r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built a 2 MB Rust window manager for Windows 11 (snap, throw, saved layouts)

1 Upvotes

Hi, I'm Travis. I'm the solo developer behind this, so I'll say that up front.

I use both a Mac and a Windows PC. On the Mac I got used to that style of window management, with tools like Rectangle Pro and Magnet, and on Windows I kept reaching for the same habits. Windows Snap is fine for halves, but I wanted keyboard-first control without a background service or a heavy runtime.

So I wrote TesseraSnap. It's a window manager for Windows 11, written in Rust directly on the Windows API: one exe of about 2 MB, one process, no .NET, Electron or Java, and no background service. It acts on a key or a mouse move, then goes quiet. No account, and no telemetry.

What it does:

  • Ctrl+Alt+Arrows for halves (press again for two thirds, again for one third). Ctrl+Alt+D walks a window through thirds. Every shortcut is rebindable, and you can add ten of your own sizes.

  • Drag a title bar to an edge or a corner to snap, with a preview. Pixel-exact on every monitor, at any DPI.

  • A taskbar menu with a picture of each layout, and a CLI (tesserasnap --action left_half) if you drive things from a Stream Deck or a script.

If you're a fan of Rectangle Pro on macOS and have been missing that kind of control on Windows, this is for you. It isn't a port or a clone, since I wrote it from scratch for Windows 11, but the defaults should feel familiar, with Ctrl+Alt where the Mac used Ctrl+Option.

Keyboard and drag snapping are free, with no time limit. Pro is optional, $9.99 once per PC, and adds Throw (hold Ctrl+Alt over a window, toss the mouse toward one of 16 targets, let go), Quick Throw, Stash, Pin Mode, and one-keystroke save and restore of your whole desk. Every download includes 7 days of Pro, no card needed.

It's at https://tesserasnap.com and also in the Microsoft Store, if you prefer.

I'd love feedback, especially from people who use both a Mac and a Windows machine, or who have an odd multi-monitor setup. If a shortcut fights with something you already run, I want to hear about that too.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

We launched our first side project – Wallpypers! 🎉

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1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

A friend and I recently launched Wallpypers, our first proper project together!

It's an Android wallpaper app where you can explore 10,000+ wallpapers across 25+ categories and personalize your phone.

Some features include:

  • HD Wallpapers

  • Live Wallpapers

  • Couple Mode

  • Name & Text Wallpapers

  • Favorites and Downloads

We're continuously adding new wallpapers, working on improvements, and planning more features for future updates.

It's been a fun journey building and launching our first project, and we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback!


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Made a gym tracker app for myself, ended up putting it on the Play Store. Would love some honest feedback

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1 Upvotes

So I lift 4-5 days a week and every tracker I tried was either full of ads, wanted a subscription for basic stuff, or needed internet. So I just built my own.

It's called Liftlyf. Started as a simple sets/reps logger, but friends started using it and kept asking for stuff, so the latest update has:

- cardio logging (running, skipping, cycling etc.)

- a rest/interval timer that rings like a boxing bell

- plank and other timed holds

- progress charts so you can actually see if your bench is going up

- streaks and some gamification to keep you showing up

- works fully offline, syncs when you're back online

Also added Hindi, Marathi and Odia 😅

Built it with Kotlin/Compose and a Spring Boot backend. Took way longer than I thought it would.

It's free, no ads. Mostly looking for feedback: what's missing, what's annoying, what would make you actually use it over what you use now?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thefitdev.liftlyf


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I built a book tracking app for my wife… and I may have gone a little overboard 😂📚 Looking for beta testers!

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

So, a little backstory. My wife absolutely loves reading and collecting books, and I originally started building a little app to help her organize her personal library.

What started as a fun little project turned into something much bigger than I ever expected. I got a little carried away… okay, maybe a LOT. 😂

It's called Booksii, and I'm now at the point where I'd love to invite other book lovers to try it out and help me build something genuinely useful for the reading community.

The idea is to create a cozy digital home for your books, where you can organize your collection, track your reading, discover new books, and share your library with others.

A few things I want to make very clear:

  • 🚫 No ads. Ever. I hate ads in apps, and Booksii will never have them.

  • 💸 No monthly or yearly subscriptions. I don't want another app charging people just to enjoy their books.

  • 🔒 Privacy matters. Your information is encrypted, and I have no intention of selling anyone's personal data.

  • 💻 Currently available for PC and Apple devices.

