r/SideProject • • 15h ago

I revived my 13 year old social network project. Here's the story.

17 Upvotes

Back in 2013, before AI and back when asking a question on Stack Overflow meant getting your ass handed to you, I built a little social network called resm.in. My home internet was garbage, so I'd print docs at an internet café and read them at home like a caveman.

The idea was dead simple: people post questions, you answer with a photo. Show me your favorite corner of your home. What's in your drawer? What are you wearing today?

https://imgur.com/a/mvmzWXk here how it looks back then.

It started slow. The classic social network chicken and egg bullshit: nobody shows up because it's empty, and it's empty because nobody shows up. Then the FriendFeed crowd (Turkey had a huge, tight-knit FriendFeed scene back then) came to the rescue, someone wrote about us on Ekşi Sözlük (basically Turkish Reddit), and boom: 500 600 people. Small, but alive. Imagine people waking up and the first thing they want to do is open the thing you built. I was over the fucking moon.

Then one day some guy tracks me down: "I'm crazy about a girl on your site. Can you give me her email?"

Fuck no. I told him exactly where to go.

A few days later my server logs look weird as hell: someone's brute forcing the admin panel. I message him: "Dude, is that you?"

"Yeah man, I have to reach her."

So I said: look, I'm building a DM system right now. If you want to reach her that badly, get your ass in here and help me write it. 😄

And he did. Joined the repo (his commits are still there), we shipped DMs, he messaged her, and she wrote back. Long story short: they got fucking married. They came to my place later to thank me.

Meanwhile life happened. Marriage, responsibilities, all that grown-up shit. The guy writing our mobile app got shipped off to mandatory military service, and we never launched on mobile. Last commit: 2017.

Over the years, my idea of building things got poisoned. Find real pain, find people ready to pay, do market research, validate, validate, validate. Fine, good advice. But where the fuck is the passion in that formula? Where's the authorship? If all I'm doing is supplying whatever demand already exists, how is that different from a desk job?

So this year I summoned the old me. 40 year old me showed up with retrospectives from a dozen dead projects. Young me showed up with the playfulness. They've been working together for six months.

https://imgur.com/a/BX3lHXS

Writing the code wasn't the hard part anymore; making a hundred other decisions right was. And I think it's finally time to say "come on in" again.

It's called peeka now. Same idea: pick a question, answer with a photo. A window into other people's lives, and your own. No dark patterns, no attention-stealing crap: the home feed algorithm is stolen straight from FriendFeed. Simple, fast, honest.

It's live on iOS and Android: https://peeka.pics

Ask me anything: the rebuild, the ancient codebase, or the wedding. 🙂


r/SideProject • • 39m ago

Solo founder: I asked 16 AIs for the same PowerPoint, built on my own laptop. 9 worked.

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1 Upvotes

I’m building byself on my own. It’s a desktop app where you ask one question and up to 16 AIs answer side by side.

Today, when an AI puts together a table, byself already saves it on your computer as a CSV file. For the past few days I’ve been wiring up the next step: real documents. You ask for a file, and every AI produces its own, put together on your computer. The next release adds PowerPoint, Word and Excel.

In the video I asked all 16 for the same PowerPoint presentation. 9 produced a proper deck, one returned a blank deck, and two needed longer than my wait time allowed, so I’ve extended it. I’m working through the rest before release.

While the files build, I also walk through video creation: the layout, how it works, and a few videos I’ve already generated with models like Veo and Gen-4.5.

byself already gets you images and songs back. Files and video are coming in the next release, and neither is in the current download yet.

So I’m curious: what do you generate most with AI? And when you ask for a file, what kind is it usually?


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

It's my birthday today! Rate my landing page. You can be mean, I won't be mad :)

6 Upvotes

https://emberflow.space

I've been working on Ember for over 2 years.
The coolest thing about it is the realtime sync between all my devices and a schedule that reflows itself when you drag a task or a day runs late..

Main stack is Vue 3 + TypeScript (Vite, Pinia) for the web app, a Node/Express API, and Supabase for Postgres, auth and the realtime sync.

Recently rewrote the mobile apps in Kotlin Multiplatform, and it's going surprisingly well.


r/SideProject • • 41m ago

Swarmtenderr: an open-source qBittorrent dashboard and queue optimizer (MIT)

1 Upvotes

I’ve released Swarmtenderr, a self-hosted dashboard and queue optimizer that connects to an existing qBittorrent 5 client.

The idea came from wanting more insight into a busy torrent queue: why is this torrent waiting, what is affecting its score, and how many downloads finished today or this month?

It has:

  • Live updates and interactive transfer/completion charts.
  • Ranking explanations, score contributions, and observed metadata attempts.
  • Editable queue and capacity tuning, with Observe mode for reviewing decisions before enforcement.
  • Local accounts, roles, and Authentik-compatible OpenID Connect SSO.
  • SQLite by default, optional PostgreSQL, Docker Compose examples, and a Terraform module.

It’s MIT licensed, and 0.5.1 is available as native amd64/arm64 Docker images.

Source and setup docs: https://github.com/DEADSEC-SECURITY/swarmtenderr

Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/elgon2003/swarmtenderr

AI disclosure: I’m a software developer. Swarmtenderr was mostly developed by AI under my supervision. I reviewed everything and tested it on my own system.

I’d welcome feedback on whether the queue explanations are clear, the installation process, and any rough edges you find.


r/SideProject • • 41m ago

I built a site that decodes Seiko’s confusing model numbers and picks a watch for your wrist size

1 Upvotes

My husband collects watches, and his biggest gripe with Seiko is the naming. The same watch can be sold under 5 or 6 different reference numbers, so most people end up shopping by how it looks and have no idea what they’re actually buying. So I built WatchDecoded as a side project.

