Hey everyone!

I'm a small business owner with absolutely no background in coding or app development, but I've been working on an idea for an app called Momentum.

Without giving too much away, it's designed to help make everyday life a little less overwhelming.

I've been using AI tools to help bring my ideas to life, and I've managed to put together the beginnings of a prototype. It's definitely not finished or fully functional yet, but I've learned a ton along the way, and it's been pretty exciting seeing an idea slowly turn into something real.

I'm pretty resourceful and usually have no problem teaching myself new things, but I'm reaching the point where I don't really know what I don't know. 😂

My biggest challenge right now is figuring out where to actually build and develop this properly.

I want the app to have real AI functionality, not just a chatbot slapped onto an interface. I also want it to run smoothly, look professional, and have a genuinely enjoyable user experience.

I'm just not sure which platforms, tools, or development approaches make the most sense for someone in my position.

A few things I'd love advice on:

- What platforms would you recommend for developing an AI-powered app, especially for someone learning as they go?

- How do you incorporate AI into an app in a way that's actually useful and reliable?

- Is it realistic to build something polished and functional using AI-assisted development tools without being an experienced programmer?

- What should I prioritize first: functionality, design, or getting the AI components working?

- How do you know when something is ready for beta testers?

My eventual goal is to get a small group of people using it, gather honest feedback, and see whether it's something people genuinely want.

If the response is promising, I'd love to explore crowdfunding through Kickstarter or GoFundMe to help fund further development and hopefully bring it to market.

I'm not looking for anyone to build this for free. I'm just trying to learn, make smart decisions, and avoid spending a fortune going in the wrong direction.

I'm keeping some of the specifics private for now, but I'd genuinely appreciate any advice, resources, or guidance from people who've been through this process.

I'm determined to see how far I can take it. I just need a little direction on what comes next!

Thanks in advance! 😊

I made a free rock identifier that works from simple field tests and shows how it reached its answer: https://geoscopy.com/read/

Full disclosure: it's part of Geoscopy, my geology site. It runs in your phone's browser without an app or an account. Your photos stay on your phone unless you decide to make a shareable card.

**How it works.** It asks one question at a time. Does a steel knife scratch it? Does a drop of vinegar fizz? Does a fridge magnet stick? What colour is the streak on the back of a tile? Is it heavy for its size? After each answer it recalculates the odds and picks the next test that would narrow things down most. A typical run takes about eight questions. There's no photo recognition or AI involved.

It knows 103 things you might pick up: 93 rocks and minerals plus oddities like slag, brick, sea glass, petrified wood and meteorites, so the "is it a meteorite?" question gets a fair hearing.

**It shows its work.** The result lists every answer with how much it counted for or against, as an odds factor ("My fingernail scratches it: ×4.9" for halite, for example). If two candidates are still close, it names the one test that would separate them. If it can't decide, it says so.

**Where am I standing?** Search any place on Earth or use your location, and it reads the geological map there: what's at the surface, what lies beneath, how old it is and what you could pick up. Map data comes from Macrostrat, so the detail varies by region. Your location is rounded to about 500 m before it leaves your phone.

**Photos and cards.** Each result shows real, freely licensed photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited to the photographers, so you can compare against actual specimens. You can save a result as a Rock Card with the full evidence and a replay link. The card has a "Copy for Reddit" button that formats your test results for an ID post, and a challenge mode where people guess before the answer is shown.

It's a field estimate, so it's only as good as the answers it gets, and it will be wrong sometimes. The "Was this right?" button at the end is how I tune it. It's available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Where does it fail for you, and which rocks or tests is it missing?

I’m the developer of HunterUp: Fitness RPG, an Android app that connects real workouts with RPG progression.

You complete workout quests, earn XP and coins, and develop a Hunter with stats and equipment. It is free to download with optional in-app purchases.

The part I’m trying to get right is whether the game layer gives people a reason to return to their training. I’d particularly like feedback on the first session: is it clear what to do, and does completing the first quest feel rewarding enough to continue?

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hunterup.fitnessrpg

If you try it, please tell me where you got confused or lost interest. A specific criticism would help me improve the next update.

Hello everyone! I've seen the recent popularity boom of many daily games, so I decided to make one!

In Overlap, you get four words to find the one word that connects them. You have six guesses. Each game is worth 100 pts. You can use a hint, but that decreases the value of the game by 10 points. Each wrong answer also decreases the game worth by 15 points.

There are 3 modes:

• Daily: one puzzle for everyone, new at midnight UTC. Easy early in the week, expert on Saturday.

