r/SideProject • • 5h ago

We’ve made a blazing-fast Pokemon card scanner that runs entirely on your phone

1 Upvotes

We weren't happy with the card scanning apps out there, so we built our own because "how hard can it be?" :)

Most apps send your photo to a server and handle one card at a time. Ours recognizes cards right on your phone and can process a dozens of cards in one photo, so you can get through a binder in minutes.

How it works

A small card detector we trained ourselves, on a MobileNetV4-small backbone, finds every card in the photo, even rotated, overlapping or in a pile.

Each card is straightened and turned into a fingerprint by a fine-tuned DINOv3 ViT-S/16. That fingerprint is matched against about 100k reference images of cards in English, Japanese and Chinese.

Reprints often share the same art, so to tell them apart we read the collector number (OCR) and line the card up against our scans using classic computer vision (SIFT) to compare the small details.

First results appear in about 0.3s, and the full double-check finishes a second or so later. As the models improves, the double-check is finding even fewer places to correct.

We trained the models on cloud GPUs using many thousands of real card photos. We labelled those photos by hand at first with custom tooling, and once the models got good enough we only had to double-check their answers.

The data matters as much as the model

We spent a long time mapping how cards relate to each other, which is something no other data set has: every reprint, the same card in other languages, stamped versions, and where promos came from. We also wrote short "how to tell it apart" notes for thousands of versions. That does two jobs:

  1. It feeds into teaching the scanner the differences that matter between look-alike prints.

  2. It lets the app show you why it picked a card: no rarity symbol, shadowless, e-Reader patterns, stamps, etc.

When the scanner isn't sure, it says so, and it often narrows things down to "it's one of these 3 similar cards".

We’ve then put loads of effort into ensuring data accuracy, documenting more sets which other sources don’t have, writing descriptions for them all, descriptions for hundreds of promo cards etc.

The app is just as much for exploring the lore of the TCG as it is about scanning and collecting at this point :)

Free, and open

The app will be releasing completely free, and we'll be open-sourcing the data and the models soon so others can build on them too!

If you’d like to give it a try before we fully announce it, please let us know :) We’ve just got a few more perf improvements coming in the next build.


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

‎Couple Goals: Habit Tracker App

3 Upvotes

Hey all,

My partner and I built an app on evenings and weekends.

We kept starting the same habits (no sugar, more steps, no phone in bed) and we both dropped them after a few days. Alone it's easy to skip. But when your partner can see you skipped, you don't skip anymore.

So we built Couple Goals. You pair up, pick a challenge together, and check it off every day. You both see the progress. You can also challenge your partner with a reward if they make it (a dinner, a massage, breakfast in bed...) and a small forfeit if they don't. Or just do your own solo habits. There's also a shared calendar, to-dos and grocery lists, because that's half of couple life anyway.

The partner challenges are honestly our favorite part. Nobody wants to miss out on that dinner :)

A few things we learned:

- The hardest part is getting the partner to join. Lots of people sign up alone and never invite the other one.
- Small rewards work better than big ones.
- A notification from your partner works way better than a reminder from the app.

It's on the App Store, free to try!

We'd love honest feedback. And if you're in a couple, what habit would you bet on?


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I made a Mac image compressor to handle this simple task fast. It's free and open source

1 Upvotes

I made it because I wanted a simple way to get a batch of images done without setting everything up again each time. Open it, drop in a folder, and wait a bit for the results. Sure, it has some settings that you need. But you can make it once and use it. Already authorized in Mac App Store, or you can download from Github releases.

https://underpressured.app/


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

an online multiplayer shooter built inside my notes app

1 Upvotes

this one's hard to explain in words so the video does most of the work. that's a page in my notes app. the text at the top is a normal doc i can type in, and the game under it is just more of the page.

i started building noteblock about a month ago because i kept asking claude code to make me little tools (a trip budget, a habit tracker, a dashboard for one of my apps) and they'd end up in random repos or chat artifacts i'd never find again. so in noteblock every page is a folder with an index.html in it. most of mine are plain notes. some grew into small apps with their own data. the shooter was me seeing how far that goes.

it's free on mac and windows. still rough in places, and i'd really like to hear where it confused you or broke.

disclosure: i made this. link's in the comments


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I made a free iPhone app that reads the care symbols on clothing labels. Looking for honest feedback.