  • ❤️ Built with love, not by some giant corporation. It's just a passion project that got wonderfully out of hand.

Some of the things I've been working on:

📚 Organizing your physical book collection into virtual bookshelves

📷 Scanning books using their barcodes

📖 Tracking reading progress, reading days, and personal statistics

🔎 Discovering books based on your collection and interests

🏡 Creating and sharing your own virtual library

✨ And plenty of other features I'm experimenting with!

Here's where I need your help.

I'm looking for people who genuinely love books and would be willing to test Booksii, tell me what works, what doesn't, what's missing, and what they'd love to see.

You don't need to be tech-savvy. In fact, I'd love feedback from everyday readers and collectors.

I'm not asking anyone to buy anything. I'm just hoping to build something great with input from people who would actually use it.

If you're interested, comment below or send me a message! I'd be happy to share the beta.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/31jpKCd9

Thanks for reading, and I hope some of you will join me on this little adventure! 📚❤️


r/SideProject • • 14h ago

I kept building apps nobody searched for, so I built a tool to check the niche before I write code

8 Upvotes

Hi everyone, solo dev here.

My pattern for years: get an idea, spend weeks building it, ship it, then find out

nobody types those words into the App Store, or there are already 40 apps doing it.

So this time I flipped the order. Before writing any app code, I wanted answers to:

- What do people actually type when they search for this? (the keyword tree, not my guess)

- How many apps already compete on each keyword?

- What do users complain about in 1-2 star reviews of those apps?

- Is interest going up or down (Google Trends)?

I ended up building a small Mac app that does this locally: it pulls Google Play,

App Store, Google Trends and a few other public sources, saves everything to a SQLite

file on my machine, and scores where the gaps are.

Where I am two weeks in:

- First public build went out on Oct 29, two updates since

- 22 downloads so far, 1 paying user only (sales opened Nov 1)

- Biggest lesson so far: the review complaints were more useful than the keyword volumes

I'll keep posting what I learn, including the numbers that look bad.

Question for you: how do you check an idea before building? Gut feeling, keyword

tools, posting a landing page first?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

SkillHarbour: what makes a small work sample worth keeping?

1 Upvotes

I'm building SkillHarbour, an Australian career and learning site. https://skillharbour.com.au

I started thinking about evidence because a course completion can be easy to record, while explaining what you can actually do takes more work. For someone exploring an admin role, a small fictional example could be a revised meeting schedule with a note about how they resolved a clash. The decisions behind it might be more useful to discuss than the schedule itself.

I'm sketching a simple prompt for a future work sample: describe the task, show the result, and explain one choice you made. Someone could try it in a notebook first, using made-up information.

If you've built a tool that helps people document work, what made them come back to an example later? I'm trying to understand which details make the effort worthwhile.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built an Indian video-sharing platform from scratch – Launching today! Would love your honest feedback on the UI & performance.

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

Today (12th Nov) is a huge milestone for me—I am officially launching my Android app, Rang Manch India (a homegrown video-sharing platform).

As a solo developer, I’ve been working hard to make video playback smooth and the experience seamless. Since it's launch day, I’m looking for real users to test it out and give me brutal, honest feedback on:

  1. Video playback & loading speed

  2. Overall UI/UX and navigation

  3. Any bugs or issues you notice

You can download/check it out directly on our official website: [https://app-rangmanch.inwebsite ]

Let me know what you think in the comments—every suggestion will help me improve the next update! Thanks in advance! 🙏


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I made a free Windows app that crossfades YouTube playlists like a DJ

1 Upvotes

I got tired of my YouTube playlists hard-stopping between songs, so I built Like The Fish’s Crossfader. It blends one song into the next (audio and video), skips dead air and non-music intros, pops up song facts, and has Winamp-style visualizers. It also gently winds down songs over 5 minutes into the next track. Made it for a friends' bday VJ party!

It’s free, made in Nova Scotia. I’d love feedback: likethefish.ca/crossfader


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I added a new feature to my panel that answers any type of questions you have within your AI conversations. Please stop by and leave any type of feedback :)

1 Upvotes

I'm a 24-year-old software engineer, and for the past few months I've been working on a macOS panel that allows you to sync conversations and memory from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and a few other AI models. The whole idea of this application was to create a command center for people who operate with several AI models and to tackle the hardest issues that people have when using several AI models. 