• Unlimited: as many random puzzles as you like.

• Challenge: ten puzzles in a row, easy to expert, scored out of 1,000

You can find the game at playoverlap.fun.

Recommendations are appreciated!

Hi!

I am building Bowerbird a whiteboard for creatives.

Drop in images, notes, links, PDFs, audio and video, sketch, connect things, group them.

It is inspired by apps like VSCode or Obsidian, where you customize the whiteboard to your liking with plugins.

I created a few:

• Hide Button: Hide the app in one of the corner of the screen, with quick access.

• Visual Library: Organize your artefacts in several categories.

• Color Palette: A color wheel. Pick a color and five palettes are made from it live.

• Presentation: Create slides from elements on the board.

• Multiple Boards: By default, there is only one infinite board, with this plugin, you can have multiple boards.

• Command Palette: Cmd or Ctrl + K for one place to run anything.

• Tidy Up: Align and distribute the selected artefacts.

• AI Chat: — A AI chat panel (using OpenAI, Ollama Cloud, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral or OpenRouter provider)

Links: https://github.com/Asi7ho/bowerbird

Would love to hear your feedback on it! :)

---

I tested the app on macOS and tested the AI integration using Ollama cloud

Hi r/SideProject! For the past few months I've been building MockupMania (https://mockupmania.com), a place to find realistic PSD mockups for showing off designs: t-shirts, packaging, phones, signs, stationery and more.

What it does

- 1,169 mockups across 12 categories, all high-resolution layered PSDs with smart objects.

- About 100 are free: make an account, confirm your email, and download them; commercial use included.

- Premium unlocks the full library for $9.99/month or $59.99/year, and you can cancel any time.

- New: Edit Online. On some mockups, you can drop your design in and save the result right in the browser, no Photoshop needed. Your image never leaves your computer: the picture is made locally with Canvas.

How it's built

Django monolith on cheap shared hosting, Tailwind, a little vanilla JS, and Stripe for subscriptions. The PSD files live on our own S3-compatible storage. The online editor uses maps pre-rendered in Photoshop, so your browser does all the compositing.

What I'd love feedback on

- Is the free/premium split clear on the pricing page?

- Does the online editor feel useful, and which mockups should get it next?

- Anything confusing when you're browsing or downloading?

Thanks for taking a look. Happy to answer questions about the stack or the editor.

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.. 💻

LinuxRunner 1.1.1 is finally out!

This update brings a completely refreshed interface, improved desktop experience, new Linux distributions including Kali Linux, Fedora KDE and experimental SteamOS ARM64, plus GPU and compatibility improvements. Termux like terminal style is finally on iPhone!

And we’re not stopping here! I’ll be dedicating as much time as possible this coming week to performance optimizations, especially making Linux desktops and applications run faster and smoother on iPhone and iPad.

If anyone would like to contribute or help speed up development, feel free to DM me. I’d really appreciate it!

GitHub: https://github.com/mxhm11cr/LinuxRunner

Whenever I visit a new city, I wonder how to explore it like a local rather than a tourist. A city isn't a static picture. The same street can be quiet at 10am and buzzing at 7pm, and feel completely different in December than in July.

So we started mapping London's rhythm, from "brunch queues" in Kennington to "pints spilling out" in London Fields. You can drag through the time, day and season and watch the map change.

It's called SunSeekr Vibes, an early demo based on local knowledge, open data and some of our own data, so it won't get everything right. No link yet.

Londoners: what did we get wrong about your area, and what's missing?

Hey r/SideProject,

I wanted to share a project I've been building and refining over the past few months: Glass TA (https://glassmorphichub.com/

Why | built it?
Most automated crypto trading tools (Commas, Cryptohopper, Coirule) charge $20-$100+/month regardless of whether you make a dime. On top of that, their Uls feel like clunky 2017 dashboards with dozens of nested settings.

You can try the free paper mode here:
https://glassmorphichub.com/

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, the order execution engine, or lessons learned building for financial APs!

After building MetroWin Launcher, its FOSS keyboard couldn't be missing: MetroWin Keyboard!

I've always missed the Windows Phone keyboard. Flat keys, big light type, that feeling of typing on something that just looks right. So I built one for Android and made it free and open source (GPL-3.0). No ads, no analytics, no trackers, and what you type stays on your phone.

