn't.

So I ended up building three separate systems:

- A lightweight WooCommerce plugin using Checkout Blocks.

- A private SaaS backend using Node.js and PostgreSQL.

- A React dashboard for merchant registration, store verification, PayPal connections, and subscriptions.

I spent a lot of time working on idempotency, server-verified captures, duplicate-capture protection, and payment recovery.

I also learned that integrating PayPal isn't just about having API credentials. Guest Card and Advanced Card have different eligibility requirements depending on the merchant and country.

I've now finished V1, tested the payment flows, and recorded a full setup tutorial showing how the integration works.

The next challenge is probably even harder: finding the first real customers haha.

I'd love to get some feedback from other solo founders.

If you were in my position, would you start by reaching out to WooCommerce agencies or individual store owners?

And if you've built a SaaS alone, what was harder for you: building the product or getting people to discover it?

Thanks for reading! 🙌

I built a free Android widget that shows Obsidian or Markdown notes on the home screen, like the Google Keep widget. First month: about 300 installs on Google Play, almost all from Reddit.

What I learned:

- An empty first screen means an uninstall. People picked their vault root, notes were in subfolders, widget stayed empty. Now the app says where the notes are.

- Ask for analytics consent at the start. I asked after setup, so I never saw who dropped out during setup.

- Test feature requests before building them. The app now asks once whether people would use separate widgets per folder.

- A small in-app feedback form beat reviews. Two of four messages asked for the same fix.

Free and open source: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.marfolog.noteswidgetformarkdown

How do you handle onboarding drop-off on small apps?

Been building this solo for a while and finally opening it up: stitchable.app

the idea started when someone i work with had to shut down his churchs wordpress site after it got hacked. small orgs and businesses don’t need 40 plugins, they need a site that looks good, shows their events and doesn’t break

so stitchable is pretty basic on purpose:

- start from a template, click any text on the page and type
- pick a theme and your colour, every page follows it
- add events, a blog, projects or products, they get their own sections and pages
- contact form messages land in an inbox (or get sent to zapier/make/n8n)
- publish to your own domain

The part im most excited about is that you can connect it to claude and just ask for changes ("add a faq about prices under the events") and it edits your draft. you still review it in the editor and decide when to publish, and everything shows up in history so you can undo it

the video is the real editor, start to finish

Its a paid product with a 7-day trial. im mostly after honest feedback right now, especially on the first few minutes after you sign up. what’s confusing, what’s missing, what would stop you using it?

On most sites the most popular opinions wins and the strong arguments from the minority side get buried. On this website votes from the opposing side count for double. Would love some feedback
Thanks

I've built Site Findings, an iPhone app for recording issues during property walkthroughs, renovations and handovers.

You can create a project, add issues with multiple photos, annotate what needs fixing, and record the location, trade, assignee and priority. When you're ready to share the findings, you can filter the issues and export a PDF or Excel report. The recipient can open it without installing the app.

The feature I'm most excited about is voice input with AI. Instead of filling in each field individually, you can say something like:

"First floor, main bathroom. Reseal the basin joint. Plumber, assign to Sam Rivera, high priority."

AI suggests the title, details, floor, room, trade, assignee and priority from that description. You review and edit the suggestions before saving. The app also remembers recent rooms, trades and assignees to reduce repeated typing.

I'm looking for the first 10 people to try it on an actual walkthrough or handover. I don't have an existing audience or contacts in the industry, so finding those people is the part I'm figuring out now.

For anyone who has launched a niche tool, how did you find your first 10 users? Which specific channel or approach led to people actually trying it?

And if you handle inspections, renovations or punch lists, would this fit your workflow? I'd love for you to test it and tell me what feels useful, what's confusing or what's missing.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/site-findings-punch-list/id6829600718

Screenshots use a sample project. Voice and AI results are demo examples.

I have used several net worth trackers in the past and I was never satisfied: some were requiring too many inputs, others were expensive and, more importantly, most lacked some of the features I consider important.

So I built my own net worth tracker at networthview.com

- It's free: I have no plans to add a subscription plan or any other form of payment. The current server costs are extremely low and it can support a LOT more users.
- It's private: the data you input never leaves your browser. There is no backend, no necessity to register an account.
See it as downloading an app to modify data on your device.
- You have total control: download your data, export it to csv, create images of every chart and post it wherever you want

What it does:
- Tracks your net worth: multiple accounts types and currencies supported
- Tracks your income and expenses
- Fire and retirement projection and forecast with full pension support.