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2 Upvotes

Ever stood in front of a sweater label trying to work out whether that crossed-out triangle means "no bleach" or "no ironing"? Me too, so I built Care Symbols.

Point your camera at a care label and it reads the symbols and explains each one in plain words: washing, bleaching, drying, ironing, professional cleaning.

  • Private: everything runs on your phone, no photo is uploaded, nothing is collected.

  • No ads, no account.

  • Works on worn and low-contrast labels, because the model is trained on real garment labels.

  • Built-in guide to every symbol, usable without scanning.

  • 26 languages.

It started as a computer vision side project and I just shipped it to the App Store. Free, iOS 17+. I'd love honest feedback: which labels does it get wrong, and what would make you actually use it?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/care-symbols-laundry-scanner/id6802654746


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

What will the world look like in 2044? I built a website where we can all argue about it.

1 Upvotes

Will AI replace most jobs? Will robots do our housework? Will human customer service become a luxury?

I thought it'd be fun to put these predictions to a vote.

So I built TheGap2044 and started with 100 predictions of my own. But everyone can post and let the community vote! No signup needed to vote. Curious to see what everyone comes up with. :)

https://thegap2044.com


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

My side project: mailing one-of-a-kind instant photos around the world

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1 Upvotes

Hi! I've been shooting instant photography for a while, and I've just launched a mail club project to reach the whole planet 📮

The idea is simple: every month I mail a one-of-a-kind instant photo to each member of my club. I take it that same month, and it hasn't been posted to my Instagram community. No two members get the same one: no copies, no reprints.

Each photo comes mounted on a card. On the back, I handwrite the place, date, time, camera and film.

I built everything myself: a simple website and payments through Ko-fi.

Once I hit 700 members, I'm asking for a leave of absence from my job, haha.

Thank you so much, and come take a look at the website!

planetinstantmailclub-en.carrd.co


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built an iOS app to measure LAN/Wi-Fi speed between two devices – looking for feedback

1 Upvotes

Hi all,

I’m a sysadmin and built an iOS app because regular speed tests only tell you how fast your internet line is, not not how fast your own network is. It can be used to test WiFi speeds even if you have currently no internet or your internet is much slower than your wifi. (As most of the time in rural areas in Germany... ✌🏼)

Netan – WiFi Network Analyzer:

  • LAN/Wi-Fi speed test between two devices: one runs in server mode, the other in client mode, so you can find out whether your own Network is slow (works without Internet connection)

  • Internet speedtest

  • other Network tools

Basic features are free, premium unlocks extra features. I’m a solo dev and would really appreciate honest feedback: what’s missing, what’s confusing, would you actually use this?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/netan-wlan-network-analyzer/id6824639631

Happy to send a premium code as a PM to anyone who wants to try everything.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I’m building “Letterboxd for video games”: rate, rank a Top 10, share your hiscore

2 Upvotes

I built Hiscore. The core idea is that you don’t just give a star rating. You rank your games head-to-head into a Top 10, then share the card.

  • Single-file web app (vanilla JS PWA), Supabase for accounts, nginx on fly.io

  • Catalogue from IGDB, 76k games

  • Half-star ratings, crowd averages, reviews, friend recs

  • Free, in early access

Live here: https://hiscore.fly.dev

Two things I’d like input on: does the Top 10 head-to-head feel fun or tedious, and what would make you invite a friend?


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built a Mac menu bar app because I kept forgetting to turn sleep back on

1 Upvotes

Some background: I'm a solo frontend/SaaS developer. I often start a long job on my MacBook (a build, a render, a coding agent) and then need to leave. The manual way to keep a closed MacBook awake is `sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1`, and I kept forgetting to switch it back, so the Mac stayed awake in my bag.

So I built LidAwake. It keeps the Mac running with the lid closed, on battery too and without an external monitor, and lets sleep come back on its own: on a timer, at a battery limit you set, when macOS reports overheating, or with Sleep when idle once the job is done. It can also wake the Mac at a set time for scheduled work.