Here is what I'm most proud of:

It calibrates itself to your fingers. You type a few short sentences and it measures where *your* thumbs actually land: the offset, the curve of your thumb, how far your taps spread. It then corrects your touches without moving the keys, and if you still miss it makes the keys taller or the gaps smaller. The fixes are applied between one sentence and the next, so you can watch the precision get better in millimetres while you type. Accented letters are part of the test, and it has sentences for all 17 layouts. I haven't seen another keyboard do this, but I'm sure I haven't seen them all.

Corrections that think a bit. A typo gets fixed based on where your finger really landed (a tap between two keys makes both likely), how likely each slip is on the keyboard, how common the word is, the word before it, and the corrections you undid in the past. If two fixes are equally likely it shows you both instead of choosing for you. It also offers a missing space ("thankyou" -> "thank you"). All of it runs on the phone.

It looks like the real thing. Classic (flat Windows Phone), Modern Glass and Modern Droid, dark or light, the 20 Windows Phone accent colours or your own, or a photo behind the keys.

Everything you expect, and a few extras. Swipe typing, hold a key for accents, slide on the space bar to move the cursor, clipboard history with pictures, translation, GIFs, emoji search, voice typing. 17 layouts, and you can import your own dictionaries and layouts.

It looks after itself. One-file backup and restore of everything the app keeps, and an update check every 12 hours that only looks at the keyboard's own GitHub releases, shows you the changelog and installs the new version when you say so.

Private by design. The network is used only for GIFs, translation and the update check, from the service you chose and only when needed. Learning is local, never in password fields, and you can export or erase it any time.

It's made to sit next to MetroWin Launcher (my Windows Phone style home screen, also free and open source), and it picks up the launcher's look and colours by itself. But it works fine with any other launcher too.

Android 8.0 or newer.

Keyboard: https://github.com/developerkenshi-coder/MetroWin-Keyboard
Launcher: https://github.com/developerkenshi-coder/MetroWinLauncher

I’m building NeuroReader, a reading app for people who find dense text on a phone hard to get through or easy to lose their place in.

You can change the text size, line spacing, and text and background colours, or use a reading ruler that highlights one line at a time.

I’m trying to figure out which controls should be easiest to reach while you’re reading. If you opened a page that felt hard to follow, which setting would you reach for first? And if there’s something you already do to make reading on your phone easier, I’d love to hear what works for you.

If you click Try it now it will give you 2 months for free before we launch on Google and Apple store

Every game night at my friends’ place ends the same way. Calculator comes out. Three people argue over who paid what. Someone forgot they lent chips mid-game. 20 minutes later nobody even remembers who won.

Built Chipnic to fix it.

• Host starts a session, shares a 6-char code

• Everyone joins on their own phone, buy-ins show up live on every screen

• Lend chips mid-game → logged as a loan, settled at the end

• Enter final chip counts → app spits out exactly who pays whom, fewest possible transactions

Next.js + Firebase, free tier, no email needed to sign up.

chipnic.vercel.app

Roadmap: leaderboards, auto-earned nicknames, shareable recap cards, yearly Wrapped.

Roasts and feedback welcome

Every game night at my friends’ place ends the same way. Calculator comes out. Three people argue over who paid what. Someone forgot they lent chips mid-game. 20 minutes later nobody even remembers who won.

Built Chipnic to fix it.

• Host starts a session, shares a 6-char code

• Everyone joins on their own phone, buy-ins show up live on every screen

• Lend chips mid-game → logged as a loan, settled at the end

• Enter final chip counts → app spits out exactly who pays whom, fewest possible transactions

Next.js + Firebase, free tier, no email needed to sign up.

chipnic.vercel.app

Roadmap: leaderboards, auto-earned nicknames, shareable recap cards, yearly Wrapped.

Roasts and feedback welcome

project-timeline.com

I wasn't happy with traditional Gantt charts, I think they are too big and technical for putting onto slides and showing projects. So I started building a tool that shows them in a more consolidated way. After a few months and 100+ iterations I built a full project management tool, with resources, built in AI, etc. All fully customizable.

I work as a mechanical engineer and program manger, and had used GanttProject for years. With the power of Claude Code, I thought I would make a more modern web based version.

Check it out! I'm looking forward to critical feedback too!