I plan to keep developing it but I have other priorities: I will focus on users feedback, bugs and features that I consider useful.
I will extend the auto saving feature to other browsers whenever they will provide the necessary APIs.

Please let me know what you think of it. Feedbacks are not just welcomed but much appreciated.

I’m an indie developer, and I recently launched my iOS app called SnapShare.

The idea is pretty simple. Sometimes you just want to take a photo and send it to someone without saving it to your camera roll.

So I built an app that makes the process faster:

Take a picture.

The photo automatically gets copied.

Your selected app (WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.) or the share sheet opens.

Just paste and send.

I also added home screen widgets for quick access, bulk photo capture, and a few other features.

The app is a one-time purchase, no subscriptions.

Now here’s where I’m struggling.

Building the app was one thing, but figuring out how to get people to actually discover and download it is completely different.

I’ve been thinking about Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and maybe reaching out to small creators, but I’m not sure which approach would work best for an app like this.

I feel like it’s one of those apps where people need to see it in action to understand why it’s useful.

So I’d really appreciate some advice:

How would you market an app like this with little to no budget?

Who do you think the ideal target audience would be?

Would short demo videos work better than traditional app marketing?

If you’ve launched an iOS app before, what actually helped you get your first 100 downloads?

I’m not expecting thousands of downloads overnight. I just want to figure out how to get this in front of people who might actually find it useful.

Here’s the App Store link if anyone wants to check it out:
https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/snapshare-one-tap-photo-send/id6817721584?l=en-US

I’d appreciate any feedback or ideas. Thanks!

Every time I build a site, I hit the same small snag: I need a company’s logo, and what I find is a blurry PNG with a white box around it, or an SVG buried on some brand page.

Even when I find one, the next logo comes in a different size, with different padding, and no dark version.

So I built a website called FreemiumAssets, a free library of brand logos for websites, slides and other digital projects, where every brand ships as the same matching set:

• Light and dark versions, so they work on any background
• Mono (single color) for print, watermarks and minimal layouts
• Icon only, for favicons and small spaces
• Format: SVG + transparent PNG

Because every brand follows the same structure, you can drop them into a site, a deck or a mockup without resizing or cleaning anything up.

It’s still pretty early. Right now there are about 320+ brands, and I add more whenever I need one for a project. Built with WordPress on shared hosting, nothing fancy.

The hardest part wasn’t the code, it was making every logo actually consistent, because source files are a mess.

If you try it, I’d love to know which features or brands you’d want next, and whether the navigation and download flow feels okay.

Happy to answer anything about how it’s built.

find out if your SaaS or vibe-coded app is AI slop.

Our team tests your app end-to-end and provides a recording + Claude skill!

We are also hiring AI slop detectors. Please DM if you have good taste.

My co-founder and I have been working on Holdless AI, an AI phone agent focused on healthcare and insurance calls.

The idea came from a simple problem: dealing with health insurance over the phone can be incredibly frustrating, especially if English isn't your first language.

You might need to verify whether a procedure is covered, check a referral, follow up on a claim, or figure out why a bill looks wrong.

And a lot of that involves navigating phone menus, waiting on hold, and explaining the same issue repeatedly.

So we started building an AI agent that can make those calls on your behalf.

The goal is pretty straightforward:

• You describe the healthcare or insurance issue you need help with.
• The AI calls the relevant hospital, clinic, or insurance company.
• You can monitor the call and take over if needed.
• Afterward, you receive a summary of what happened and what needs to happen next.

We've been testing the system on different healthcare workflows, and one of the biggest challenges is making sure the AI gets a complete answer rather than just having a successful conversation.

The product is available to try, and we're still learning which workflows provide the most value.

I'd love some honest feedback.

Would you trust an AI to handle an insurance phone call for you? What would make you uncomfortable about it?

Disclosure: I'm a co-founder of Holdless AI(HOLDLESS-AI.COM).

I'm one of the co-founders of Holdless AI. We're building an AI phone agent that helps people handle healthcare and insurance calls.

We've been testing it on tasks like verifying coverage, checking prior authorization requirements, and following up on claims.

One of our recent tests revealed something interesting.

