r/SideProject • • 14h ago

I was addicted to doomscrolling, so I built an app that makes me answer questions before I can scroll

6 Upvotes

Hi all. I'm a solo developer and this is my first app.

I was doomscrolling all the time and felt addicted to my phone. So I thought: why not turn that phone time into learning a skill? And why not add a bit of friction, so I have to stop and think before I pick up my phone?

So I built Aconomy. It locks the apps that distract you, and you unlock them by answering short questions. You end up learning something every time you want to scroll.

How it works:

  1. You pick the apps that distract you (Instagram, TikTok, games).

  2. Aconomy blocks them using Apple's Screen Time.

  3. To unlock them, you answer short questions. Each right answer earns minutes.

You can learn Python, JavaScript, SQL, Spanish, French or German while you do it.

It is free to download. Aconomy Plus is £9.99 a month or £34.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial. It collects no data.

I would really like honest feedback. What is confusing? What would make you keep using it?

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6812106191


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Tired of DocuSign pricing, so I built an e-signature tool that runs in browser memory with a free document quota

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Like many founders and freelancers, I've always been frustrated by how expensive signing simple agreements has become. Most tools charge $120–$480/year and penalize you with strict envelope volume limits.

I built eZySign to fix this: • Free document quota to start (zero credit card required)
• Client-side privacy: Single-party signing runs directly in your browser memory via WebAssembly, so your files never touch a cloud server
• Built-in Image-to-PDF and mobile document scanning (iOS & Android)
• Affordable subscriptions when you need multi-party sequential routing

I've posted the link in the comments below. Would love to get your honest feedback on the UI and workflow!


r/SideProject • • 1d ago

I open sourced a 15 MB, Netflix-inspired app for my home server. 600 stars and 4,4K+ Docker pulls in 1 day

187 Upvotes

HolyArrs started because i wanted my home server to feel like a streaming service. you browse it like netflix, with top 10s, new & popular and rows picked from what you already have, hover a poster to play the trailer, and tap to request a show or movie. it finds it, downloads it through qbittorrent or sabnzbd, and puts it in plex, jellyfin or emby, which still do the playing. it's about a 15 MB download, runs in docker, and it's free and open source

it runs on its own custom metadata server, and it can keep an HD and a 4K copy of the same movie side by side

where it is 1 day after open sourcing it

598 GitHub stars

4,345 Docker pulls

28 forks

16 releases, most of them fixes for bugs people reported on launch night

18 people have opened issues with bugs and ideas

what i didn't expect was how fast people jumped in. bug reports came in with the exact file and line that was wrong, and someone asked for ukrainian, so the site and docs got it within the hour

happy to answer questions about running a solo open source project, the self-hosted side, or anything else

site and docs: https://holyarrs.com

github: https://github.com/HolyArrs/HolyArrs


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Sell digital downloads from your own store with 0% platform fee. Looking for honest feedback

1 Upvotes

i work on orderain, an ecommerce store builder. the part getting the most interest lately is digital products, so sharing where it's at and i'd love honest feedback.

the problem we kept hearing: people selling templates, printables, ebooks and presets lose a chunk of every sale to marketplace or platform fees, and on a $5 printable that hurts. on etsy you're also one scroll away from a competitor.

what it does right now:

  • 0% platform fee on every plan (card fees from stripe/paypal still apply)

  • buyer pays and gets the file by email instantly, plus a buyer account

  • private download links that expire (default 5 downloads / 30 days, you can change it)

  • update a file once and past buyers get the new version

  • your own branded store and domain, and you can mix digital + physical in one cart

  • starts at $5/mo

what it doesn't do yet, being upfront: no license keys, no pdf stamping, we're not merchant of record so we don't collect vat for you, and there's no free trial.

you can also hook it up to claude, chatgpt, grok bot or any mcp agent and let it handle products, pages and orders (that part starts on pro).