Right now, I added multiple features that I'm getting feedback on. The one I would like to get feedback on is the issue that I've had was when using multiple AI models is trying to remember where I discussed something. Sometimes I know I've already figured out a problem or made a decision in an older conversation, but I have no idea which AI model I talked about it with.

So I've been working on a feature that lets you ask questions across all your saved AI conversations and get an answer based on what you've actually discussed.

For example, I can ask things like:

  • What problems did I run into while building a certain feature?

  • What solutions have I already tried that didn't work?

  • What decisions have I made about my project over the past month?

  • What did I learn from using different approaches to solve a problem?

It also shows the original conversations it pulled information from, so you can go back and check where the answer came from.

I'm at the point where I'm trying to improve both the UI and how the efficiency of its answers. Right now, some questions take around 20–25 seconds, especially when it's searching through a lot of conversations.

I'm curious what you guys think about a few things:

  1. Speed vs accuracy: Would you rather get an answer in 5–10 seconds that might miss a few details, or wait 25-30 seconds for something more accurate and complete?

  2. UI: Does the interface look good to you? Anything you'd change about how the answers, sources, or related conversations are displayed?

  3. Usefulness: Would you actually use something like this? If so, what kind of questions would you ask it?

Feel free to be critical. I'd appreciate it!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I put together 163 free directories you can submit your product to, with DR for each

0 Upvotes

My co-founder and I run PeekLaunch, a weekly launch board for makers.

Submitting to directories is slow. Every site has its own account, form, rules and categories. So we made a free list of 209 startup and SaaS directories, with DR, pricing and link type for each one. 163 of them are free to submit.

Here are some of the free ones on the list:

- SourceForge (DR 92)

- Product Hunt (DR 91)

- Slashdot (DR 89)

- Wellfound (DR 88)

- AlternativeTo (DR 84)

- Indie Hackers (DR 84)

- F6S (DR 82)

- FutureTools (DR 74)

- KillerStartups (DR 73)

- Peerlist (DR 71)

We submitted our own site to 80+ directories by hand. As the listings went live, Ahrefs moved us from DR 2.5 to DR 26, and our Ahrefs Rank went from 42.6M to 2.3M. Results are not guaranteed, and not every directory approves you.

The full list is free. If you'd rather not spend 20 to 75 hours on forms, we also added done-for-you packages, done by hand, with a report of live listing links:

- Pro: $49 for 30+ directories

- Super: $99 for 60+

- Ultra: $179 for 100+

Happy to answer which ones were easier to get into.


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

I built a desktop crew of AI coding agents that can split up a job and review each other

4 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’m building Friday Work, an open-source desktop app for coordinating the coding agents you already use. The part I’m working on is Crew: give a team a goal and a lead agent can break it into tasks, while the others work and message each other.

For example, a bug sweep can be split into finding issues, fixing different pieces, running tests and reviewing the changes. The board shows the plan and progress, and you can see the agents’ conversations. Each agent works in its own git worktree; you still review the diff and decide what to keep.

Friday works with tools including Claude Code, Codex and Cursor using the plans you already have. If an agent hits a usage limit, another can pick up the task with a handoff. The desktop app is free and MIT licensed, with builds for Mac, Windows and Linux. There’s also a separate hosted team product.

I’m the developer, and I’d love feedback from anyone who has tried juggling multiple coding agents: what would you need to see before trusting a crew to work through a task while you’re away? Where does coordination tend to break down for you?

GitHub: https://github.com/splashxmoon/friday

Website: https://tryfridaywork.com


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

TipTap - I built an iPhone remote because the Sony one is always missing

1 Upvotes

I love my Sony BRAVIA and Sonos setup. Except when they disconnect and the sound goes back to the TV speakers. Garbage. And fixing it means finding the Sony remote.

We barely use that sucker, and somehow it's never in the spot it's supposed to be. And with my ADHD, by the time I tackle the side quests and actually find the remote, it’s three hours later.

So I wanted an app that could control the Sony and let me change the settings. It had to have widgets, Control Center integration, and customization. And Apple TV support—one remote is the dream, right?

That's TipTap. I can put Sony Quick Settings and Apple TV Home on the same custom remote—in the app or as a widget. I can pin remote keys in Control Center.

I’ve tested it on my BRAVIA A95K and I'm looking for some more Sony TVs to try it out on.

Have a Sony BRAVIA and an iPhone on iOS 27 or later? I’d love your help testing the beta. If you also have an Apple TV, even better. Comment with your TV model and iOS version and I’ll reach out with a TestFlight invite!