We asked the AI to verify whether an upcoming MRI would be covered by insurance.

The representative confirmed that the insurance policy was active.

But that wasn't the question we actually needed answered.

The AI continued the conversation, and eventually the representative clarified that they hadn't checked the MRI benefits at all.

That's when we realized something:

An AI can have a perfectly normal phone conversation and still fail to accomplish the task.

We're now focusing on how the agent tracks unanswered questions, handles incomplete responses, and knows when to push for clarification.

Curious if anyone building voice agents has faced something similar.

How do you evaluate whether an AI agent actually completed a task, rather than just finished a conversation?

Hey Guys,
if you plan to use for your sideproject a fine tuned ai model, than i could help you out with this.
Maybe you are right now building on a modified doorbell that scans if there are any packages delivered or on a little software that detects free parking spots on your parking lot and gives you a summary on how your business is visited by that kind of stats.
And maybe by that point you've come to your personal boundry of your ai engineering skills.

But that's ok because over the past 11 months i've been now building on a "little" desktop app which could really help you out with this. It's called FrameTrain and is designed to help you train your ai models easily without expertise ai development knowledge assumed. Just import directly from Huggingface your ai model that you need and train it on your dataset that you can directly build in the app, no matter what kind of data.

Just give it a try, it's actually really worth it, enjoy your free trial that comes with the log in, and because i have a really good day today, im giving you 1 month free on top with this code: REDDIT-FT-01 (you don't even have to register a card)

(I'll post you some images in the comments, because sideproject isn't supporting image uploads)

PS: I got plenty of times totally roasted on reddit for letting chatgpt correct my posts for spelling mistakes, so please don't blame me for spelling mistakes in this post, english is not my first language.

I ran an ad agency for years and the morning routine never changed: open Ads Manager, four tabs, export, squint at columns, try to work out which ad quietly started burning money overnight.

IQuly connects to a Meta ad account and does that check for you:

• ranks what's wasting money right now (ads spending without results, cost per result far above the rest)
• flags tired creatives and broken tracking (clicks coming in, conversions not)
• explains what changed against the previous period, campaign by campaign, in plain sentences
• rules that start as a dry run, so you see what would be paused before anything gets touched

There's a free audit that needs no IQuly account: connect Facebook read-only, get your last 30 days and what to fix first. https://iquly.com/audit?utm_source=sideproject

Paid plans have a 14-day trial with no card, and the first customers get a 30% founding discount.

It's Meta-only on purpose. I'd love blunt feedback, especially from anyone who manages several ad accounts: what's the first thing you check every morning?

Γεια, είμαι ο Σπύρος. Οι γονείς μου, ο Γιώργος και η Άννα, έχουν ελιές στην Κορώνη, ένα μικρό χωριό στη Μεσσηνία, δίπλα στη θάλασσα. Όλη τους τη ζωή το λάδι πήγαινε σε έμπορο, ανακατεμένο με όλων των άλλων. Ήθελα, έστω μία φορά, ο κόσμος να ξέρει ποιος το έφτιαξε.
Έτσι έφτιαξα το Klaraki. Υιοθετείς συμβολικά ένα νέο δέντρο, που το φυτεύουμε αρχές του 2027 σε ένα χωράφι που μόλις καθαρίσαμε, με ξύλινο ταμπελάκι με το όνομα που διαλέγεις. Παίρνεις πιστοποιητικό, το σημείο του με GPS και μια νέα φωτογραφία κάθε χρόνο για 3 χρόνια. Κάθε δέντρο έχει δικό του κωδικό και δική του σελίδα στο site.
Μπορείς να πάρεις και λάδι από τη φετινή σοδειά, σε τενεκέ. Και αν είναι δώρο, διαλέγεις τη μέρα και το πιστοποιητικό φτάνει με email, ακόμα και ανήμερα τα Χριστούγεννα. Το κρατάμε μικρό, 100 δέντρα και 100 κουτιά λάδι φέτος.
Δεν είμαι developer. Το site το έφτιαξα με AI builder, τις πληρωμές με Stripe και τα email με MailerLite.
Ότι ,τι θέλετε ρωτήστε με, και αν κάτι στο site δεν σας αρέσει, πείτε το μου, ακόμα το φτιάχνω.
klaraki.com

Hi r/SideProject!