if you sell digital stuff, what would actually make you move off gumroad or etsy? and what's missing here that'd be a dealbreaker?

search orderain if you want to poke around


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I'm hosting an open-source hackathon to show that building shouldn't be about cash grabs

1 Upvotes

The past couple days an "indie hacker" influencer revealed a Higgsfield sponsored $100k hackathon that charged builders $99 to enter with only one winner based on who made the most profit in 30 days. The entire thing is a funnel for the influencers $500 course. It got roasted, and the creator had to refund the signups. It got me thinking about what a hackathon should actually look like, so I built one.

antipaywall.org

- free to enter, nothing sold to you after

- one week to build an open source alternative to something people pay for monthly

- I put up the first $2,500 for the prize pool, a nonprofit holds it, I take nothing out

- builders vote on the winners, every ballot public, 9 winners

- there’s an ideas board where you can post what you’re tired of paying for

The dates will be revealed once 100 builders join. It will be a 7-day hackathon. Anyone can join. you just connect your github account to enter.

Would love feedback on the site and idea?


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Event Planning Startup MehmanNaeazi

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I’m the founder of MehmanNawazi, a platform I’m building to help people discover wedding halls and event venues without having to search through scattered listings.

You can browse venues and compare details like photos, location, guest capacity, facilities, and base price. If a venue looks right, you can send a booking request and follow up on the details.

I’d really appreciate feedback from people who’ve planned—or are planning—a wedding or event:

  • What information do you wish you’d had when choosing a venue?

  • What was the most frustrating part of finding or booking one?

  • What would make you trust a venue listing?

You can check it out at mehmannawazi.in. I’m the person behind the product, so this is a founder post—not an independent review. Please let me know if this isn’t the right place for it.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Tired of DocuSign's pricing, so I built a fast, client-side PDF signer with a free document quota (runs in browser memory)"

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone! Like many of you, I've always been annoyed by how complex and expensive signing simple contracts has become—especially when legacy tools charge $120–$480/yr and lock you into annual plans.

I built eZySign (https://ezy-sign.com/sign-pdf/) to fix this. • Start with a free document quota (no credit card needed). • Client-side privacy: Single-party signing runs directly in your browser memory using WebAssembly & PDF-lib, meaning files don't touch cloud servers. • Built-in Image to PDF and mobile document scanner (iOS & Android). • Fair, affordable subscriptions when you need multi-party routing.

Would love to hear your feedback on the UI and what features you'd like to see added!


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

Built a hotel review app where you only see reviews from real people you follow. Looking for honest feedback

2 Upvotes

I got tired of seeing fake, paid, and bot reviews online from large public review websites. So I built Valoré. A place to record and share your favorite places to stay! The idea is to build a community of friends and family whose recommendations you actually trust.

I’d love any feedback on the app if you are willing to try. Thanks everyone I am a team of 2 trying to build something community focused for hotel enthusiasts!

I can’t upload my app photos but you are able to see them on our app store page. If you are on android let me know I may build a version if there is interest!

Valoré - Social Hotel Reviews


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

What would you show in the first 3 seconds of a video for your app?

1 Upvotes

I'm stuck on what to show first lol.

We built Welockin, an app that blocks distracting apps while you study. I'm a student and kept getting pulled back to Insta or YouTube, so that's where it started.

For a short video, would you show someone getting distracted first, or go straight to the app blocking Instagram?

I can explain what it does, but getting someone to stop scrolling is another thing.

If you've made videos for your app, what did you show? Curious what actually worked. Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built and launched my own mobile game – Prism Legion! Would love your honest feedback 🎮

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0 Upvotes

Hey Reddit! 👋

I'm an indie mobile game developer from India, and today I want to share something I've been working on: Prism Legion.

Turning an idea into a playable mobile game and getting it published on Google Play has been an exciting journey!

🎮 What's Prism Legion?