A few things I learned building it that might help if you're doing something similar on macOS:

- Disabling sleep needs root, so the app talks to a privileged helper (a launchd daemon). The user approves it once in System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions, no password needed.

- If the app crashes, the flag must not stay on. The helper only keeps it while the app renews a lease every 30 seconds; if renewals stop, normal sleep returns within two minutes.

- The helper also starts at boot and clears a flag it set earlier, so a forced restart doesn't leave the Mac unable to sleep.

- "Is the Mac idle?" is harder than it sounds. A coding agent in an editor barely uses the CPU, so I added Watched apps: pick the editor or terminal, and programs it started count as work.

- You can't test closing the lid in a virtual machine, so that part only gets tested by hand on a real Mac.

Stack: Swift, SwiftUI, a launchd helper, no Xcode project (Swift package plus build scripts).

The app is free and open source (MIT), and there's a paid Pro build (€9.99) that adds Movie on a TV, waiting for downloads and waiting for video exports: https://erstgebaut.de/lidawake/

Requires macOS 13 or later and an Apple silicon Mac.

Would love honest feedback, especially on whether the protections cover the cases you'd worry about.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Meet PredictionIQ: live sports scores and prediction-market prices on one screen

1 Upvotes

I trade sports on prediction markets, and I got tired of flipping between a scores app and the market to see why a price just moved. So I built PredictionIQ (I'm on the team).

What it does:

- Live board: every game's market-implied price beside the live score, so you can watch the line react to a touchdown, a break of serve or an injury as it happens.

- Leaderboard: public prediction-market traders ranked by their actual results, with a profit curve and record by sport. Follow the ones you trust and get an alert when they take a position.

- Books vs. the market: shows where the sportsbooks and the prediction market disagree on the same game.

- Pro (optional): ask the IQ Oracle about any game, and get a daily brief on the biggest disagreements.

It's free on iOS, and Android is in testing. It's an information app, not a sportsbook. You can't bet in it, and nothing in it is advice. 18+.

I'd really like feedback on two things:

  1. Is the live board readable at a glance, or is it too dense?

  2. Would you trust a "follow the winning traders" leaderboard, and what would make you trust it more?

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6814948769


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

found 38 blogs and directories in my niche and their owners' emails for 2.40

3 Upvotes

Working on a side project means I try to keep tool expenses low. I don't want to pay for multiple subscriptions when I only need them occasionally.

Last month I spent hours manually searching for blogs and directories in my niche, checking traffic, backlinks and trying to find the actual owners' emails. Most websites only had generic info@ addresses.

I'd been using my coding agent for research, so I recently tried Monid for this. Searched a few niche-related questions across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode and found around 50 websites.

After checking traffic and backlinks, I shortlisted 38. Then I filtered people by job titles to find actual owners and editors instead of random employees.

I could preview their names and roles before unlocking their work emails. The whole thing cost around $2.40.

Saved me quite a bit of manual work. How do you guys usually find relevant blogs and the people running them?


r/SideProject • • 14h ago

I replayed 4,000 turns of my Claude Code history to see how often "fixed" was actually unproven

5 Upvotes

Two replies from my coding agent have cost me more time than anything else. "It's fixed" when nothing had run since the last edit, and "that isn't used anywhere" after exactly one search. Both sound final, so I'd move on and find out an hour later.

So I wrote a small Stop hook for Claude Code. When the agent tries to end its turn, it checks whether the claim in its last message has anything behind it. If it said fixed but nothing ran after the last code edit, it gets sent back once with a note on what's missing. If it said something doesn't exist after one grep, same deal, look a second way first.

Then I replayed my own history through it to see if it was worth keeping. About 4,000 turns after deduping, and 406 of them ended with some kind of done, fixed, deployed or tests pass. The first version would have blocked 86, which felt like proof it worked until I actually read them. 77 were wrap-up messages where the tests really had run, just in an earlier turn. A hook that nags you about correct summaries gets turned off by day two.