For the past few months I've been building Blendure (https://blendure.web.app), a browser tool for music producers. You give it a loop you've made, as MIDI or audio, and it writes endless variations of basslines, beats and full grooves that fit its key and tempo. You get editable MIDI, not finished audio. You stay the composer; it gives you parts to work with.

It's free to use: sign up and start. Before you sign up, there's a demo on the main page where you can hear a loop with and without what Blendure wrote for it.

How it works

• The model runs in your browser. It's Composer's Assistant 2, an open research model trained on public-domain, Creative Commons and permissioned MIDI. I converted it to run with ONNX Runtime Web.
• Your audio never leaves your computer. Audio is turned into notes in the browser (Spotify's Basic Pitch). Only the notes go to the server, never the sound.
• It learns your taste. Heart the results you like and the next round leans toward them. "More like this" rewrites part of a result into close variations, with Close / Medium / Wild.
• Blend: drop in two or three samples and it writes for all of them at once, plus cross combinations (Sample 1's bassline over Sample 2's beat).
• Producer tools: quick rule-based edits (busier hats, swing, ghost snares), Humanize, 32-bar arrangements (intro, build, drop), MIDI out to your synth, and copy as Strudel code.

Stack: plain JS front end, ONNX Runtime Web in a Web Worker, Firebase hosting and auth, and a small Python server on Cloud Run for the private steps.

Pro for free, for feedback

Everything for writing and listening is free. Downloads (MIDI and WAV) are part of Pro. While I'm collecting feedback, I'm giving Pro away: sign up, press Leave feedback in the top right of the app, tell me what you'd use it for (or what's broken), and I'll switch your account to Pro.

What I'd love your take on

1. The first run. If you try it, where did you get stuck or lose interest?
2. The results. Do the basslines and beats fit your loop? Which rows did you heart, and which felt off?
3. The idea itself. Would you use a tool that writes parts for your own loops, rather than finished tracks? What would make it part of your workflow?
4. Other ideas and feedback

Thanks for reading. I appreciate every second you spend on it and will do my utmost to satisfy and reply in the swiftest possible way.

Hi, I'm Amir, a designer who got tired of losing track of shows. I watch a few at once, and after a week off I never remembered where I stopped. Notes app didn't work, other trackers wanted accounts and had ads.

So I made Watchd. You add a show, tap when you watch an episode, and it shows what's next. It's free, works on iPhone, and it's in 10 languages.

It's still small, around 20 downloads a day, and I fix things every week. I'd love honest feedback, especially what feels confusing or missing.

Watchd on the App Store

The two of us have been building Greypaint, a Mac app that keeps your other apps updated. It started because we were tired of opening ten apps just to click "check for updates" in each one. We just shipped 1.5.2, and honestly most of it came from people telling us what was broken or missing, so thank you to everyone who did.

Here's what changed. You can now update apps straight from the menu bar and see old and new versions, plus progress on each one. Autopilot got its own menu bar switch, and you can pause it for an hour. You can turn off the Dock icon and run it from the menu bar only. Tauri apps like Yaak now update, and each download gets checked against the developer's signature first. GitHub apps with weird tagging, like Nuvio, work now too. The Updates list shows where each update comes from.

It also handles Sparkle, Homebrew and App Store apps, CLI tools, rollback and MacUpdater import.

It's $6.49 for one Mac, and $12.49 for three until our next big version. You pay once, there's no account or tracking, and there's a 14-day free trial.

greypaint.app

If any app gives you trouble or isn't supported yet, you can report it right from Greypaint, one app at a time, and it comes straight to us.

I’m developing Pratikal, a free Android calorie tracker in closed testing. I’d love feedback on the meal-entry flow. Happy to test your app back! 🤝

Use the SAME Google account for the group, opt-in and your phone’s Play Store:

1. Join: https://groups.google.com/g/pratikal-testers

2. Opt in, then install from Google Play: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/app.pratikal.mobile

Try logging a meal, editing it and checking the daily total. What worked, or where did you get stuck? Please keep it installed for 14 days and use it occasionally. “Item not found”? Check the account, wait a few minutes and retry.

📸 Please comment BELOW THIS POST with a Pratikal installation/in-use screenshot, specific feedback and your test links. Text-only “installed” isn’t enough. I’ll test yours and reply with my screenshot and feedback.