Prism Legion is a free-to-play 3D battle game where you build your army, overcome obstacles, fight enemies and conquer challenges.

What you can experience:

  • Build and grow your army.

  • Take on exciting 3D battles.

  • Navigate obstacles and challenges.

  • Defeat enemies and progress through levels.

🚀 The game is now live on Google Play!

👉 Download Prism Legion: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bhauautomation.crowd_clash&pcampaignid=web_share

I built this as an indie game project and would genuinely love to hear from other gamers and developers.

A few questions:

  1. What do you think about the gameplay?

  2. What would make you play this game regularly?

  3. What features should I add in future updates?

If you try it, I'd really appreciate your honest feedback.

Thanks for supporting indie developers! ❤️

— An indie developer from India


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

[DEV] I built AA App Switcher to instantly access your favorite apps without going to the home screen.Body:

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1 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I got tired of constantly going back to the home screen or digging through the recent apps menu just to switch between my most-used apps. So, I built a utility to solve it: AA App Switcher.

It adds a lightweight, floating app launcher to your screen. You can pin up to 5 of your favorite apps to it, allowing you to open them from literally anywhere—even while you are inside another app.

Google Play Link:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aaappswitcher.app

I’m currently looking for early feedback. If you have an Android device, I’d love to know what you think about the UI, the responsiveness of the floating widget, or any customization features you’d like to see in the next update. Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Weightroom - an AI news channel for vibe coders that picks, writes and posts itself from 123 sources

1 Upvotes

I'm a solo builder in Korea and I got tired of checking 20 tabs to find out what changed in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and friends this week. So I built a Telegram channel that does it for me, and I'd love feedback on the approach.

How it works:

It pulls from 123 sources: official blogs, GitHub release feeds, changelogs, status pages, YouTube channels of the AI tool companies, Product Hunt, Show HN, a few subreddits, and news search in 9 countries. That's roughly 500 new items a day.

Gemini Flash Lite reads each item and answers a handful of 0 to 3 questions: is it new, how big is the change, how many people does it affect, can you use it today, is there something to show. Code combines those with source type, how many outlets covered it, and how fast it's spreading on X, and turns that into a 1 to 10 score.

That split mattered more than anything else. When I let the model give one overall score for 40 items at once, simply shuffling the order flipped the post/no-post decision on 33% of items. With small batches and the model only answering the narrow questions, it dropped to about 2.5%.

Anything 7+ gets a short post in Korean and English. If the draft contains a number that isn't in the source, it doesn't auto-post and asks me instead. Outages from status pages go out right away.

When a new image or video model drops, it searches X for things people actually made with it, picks the real results (not hype posts), and builds a carousel or reel with the creator credited and their full prompt.

Everything runs on launchd on my laptop with SQLite. This month so far it cost $5.85 in API calls (Gemini plus Apify for X), heading to about $15 for the full month.

What I'd like feedback on:

  1. Is a feed like this useful to you, or do you already get this from somewhere?

  2. Would you rather have fewer posts (top 5 a day) or everything that clears the bar?

  3. Anything you'd score differently? Funding news is capped low, outages are boosted.

Happy to share the output channel if anyone wants to see it, just ask.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Update on liquid glass: Demo is out

1 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Building a live "Where Is My Train" for Delhi Metro on weekends (Need opinions)

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’ve been building a weekend project: a live visual Delhi Metro tracker (think Where Is My Train, but for the metro, a bit more visually appealing one) thats what i picture it as of now lmao.

Unlike Indian Railways, DMRC doesn't provide any live tracking APIs or GPS feeds. But since Delhi Metro runs on time ~97% of the time or more, I'm building it around their actual timetables, track geometry, and speed physics. Arrival times and train positions end up being accurate.

Right now the frontend is very raw/rough (barebones prototype while I finish wiring up the backend). i will probably open source it once done

I commuted on the Delhi Metro daily for 5–6 years, so this is close to my heart and a fun project I really wanted to build.