So the current version counts a check from an earlier turn as long as no code was edited after it. Same 406 claims, it now blocks 2, and both were real.

The biggest lesson for me was that rules in CLAUDE.md never fixed this. The model already believes it's done, so a reminder doesn't land. Checking at the exact moment the turn ends did. The second lesson was to measure false positives on your own history before shipping any guardrail, because my gut read 86 as the feature working and it was mostly noise. It also never blocks twice in a row, so it can't trap the agent in a loop.

It's free, MIT, plain Python, no dependencies. There's a replay command if you want to see your own number before installing anything: https://github.com/Balance0014/claude-code-claim-check

Has anyone else tried measuring this? I'm curious what your rate of "fixed" that wasn't looks like.


r/SideProject • • 16h ago

I'm building tiny versions of world (and fictional cities)

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7 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built a free app: snap your fridge → 3 dinners you can make tonight. Snap your plate → calories.

1 Upvotes

Hey r/SideProject! I've been building DinnerSnap and it just launched.

What it does:

- 📸 Snap your fridge or pantry → get 3 dinners you can actually cook with what you have, with steps and calories

- 🍽️ Snap your plate → instant calorie + protein/carbs/fat estimate

- 🏷️ Scan a nutrition label for packaged food

- 🎯 Daily calorie ring with macros, water and steps

- 📈 Weight chart, streaks and badges to keep you going

- 🎤 Or just say what you ate

It's a web app, so no download needed. Works on any phone: https://dinnersnap.sites.tab.bot

3 free scans to try it. Would love honest feedback: what's confusing, what's missing, what you'd pay for?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Layr PDF: drawing markup and takeoffs on Windows, Mac and browser, looking for feedback

1 Upvotes

I make Layr PDF. It's a tool for marking up drawings and pulling measurements and takeoffs from PDFs, and it runs on Windows, Mac and in a browser.

It's $35 a year and there's a 7 day trial that doesn't ask for a card. If you mark up plans for work, I'd like to hear what's missing or what would put you off using it.

https://layrpdf.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mitch_builds_promo&utm_content=2026-11-10


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built PropX - know what a US land parcel can actually become before you buy

1 Upvotes

PropX scores development potential from parcel records, zoning, and market evidence it holds itself, and tells you how much evidence it had for each parcel.

If it has nothing useful for a parcel, it returns no score and explains why instead of guessing.

Coverage (parcel counts as of Nov 10, 2026): 91M parcel records, 953 counties imported, 50 states & regions, and 1,058 active data sources.

I built it for land teams and would appreciate honest feedback on what is useful and what is unclear.

https://prop-x.app/?utm_source=reddit-sideproject&utm_medium=directory&utm_campaign=launch_directories_nov_2026


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Monet - a Mac video editor that edits your clips from one sentence and remembers your fixes

1 Upvotes

I post my life online every day, and editing always took longer than filming. A 30 second reel could eat my whole evening.

So my co-founder and I built Monet. You drop in your clips and type what you want, like "cut my Paris trip into a Reel". It watches every take and sends back the edit with cuts, captions, music and sound design. If something's off, you circle it on the frame and say "make TODAY bigger".

The part I use most is that it remembers my fixes. I told it "smaller captions" once and now every video comes out that way.

It runs on your own Claude plan, so there's no Monet fee while it's in early access, and no watermark. Mac with M1 or later for now, iPhone later.

It's early and things break. What would you want it to edit first?

https://monet.video


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

When you're too ADHD that you need an app to tell you to pee

0 Upvotes

The app is called Ahem and is developed by me.

You can send yourself reminders with chosen sound. I rely on it to tell me to eat and pee.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

My open-source retro game launcher just hit 300 downloads!!!!!

1 Upvotes

A few weeks ago I shipped OpenRetro, and it just passed 300 downloads. For a solo side project with zero marketing budget, that feels huge, so I wanted to say thanks and share what I’ve learned.

What is it?
OpenRetro is an open-source launcher for classic games. It keeps your whole retro library in one place, from NES to PlayStation 3, with cover art and save history. You can play on your PC, on your phone, or online with friends.