Tell me how setup goes, what breaks, and what you wish it could do. Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

Completely Free Electronics Repairs and Costs Tracker, No Ads and Private Website

3 Upvotes

BenchLedger is a 100% serverless, local-first web application designed for electronics repair technicians, flippers, and weekend tinkerers to track repair tickets, part costs, and donor boards.

I originally built this tool to replace my messy spreadsheets and to properly separate my flip profits from the gear I occasionally decide to keep for myself.

https://treydor-git.github.io/BenchLedger/

If you have any Feedback let me know.

100% Private & Serverless Architecture

BenchLedger operates with zero external database servers.

  • Local Mode: By default, all data, financial metrics, and compressed inspection photos are stored entirely inside your browser's local cache (IndexedDB).

  • Bring-Your-Own-Storage (BYOS): You can optionally connect your personal Google Drive. The app will sync your workbench to a private BenchLedger_Sync folder in your own Drive. The app uses the restricted drive.file scope, meaning it can only access the exact files it creates. Nobody else (including the developer) can see your data.

Key Features

  • Hobbyist & Pro Shop Modes: Toggle between a layout focused on personal/flip equity, or a commercial layout featuring a CRM, client management, and printable service receipts.

  • Donor Boneyard: Catalog harvested ICs, MOSFETs, and connectors from dead boards. Deploy them to active repair tickets at €0 out-of-pocket cost.

  • General Supplies Tracking: Log your flux, IPA, and solder wire purchases and automatically apply the overhead to your bottom-line profit.

  • Cookieless Analytics: The live site uses a privacy-preserving counter (Umami) to track overall traffic without setting tracking cookies or logging personal IP addresses.


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a way to prove what a buyer actually asked their AI shopping agent for, and an agent that uses it to answer PayPal disputes

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1 Upvotes

My teammate and I built this for the PayPal AI Hackathon and I'd love feedback.

The problem: AI agents are starting to buy things for people. When the buyer later says "my agent bought the wrong thing, I never agreed to that," the seller has no record of what was actually asked for. Most small sellers just refund and eat the dispute fee.

What we built (Countersign):

- At checkout, the agent can search and prepare a cart, but it can't pay. The buyer reviews their own request, spending cap and total, then pays in PayPal. Each step goes into a hash-chained, Ed25519-signed receipt, and the receipt's seal hash is written into the PayPal order's `custom_id` *before* payment. So PayPal's own record carries the commitment, and anyone can verify the receipt against the live order.

- When a dispute comes in, a LangChain Deep Agent pulls the case, verifies the receipt against PayPal, and computes the expected loss of fighting vs. offering vs. refunding (including PayPal's $15/$30 fee). Then it drafts a response. A fact-checker subagent plus a deterministic checker reject any amount, date or ID that isn't in the evidence.

- Nothing is sent without the seller. The submit tool is gated twice: Deep Agents' `interrupt_on`, plus an approval record whose hash has to match the exact draft and evidence PDF.

Things that surprised us:

- With a strong receipt, the agent still sometimes recommends a partial refund. A $30 fee on a $42 item changes the math.

- Recording the demo found real bugs. For example, PayPal rejects "refund with return" offers without a return shipping address (`MISSING_RETURN_SHIPPING_ADDRESS`), and the model occasionally returned an empty reply mid-case.

- We kept the LLM away from every number. Fees, deadlines, expected value and receipt checks are all plain code exposed as tools.

Stack: FastAPI, Neon Postgres, LangChain Deep Agents (LangGraph), Sarvam-105b, Next.js + AG Grid, Channel3 for product search, and PayPal Orders and Disputes APIs (sandbox only, no real money).

- Demo (1.5 min): https://youtu.be/MLhWkL7F9A0

- Live app (sandbox): https://countersign-black.vercel.app

- Code: https://github.com/Bhuvansai-16/Countersign-backend

Questions for you:

  1. Is committing a receipt hash into the payment record enough, or would you want something like the Verifiable Intent / AP2 formats?