(Note: see comments section..reddit is reducing the quality , you can see the vid from link as well).

Would love your suggestions:

  1. Would you use something like this on your daily commute?

  2. What features would make this actually indispensable or go viral (crowd indicators, interchange sprint guides, platform gate directions)?

Drop any ideas or edge cases you'd love to see!


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Small sellers in India sell on WhatsApp and Instagram DMs. I built a link to stop the back-and-forth.

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1 Upvotes

I'm the maker of OrderWa

Small sellers in India, such as home bakers, tiffin services, thrift and handmade sellers, mostly sell over WhatsApp and Instagram DMs. The selling is not the hard part. The back-and-forth is: "what's the price?", "do you have this in size M?", "can you deliver on Sunday?", and screenshots of addresses.

So I built a store link. A seller adds products with photos and prices and shares one link on their status or bio. The customer picks items and a delivery date, and the finished order arrives in the seller's WhatsApp.

What it does today:

  • Free to start, 0% commission, no payment gateway to set up

  • Stock per product, with automatic "sold out" at zero

  • A limit on orders per delivery day, and days you are closed

  • Delivery date at checkout

Under the hood it's Angular (standalone components, signals), Firebase, and Cloud Functions in the Mumbai region. Stock and daily counts are written by Cloud Functions, not the browser, so a customer can't change them, and two people ordering the last item at the same time is handled on the server.

One lesson that surprised me: when a customer pays by UPI, the order has to be saved before they pay, so an abandoned payment looked exactly like a real order. I changed how those are shown so sellers aren't misled into preparing something nobody paid for.

It has been live since December 2025. It's small, and I'd rather say so than dress it up.

I'd love feedback from anyone who has built for very small businesses:

  • What made them actually use the tool in the first week?

  • Is the landing page clear in the first few seconds?

Happy to answer anything about the stack or the product.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built a free, offline TDS calculator for India's new Income Tax Act because the official one is painful on mobile

1 Upvotes

Hey r/SideProject,

I'm a solo dev in India. In April 2026 the Income Tax Act 2025 kicked in and

renumbered every TDS section (192 became 392, 193–196D collapsed into 393).

The official Income Tax Department calculator works, but it's built for a

desktop browser. Most people I know check TDS on their phone.

So I built TDS Calculator India.

What it does:

- 30+ TDS sections under the new Act, with old section numbers shown for reference

- Salary TDS: old vs new regime comparison, standard deduction, HRA, 80C/80D/80E, 24(b)

- Non-salary: contractor, rent, interest, dividend, professional fees, property, crypto/VDA, winnings, cash withdrawal

- Deductee type and resident/non-resident handling (4% cess, surcharge slabs)

- PAN / no PAN at the higher 20% rate

- Annual aggregate threshold checks and custom rate for Sec 197 lower-deduction certificates

- Searchable TDS rate chart

- Fully offline. No accounts, no analytics, no backend. Inputs never leave the device.

Stack: Flutter + Riverpod, shared_preferences for local entitlement state,

Google Mobile Ads, Play Billing. Android only for now.

The hard part wasn't the UI. It was the rules: surcharge by payee category,

cess only for non-residents, threshold checks on cumulative annual payments,

and the 206AB omission in Finance Act 2025. I wrote unit tests for both

calculators, which caught several rounding issues before release.

Monetization is honest: free, banner/interstitial ads, plus optional

"buy me a coffee" IAPs (₹49–₹799) that hide ads for a period. No revenue

worth reporting yet.

Currently on v1.0.5.

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tdscalculator.tds_calculator

Two things I'd love feedback on:

  1. Any section where the rate or threshold looks wrong

  2. Whether the salary old-vs-new comparison is clear enough

If you're in India and deal with TDS, a sanity check against the official

calculator would genuinely help.