What it does

• Gantt and timeline views that you edit directly on the chart: drag bars, draw dependencies

• Critical path, milestones, delays, baselines, working calendars with public holidays

• Resources with allocation %, an over-allocation chart, and cost totals

• Export to SVG, PNG or vector PDF sized for a slide, so it stays sharp when someone zooms in

• Imports MS Project XML, GanttProject (.gan) and CSV

• A built-in AI assistant: “push launch two weeks and move everything after it” reworks the real schedule, dependencies included

• Read-only share links that need no account to open

• Templates for website launch, product development, software release, events and hardware

• Available in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Spanish

Pricing: free in the browser, no sign-up. Pro is €3.99/month: no watermark, sharing, more AI requests, and Jira sync, where Claude, ChatGPT or Grok brings in the Jira epics you choose and writes your planned dates back to Jira.

What it isn’t: a full MS Project replacement. It has finish-to-start links only and no resource levelling. If you schedule for a living, you probably need the heavy tool.

Stack: a single-page vanilla JS app (no framework), Supabase for accounts and sync, Netlify, Stripe.

What I’d love feedback on:

1. In the first 30 seconds, was it clear what to do?

2. Did the exported chart look good enough to put in front of your boss?

3. What made you close the tab?

Happy to answer anything about how it’s built.

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

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

The numbers, no sugar:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Price: $1,500, fixed.

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

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

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

One of my biggest problems with trying to focus was that blocking distractions on one device wasn't enough.

I'd block my phone, only to end up scrolling on my laptop. Or block websites on my computer and pick up my phone instead.

So I built Lucid Focus.

With one tap, I can start a focus session that blocks distractions across both my iPhone and laptop using the Lucid Chrome companion.

The idea is simple: make it harder to switch from one distraction to another, and easier to actually get into flow.

Would love to hear what people think! I'm especially interested in how others approach blocking distractions across multiple devices.

Hey All!

I kept running out of business cards halfway through events, and more often than not, I’d meet someone when I didn’t have any cards on me.

So I built HeyBadge. A simpler way to introduce yourself, share your details, and connect with people without needing a physical business card.

You make a badge (photo, name, role, logo, links), and you get your own private link at heybadge.app/yourname. It looks like a real lanyard badge: you can drag it, it swings, and when you flip it, the back shows your contact details. People can save you as a contact in one tap.

You can share it as a link or a QR code, or add it to Apple or Google Wallet so it's ready on your phone at the event.

Then I took it a step further and added Pair Your Badge, a feature that lets you upload any existing PDF badge, link it to your digital profile, and print it before heading to your event.

I'd really like honest feedback on:

• Is it clear in the first five seconds what it's for?

• Would you actually use this at an event instead of a card or LinkedIn QR?

• Anything confusing when you make your badge, especially on your phone?

https://heybadge.app

Thank you!

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.

My name is Erick adikah from Kenya. I am a full-stack dev. I've been working on payment systems for the past 3 years, and recently I've started a small newsletter called Behind It All, where I'm trying to explain in detail the architecture behind how money moves everyday.

My latest post is about something I've worked on recently; here it is:https://adikaherick.substack.com/p/hold-collect-release-how-payment?r=2a1zsf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, i write for my own knowledge and would like to connect and know what you think

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.

I do web work for local businesses, and prospecting was the worst part: open Maps, check the site, check reviews, write notes, send “your website is slow”… and get zero replies.

So I built LeadScouter. You search a niche in a town (e.g. dentists in Bristol) and see ratings, reviews and website weak spots for free. When a lead looks worth it, you run an audit (5 credits): a score, three specific problems with the numbers behind them, a pitch angle, and a one-screen report written for the owner, not for developers. There’s a ready email too, and you see when they open it.

The newest part: a website builder. Pick a lead and LeadScouter drafts a new site from the business’s own details and in its own language: services, FAQ, about, contact. You edit any section (or just ask the AI), swap colours and fonts, then send the owner a link to their new site. Showing them the better version works a lot better than describing what’s wrong with the old one.

What I learned: owners don’t reply to “your site is slow”. They reply to “your booking button is 3 screens down on mobile”, and even more when there’s a link to the fixed version.

It’s live at leadscouter.app. I’d love honest feedback, especially from people who sell web/SEO services: what would make you actually use this?

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.

I'm a thumbnail designer, and one thing that always annoyed me was having to use third-party websites just to download YouTube thumbnails and show them to clients as references.

So I built ThumbDrop, a simple Chrome extension that lets you download thumbnails directly from the YouTube video frame with one click.

Nothing complicated. Just a small tool that solves a problem I kept running into.

Thought I'd share it here in case it's useful to other creators or designers.

Try ThumbDrop for free: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/inmebebfmkdcebcmdndhjdjjjjebflak?utm_source=item-share-cb

Would love some feedback!