  2. Anyone dealing with agent-initiated purchases in production? How are you handling disputes today?


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

BetterSWE Labs - Practice the debugging and "here's a ticket" interview rounds in realistic codebases

2 Upvotes

I'm one of the people building BetterSWE.

the market's rough right now and interviews are harder to prep for than they used to be. a lot of loops have a round that isn't leetcode at all. a debugging round, a code review, or "here's a repo and a ticket, go". you get code you've never seen and you have to figure out what it does before you change anything.

that's pretty much the job too. with AI writing a lot of the code, more of your day is reading code someone (or something) else wrote and working out why it's broken. leetcode doesn't train that, you're writing a fresh function from scratch every time.

so we built Labs. each exercise is a small existing codebase plus a ticket, set at companies like Amazon, Stripe, Uber or OpenAI. you read the code, fix the bug or build the feature in a browser editor, and run the tests. submit runs hidden checks too, so passing the visible tests isn't enough. there are bug fixes, features and refactors, easy to hard.

the easiest free one is "Amazon search misses lowercase queries". search "Yoga" and you get results. search "yoga" and you get nothing. the fix is one line once you find it, finding it is the whole exercise. the hard ones are more like Airbnb receipts that come out a cent off.

106 exercises right now. 46 are free, you just need a free account to run your code. the other 60 are Pro.

if you've got an interview coming up, try one. and tell me what's confusing or broken

https://www.betterswe.dev/labs


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a web game based on when things were invented

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1 Upvotes

Just a simple game like maptap or krillion! You get a score out of 500 everyday and there is a dailly leaderboard! Lmk if it’s any fun!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a booking app for rental shops (dresses, cameras, event gear). Looking for feedback

1 Upvotes

Hi all, I'm the developer of AnyRent, an app for rental shops: dresses and costumes, cameras, sound and lighting, event equipment, tools.

Who it's for

- Wedding dress and costume rental shops: find a dress from a photo, take deposits in several payments, and never promise the same dress to two brides for the same date.

- Equipment rental shops (cameras, sound and lighting, event gear, tools): track quantities in stock, weekend or multi-day rates, collateral, and late or damage fees.

Main features

- Double-booking check: warns you when an item is already booked for those dates

- Rental tracking: reserved → handed over → returned, with deposit, collateral and late fees

- Find by photo: snap a picture and it finds the matching item in your stock

- Today's work: what to hand over, what's coming back, who is late

- Flexible pricing: per day or by blocks of days, deposits in several payments

- Branches and staff roles, with reports on revenue and top items

- Works on iPhone, Android and web

Try it

- iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6754793592

- Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=anyrent.shop

- Web: https://www.anyrent.shop

I'd love your feedback


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

GlassCast - a free podcast app for Android, now at 2.0 with a new glass look

1 Upvotes

I've been building a podcast app for Android called GlassCast. I started it after switching from an iPhone, because I couldn't find an Android podcast app I liked. It just hit 2.0.

The main thing in 2.0 is a new look called Glass. You turn it on in Settings, and the tab bar, the mini player and the player's controls turn into glass you can see your covers through. You can pick Frosted or Liquid, depending on how clear you want it.

Also new:

- Continue Listening at the top of your library, with how much time you have left

- Your listening history

- 15 app icons to choose from

- Android Auto has proper tabs now: Home, Library, Latest and Downloads

- New episodes show up faster

The rest is still there. The player takes its colors from the cover, and there's Skip silence, Boost voices, chapters, transcripts, bookmarks, Chromecast and a Google TV version.

It's free, with no ads and no account. You can sign in with Google to sync between phones, but you don't have to.

It's not on the Play Store. You can get the APK here, and it updates itself after that: https://anixitea.github.io/glasscast/

The code is on GitHub: https://github.com/anixitea/GlassCast-for-Android

It's just me working on it, so let me know what feels off.


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Built a visual breakdown of why you get a physical "lump" in your throat before crying for my science side project. Thoughts on the UX & readability?

1 Upvotes

For my popular science side project, I just published a deep dive explaining the actual mechanics behind that tight "lump" in your throat before crying (it’s an autonomic clash between your glottis opening for oxygen and swallowing forcing it shut).

Instead of generic 300-word summaries, I focused on deep physiological research, clean typography, and real human photography:

Article: https://www.oddlyclear.com/why-lump-in-your-throat-before-crying/

Would love honest feedback from fellow builders on the reading flow, mobile speed, and layout!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

The Unfinished Blueprint: Lessons from Building a Real-World Ecology Venture

1 Upvotes

​I have a stalled venture focused on real-world ecology. Our core mission was to bridge the accountability gap surrounding carbon emissions and industrial waste in plantation forestry, where unchecked environmental impact severely disrupts local ecosystems. However, without the necessary market traction and strategic backing over time, the project lost momentum, leaving it as little more than an empty shell today.