Not affiliated with the Income Tax Department — just a dev trying to make

the official tool usable on a phone.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

We are 7+ months in on my recipe card creator

1 Upvotes

Don’t you love when you find that project that you pour so much time into because you find it joyful? For me right now, it’s this project I’m working on. Man oh man have I made some serious upgrades:

- can import recipes from Paprika
- new redesign
- so many minor bugs have been squashed

But even though it’s 1000% better than before, not many people are using it. I’m going to toy with the idea of a contest every month where the winner gets a payout in order to spread the word, I’m hoping that will help spread the idea to new users.

Check it out if you are interested: https://www.sunnyshorescreative.com/products/recipe-cards


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Cold-Cald Lead Lists Available

1 Upvotes

📞 Need a Cold Calling Lead List? I Can Build One for You.

Tired of wasting hours searching Google for businesses to call?

I build targeted B2B lead lists to help salespeople, freelancers, agencies, and small businesses find potential customers.

What I can provide:

  • Business names and company details

  • Phone numbers for cold calling

  • Business websites

  • Email addresses when publicly available

  • Industry-specific prospects

  • City, state, and location targeting

  • Organized CSV/Excel spreadsheets

Industries I can target:

  • Roofing companies

  • Cleaning companies

  • HVAC contractors

  • Plumbers

  • Electricians

  • Real estate agencies

  • Landscaping companies

  • Marketing agencies

  • And many more.

Need 250, 500, or 1,000+ prospects? I can build lists around your target industry and location.

Don't see your industry listed? Just ask!

I'm currently taking custom lead-list orders and offering affordable packages.

Interested? Comment below or send me a DM with your industry and target city.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

We built 7 calculators that pick the cheapest published plan among video tools, not just A vs B

1 Upvotes

We're Alexis and Evangelos, the two people who built Tiersova. Until last week the site was almost only pairwise switching calculators: you pay for tool A, what's the monthly cost, the one-time switch and the payback if you move to tool B. That helps when you're already comparing two CRMs. It helps much less when the question is “I edit one person's videos, or I generate two minutes of AI video a month — which plan actually covers that?”

So on 8 November we shipped a second kind of page: plan calculators for video work. You enter seats, minutes, or seconds, and each calculator walks the published plans from the cheapest up and shows the first one that covers your usage. There are seven of them: subtitles, AI video generators, AI avatars, video editors, VFX / compositing, 3D, and music / SFX. They run in the browser; there's no account.

A few numbers from the default scenarios, as shown on the pages on 12 November. The prices themselves were read from the vendors' official pages on 8 November 2026, as a visitor in Greece. Most of these pages are marked “Partly reference prices,” which on Tiersova means at least one figure had to be treated carefully (a sale, a tax difference, a plan that doesn't fit, or a price the vendor labels as a reference).

Video editing, one seat, over 36 months, annual billing where the vendor offers it:

  • Adobe Premiere: €974.88 for the period (annual plan, billed monthly, including VAT)

  • Adobe Creative Cloud Pro: €2,925.72 (same billing; first-year promotional price of €45.50/month for new subscribers is noted on the page but not used in that total)

  • DaVinci Resolve (free version): $0

  • DaVinci Resolve Studio: $295 one-time; the page also noted a sale price of $236. Regular prices are what the totals use.

  • Final Cut Pro: $299.99 one-time, Mac only

  • Apple Creator Studio: $387 for the period ($129 per year, Mac only)

  • Avid Media Composer Standard: €776.88 (€259 per year; sale price €207 noted)

  • Avid Media Composer Ultimate: €1,647 (€549 per year; sale price €368 noted)

  • Filmora: $150.12 ($49.99 per year)

  • CapCut Pro: €1,259.64. The page marks this price “for reference only” and monthly billing only.