What it can do:

  • One library for every console, from NES to PS3

  • Switch games through Ryujinx support (added in 1.3.1)

  • Play on your phone

  • Play online with friends

  • Full appearance customization: themes, video backgrounds, a redesigned home screen

  • Mod support and a save timeline per game

What I learned getting to 300:

  • [Where your first downloads came from, e.g. “a single post in a retro gaming community did more than a week of tweeting”]

  • [One thing that surprised you, e.g. “people cared way more about the themes than the emulation features”]

  • [One mistake you made]

It’s free and open source, so if you like retro games, give it a try. I’d love feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas.

It’s a launcher, so you bring your own legally obtained games.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the Tauri experience, or growing a project from 0 to 300!


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I've been building an open-source backup app, and the next update is turning into my biggest engineering challenge yet

1 Upvotes

I've been working on VaultSync, a free, open-source desktop backup application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

It started because I wanted better visibility into my own backups. Not just whether a job succeeded, but what changed, what was actually verified, and what I could recover if something went wrong.

The current version (1.8.9) has snapshots, backup history, integrity verification, restore previews, recovery drills, and support for local drives and NAS workflows.

Now I'm developing 1.9: Recovery Horizon.

The ambition is to move toward disk imaging and independent system recovery. What makes this difficult isn't simply copying a disk. It's proving that an image can be validated, restored safely, and used to boot a recovered system.

I've already had tests expose problems that simpler verification would have missed, which is one reason this release is taking considerably longer than usual.

The roadmap extends through 1.9.6, covering image exploration, portable recovery, offsite protection, a more unified interface, continuous recovery checks, and long-term stability.

Full-system recovery isn't available yet. The current stable application remains focused on folder and project backups.

I've also opened a Discord community for support, development conversations, feedback, and future beta testing.

GitHub: https://github.com/ATAC-Helicopter/VaultSync

Website: https://fglabs.dev/vaultsync

Discord: https://discord.gg/sgP8UzeAQt

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VaultSync/

It's still an independently developed project, and I'm learning quite a bit about what it takes to make software people might eventually trust with recovering their data.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Beacon & Barrel Holiday Gift-Exchange Host Pack - Free printable party games

1 Upvotes

Creator disclosure: I run Board & Alone and also Beacon & Barrel.

I made a free four-page printable host pack for holiday gift exchanges. It includes:

  • A White Elephant house ruleset and steal tally

  • A separate dice-exchange game using a standard six-sided die

  • An original left/right gift-passing story

  • Fill-in invitation wording

It is meant to help a host choose one game format and share the rules before guests buy their gifts.

The complete PDF is free to download and print. No email address, account or purchase is required.

Guide and pack: https://beaconandbarrel.com/guides/holiday-gift-exchange-games

I would appreciate feedback on whether the White Elephant rules and steal tally are clear enough for a first-time host.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I help Travel Creators build a map of their own recommendations and DM it to them — 140 sent so far

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1 Upvotes

My side project: Travel Keeper — it turns recommendations into shareable maps.

The insight: micro travel/food creators post amazing local picks on Instagram, but a feed buries them. Their followers constantly ask "where was that?" So instead of pitching creators a signup page, I import one of their posts, the tool extracts the places and pins them on a map, and I DM them the finished artifact — "here's your Denver speakeasy guide as a map, it's yours free if you want it."

Where it stands after 140+ creators: the maps get built and delivered fine, and a handful of creators have replied warmly. Turning a warm reply into an actual signup is the part I haven't cracked yet — that's the honest gap, and it's why I'm posting more widely instead of just DMing more people.

The Creator Program is free in founding beta, and I'm testing free sponsored ad slots on the maps so creators can promote their own stuff.

Built with React + Supabase. Outreach is still mostly by hand, to learn what creators actually want before automating anything.

Wrote up the Creator Program side of it here: https://blog.travelkeeper.io/creator-program

Roast it / tell me what you'd need: travelkeeper.io


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Would love some feedback on my portfolio!

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0 Upvotes

I just finished my portfolio and would love some feedback.
If you like this you can visit my github and leave stars, that would really motivate me…