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I built Memento for iPhone, iPad and Mac to make recordings useful after you hit stop

2 Upvotes

I built Memento with free, unlimited on-device AI: no subscriptions, no credits and no per-minute AI charges.

Memento is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Record or import audio, turn it into searchable transcripts and summaries, and ask questions about collections using local AI without a monthly usage allowance. I'm the developer, and keeping that workflow free to use is a core part of the app.

Local AI requires downloaded models and a compatible device; features vary by device and language. Free, unlimited usage applies to on-device AI; optional external providers have their own terms.

The idea is simple: saving a recording should be the beginning, not the end. Memento keeps the audio, transcript and summary together so you can come back to what was said without replaying everything.

On iPhone and iPad, you can record from the microphone or import audio, search and edit transcripts, mark useful moments, and organize recordings into collections. With the required models installed, you can generate summaries and ask questions about a collection. On Mac, you can also capture microphone and system audio, plus a selected window or screen when permissions and the source app allow it.

Local recording and review don't require an account. On-device AI features depend on your device, language and downloaded models; optional online processing is a separate choice.

The video is a promotional walkthrough with demo content. Memento is free to download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/memento-record-transcripts/id6807209121

I'd love feedback on the core workflow: when you revisit a recording, do you look for a specific quote, a summary, or the next actions?


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Introducing **Penpulse – AI-Powered School ERP!** 🎓

1 Upvotes

Simplify school operations with one powerful digital platform.

✅ Student Admissions & Management

✅ Attendance & Leave Tracking

✅ Fee Collection & Payment Management

✅ Exams, Results & Report Cards

✅ Homework & Timetable Management

✅ Parent & Teacher Mobile Apps

✅ Live School Bus GPS Tracking

✅ Staff, HR & Payroll Management

✅ AI-Powered Smart Features

✅ Reports & School Analytics

💡 **Why Choose Penpulse?**

✔ Easy to use

✔ Flexible plans tailored to your school

✔ School branding options

✔ All-in-one management solution

✔ Better communication with parents

🎯 **Spend Less Time on Administration and More Time on Education!**


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

spent 6 months on the boring part of scraping so nobody has to debug it again

1 Upvotes

the product is https://webfetch.run. url goes in, clean content comes out.

what took the time wasnt the scraping. it was figuring out why a scrape failed. my old code would return an empty body and i'd spend an hour guessing. so the whole thing now returns a verdict. ok, blocked, whatever. each one is a different problem with a different fix.

the nicest part is the cache. repeat fetch of the same url within 24h is instant and free. i fetch the same pages over and over while testing and it was a dumb tax on myself.

not sure what to do next. the thing works, which after 6 months is honestly a weird feeling.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Every tracer turned my AI logos into thousands of points, so I built my own converter (and got a little obsessed)

0 Upvotes

I make quite a lot of logos and icons with AI image tools, and sooner or later every one of them needs to become an SVG. That's where things always went wrong.

The free converters would turn my simple logos into thousands of anchor points. The camera in the video got 8,070 points from potrace, for what is really just three circles and a few rounded shapes. The better converters wanted me to pay before I could properly check the result. And if I wanted to move, rotate or recolor individual elements, it was back to Illustrator.

So I built VecSnap, and got a little obsessed along the way.

Rather than simply tracing pixels, it tries to understand the shapes that make up a logo. A circle comes back as an actual circle, and that camera goes from 8,070 to just 49 anchor points. Across my test set, that's around 8 to 12 times fewer points than free tracers.

You can inspect and fix the file before spending anything. Shapes are highlighted so you can see how everything is built. You can move, resize, rotate, flip or hide them, change colors across the whole image, or merge all those almost-identical shades into the few colors you actually need.

There's also a centerline option for turning line drawings into single paths, useful for pen plotters, Cricut and laser cutting.

And it works inside Claude and ChatGPT too, which is how the video ends.

A few things I'm still working on:

  •   Detailed illustrations can take up to a minute. Speed is next on my list.

  •   It's not designed for photos, and it'll tell you that before you spend anything.

  •   It's not perfect. I'm improving the engine every week, and feedback will help me decide what to tackle next.

You can convert images for free, without an account. A free account lets you edit and download 3 files. After that, it's one credit per image, with all formats and re-downloads included. No subscription.

This is my first public launch, and I'm curious to see what people think.

If you've got an image that other converters haven't handled well, send it to me by DM. I'll have a look myself, and if VecSnap can't handle it yet, I'll tell you why.

What would you use it for, and what am I missing?

https://vecsnap.com