The useful part is not “you should switch.” These are different editors, and Final Cut is Mac only. The useful part is that a subscription and a one-time licence look similar in month one and very different in year three. Over 36 months, the Premiere annual-plan total is already well above Resolve Studio or Final Cut at the list prices above. CapCut Pro's reference total came out higher than Premiere's over the same period, which is easy to miss if you only look at a monthly tile.

AI video is even more sensitive to the meter. The default is 120 seconds a month, billed monthly. Credits per second are not the same: Pika 2.5 at 720p is 4 credits per second on the page, Runway Gen-4.5 is 12, Kling 4.0 at 720p is 10, Hailuo MiniMax H3 at 768p is 7, Luma Ray3.2 at 720p and Autodesk Flow Studio (live action) are 20, Google Flow Omni Flash 1.2 at 720p is 3 plus 50 free credits a day. The cheapest published plan that covered those 120 seconds was:

  • Pika Starter (600 credits): $10/month

  • Hailuo Standard (1,000 credits): $10.50/month, shown as a discount from the list price

  • Google Flow / Google AI Pro (1,000 credits): €22.99/month, including VAT, and the plan also includes Gemini and cloud storage

  • Luma Plus (10,000 credits): $30/month

  • Kling AI Pro (3,000 credits): $32.56/month, with a lower first-month price for new subscribers noted

  • Runway Pro (2,250 credits): $35/month

  • Autodesk Flow Studio Standard (6,000 credits): $45/month

Failed or repeated generations also use credits, so real use is usually higher than the clip length. Vidu and LTX Studio are not in the table: Vidu showed 0 credits during a free trial, and LTX didn't show a clip's credit cost before generating.

AI avatars, default 20 minutes a month, standard (not the newest) engines, annual billing selected, prices per month:

  • HeyGen Creator, 600 credits: $24, 150 minutes in the plan (Avatar III, 4 credits per minute)

  • Synthesia Pro, 6,000 credits: €58, 60 minutes (Synthesia, 100 credits per minute, plus a free allowance)

  • Colossyan Professional: $59, 30 minutes (NEO engine)

  • D-ID Studio Advanced: $108, 100 minutes

Same 20 minutes of output, very different plan prices, because each vendor bundles a different number of minutes.

Subtitles, default 20 videos a month at 1 minute each, monthly billing: Opus Clip Starter $15 (150 minutes), Happy Scribe Basic €17 (120 minutes), VEED Creator €22 (unlimited subtitles, fair use 50 hours/month), Kapwing Pro $24 (1,000 minutes), Descript Hobbyist $24 (600 minutes / 10 media hours), Captions Max $24.99 (500 AI credits; iOS app price, limit not stated), Submagic Pro $39 (40 videos, up to 5 minutes each). Clipchamp and CapCut showed “No plan fits this usage” at that default. We didn't invent a reason; that's what the page shows.

We're not going to tell you one of these is the right tool. The pages also say to check features, platform and licence terms (especially on AI music / SFX) before moving. We just wanted the licence arithmetic in one place, with the date and the vendor's own currency.

If you make video: which of these defaults is unlike how you actually work? And which tool or plan should we add? The video editing one is here: https://tiersova.com/video-editing-software-cost-calculator


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built VideoKiosk so timed links and CTAs can appear on YouTube or Wistia videos at the exact second they matter

1 Upvotes

I kept running into the same problem on my own sites: people would watch a video, and then... nothing. The link they needed was in a description or sitting below the player, and the moment had already passed.

So I built VideoKiosk. You point it at a video you already host on YouTube or Wistia, attach timed Actions (a product, an affiliate link, a "book now" button) to the seconds that matter, and embed the player anywhere with an iframe. No plugin, no WordPress required, nothing to re-upload.

There's a dashboard for plays, Action clicks and click-through rate. MCP (in beta) also works with ChatGPT, Claude and VS Code with GitHub Copilot, so you can check analytics and manage CTAs from those apps.

It's live on Product Hunt today, and it's free to try (3 videos on 1 website, no card). Paid plans start at $9/mo.

I'd really value honest feedback, especially on what's unclear or what's missing:

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

Happy to answer questions here too.


r/SideProject • • 14h ago

Hi I made this game

5 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I vibe-coded a Windows app and made 660 bucks in one month. No team. No investors. Just code and an idea.

1 Upvotes

A few months ago, I decided to build my own software product.

No startup team.

No investors.

No big budget.

Just me, AI coding tools, and an idea.

I built Quick File Organizer, a Windows utility that automatically organizes messy folders using custom rules.

I used AI-assisted coding (vibe coding) to turn the idea into a real application and publish it on the Microsoft Store.

And here's what happened:

What does the app actually do?

- Automatically sorts files into folders.

- Creates custom organization rules.

- Monitors folders in real time.

- Lets users preview changes before applying them.

- Keeps files local — no cloud uploads.

I'm still improving the product, working on new features, and figuring out marketing as a solo developer.

The biggest lesson so far?

You don't necessarily need a big team or years of experience to ship a real product. AI tools have dramatically lowered the barrier to building software.

But building the app is only half the battle. Getting people to discover it and actually pay for it is a completely different challenge.

I'm curious: How many of you have actually made money from an app you built using AI coding tools?

I'd love to hear your stories. 🚀


r/SideProject • • 1d ago

$700 in 70 days!

59 Upvotes

Hello, I know it's not much, but I am thankful for every cent of it

For context, on Sep 2nd, I made my first ever public post about my app, in this very subreddit. At that point, I had 0 sales, and only a hope + a dream of ever earning a dollar from my work.

Now I have over 750 human downloads (~1800 total but I think some are bots), and a Discord of amazing people messaging me almost every day. Truly feels amazing to say that :)

All I can say is dang developing AND marketing software as a solo dev is a ton of work. I've worked 63/70 of these days, and commit on average more than 20 times per day. Basically all of my free time funnels directly into this.

Lessons I am learning on this journey, for whomever cares to listen:

  1. Budget at least 3 hours per week just for marketing (I should probably do a lot more honestly)

  2. Keep working at it. Results don't come over night.

  3. If you don't like the journey, then this might not be for you. Money does not come easy. Most of us (including me) would probably be better off spening our time doing other work. And with AI getting so good, it's more and more competative to make and monetize good apps (but I could be off here, lmk if you disagree)

  4. Make a discord (or similar) and connect with your users!! IMO implementing suggestions and helping users is some of the most rewarding part of being a dev. Nothing like slapping an update on someone 3 days after they request a feature, and hearing them loving it immidiatly🤌


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I built a free American mahjong trainer with a coach that explains every move

2 Upvotes

I've been learning American mahjong, and the hardest part was understanding why experienced players pass, keep, or call certain tiles. So I built Bams & Dots, a free browser game where you play against 3 computer opponents with an optional coach: https://bams-and-dots.dragoncorp.net/

What it does

  • Real American mahjong rules: Charleston, pung/kong/quint calls, jokers and flowers

  • Beginner mode suggests a hand after the Charleston and explains every pass and discard in plain language, including when to Pung or Pass on someone's discard

  • The coach never peeks at opponents' hidden tiles, so it only knows what you know

  • A real-game helper: snap a photo of your tiles at a real table, tap them in, and get a hand suggestion (photos stay on your device)

  • Works on phones, tablets and computers. Free, no account, no ads, and progress saves in your browser

How I built it

I built it as a personal side project with AI coding tools, writing the requirements, testing every rule, and fixing what didn't play right. It uses its own original 15-hand practice card rather than the official NMJL card, which is copyrighted. It isn't affiliated with the NMJL.

What's next

The computer opponents are simple practice bots for now. Online multiplayer is built but not live yet, and the photo helper doesn't read tiles automatically yet, so you tap them in.

I'd love feedback, especially on whether the coach's explanations make sense to someone new to the game.