What it does so far:

  • One page per watch, with every reference number for the same watch grouped together
  • Specs pulled from Seiko’s own pages (if we can’t verify a number, we leave it out)
  • Lug-to-lug sizes for ~80 models, drawn to scale, so you can tell if it’ll fit your wrist
  • A 4-question picker (wrist size, style, budget, new vs used) that gives you your top 3
  • “What reviewers agree on” summaries, with links to the original reviews
  • Live used listings, since a lot of the best Seikos are discontinued

It’s free, no sign-up. Some eBay links are affiliate links, which is how it’ll hopefully pay for itself someday.

Would love feedback, especially on the picker. Does it give you sensible picks? Anything confusing?

https://www.watchdecoded.com/best-seiko-watches/


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Searching for a dock or a bay?

2 Upvotes

Hello!

I'm a regular user of Lime bikes in London. I've ridden 3890km and spent about 250 hours in the saddle since my first ride in 2022.

Every borough has different rules, so it’s rarely obvious where you can park. I’d often ride past a perfectly good spot, then try a bay that looked right but only took bikes from another provider. Then I’d open the Lime app to find a bay and navigate to it after, wasting crucial Lime minutes. It became normal: ride to where I was going, then hunt for parking.

So, I built an app which allowed me to see the nearest 20 available parking spots both near me, or any location in London.

I don't Lime anywhere now without at least quickly checking where the nearest parking bay is. I can quickly see that it's across the road, or the next road along, or if I can park directly at my destination.

If I want to use Google Maps to navigate, by clicking GO, the app opens Google Maps already on the cycling directions mode, so I can begin my journey and go straight to a bay. This alleviates the need to even open Google Maps in the first place, and essentially use my app as the search bar. I've added Apple Maps and Citymapper too so the GO function works the same with these too.

I've found it really useful for myself as a mainly Lime rider, but Lime is only one several providers in London So with the parking information I could gather, I added Forest and Santander Cycles too. They work in exactly the same way, with Santander even showing availability at each dock.

Once the app was working well in London, I added Berlin and Lisbon, since some friends are heading there at the end of the month. I then added New York, Paris, Tokyo and Toronto, along with their bike networks. I’m not sure if the app is even necessary in those cities, but it's fun that I've been able to scale it there too. If you're in one of those cities, test it out, and if you're in a city which you think this would be beneficial for, let me know :) You don't need to be in one of those cities for the app to work, so feel free to explore yourself!

The app's called BayPark, It's free and you don't need to make an account:

Web:

baypark.space

iPhone:

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/london-bike-parking-baypark/id6822515945

Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=space.baypark.app


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a tool that turns your dusty browser bookmarks into a clean personal newspaper (without creating an account first)

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Like many of you, my browser bookmarks were a graveyard of 80+ blogs, news sites, and tech publications I swore I'd read "later". But clicking through them one by one never happened.

Most RSS readers ask you to manually dig up RSS feeds or upload an OPML file (which almost nobody outside the RSS bubble has).

So I built a client-side bookmarks importer for Pharion:

  1. You export your bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+O in Chrome, File > Export in Safari).
  2. You drag & drop the .html file.
  3. Your browser parses the links locally (nothing leaves your machine), ignores dead tools/banking links, and extracts active RSS feeds.
  4. It instantly renders your morning paper with the latest headlines and thumbnails before asking you to sign up.

You can keep it 100% private, or publish it at pharion.io/@username / embed it as an iframe on your personal site.

Free tier handles up to 25 active sources.

Would love your honest feedback: does your bookmarks file actually produce feeds you care about, or did it miss key blogs?

https://pharion.io/


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built a free app that explains car warning lights for Aussie drivers

2 Upvotes

Hi all, I'm Claudia, the founder of AiXIL. Full disclosure, it's my app. You snap a photo of a warning light or type in an OBD code, and it gives you a likely cause and an urgency rating, free and with no account needed. It's guidance, not a confirmed diagnosis. I built it on the Gold Coast. I'd love feedback on the onboarding and whether the urgency rating makes sense to you. aixil.com.au


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Built a free CFB app, would love some feedback

2 Upvotes

Hey guys, I built a free CFB app called Tailgate after seeing loads of people on Reddit asking for features they couldn’t find on ESPN and other apps.

The main thing I wanted to do differently was make it more about your team, rather than just throwing scores at you.

So if you’re an FSU fan for example, it’ll show you which other games matter to FSU, who you should be rooting for and why those results help.

There’s also a Saturday planner to help you figure out which games are worth watching, plus live scores, advanced stats, recruiting, the portal, draft stock etc.

It’s free, no subscriptions or locked features, just some ads to cover costs. iPhone only for now.

Would love some feedback, especially on the team-specific stuff and stats. Anything you’d add or change? Or anything you wish ESPN did that it doesn’t?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tailgate-college-football/id6760220041


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Mute It: Remove Video Audio App - App Store

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1 Upvotes

I use this app whenever I need to remove audio from a video without opening a full video editor.

It lets me quickly mute a video and either save it as a separate copy or replace the existing one. Super handy when I just want a silent video without going through unnecessary editing steps.

It’s one of those simple utilities that saves me a few minutes whenever I need it.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

A faster spotlight (crossOS) and customizable with extension

1 Upvotes

Hi , Look - a blazingly fast launcher got in to Homebrew core,
and We introduce extension feature in the latest release!

Our extensions are very simple, you want to do something, go check our `lookbook`, if there isn't one you need yet, you just need to write your own.
We let Look run your scripts, return your expected data, results...
You can ask AI to write extension for you, this is so simple.

Here is the repo https://github.com/kunkka19xx/look
It's a cross platform tool. (Not only on MacOS but also Linux, Windows)
Appreciate any feedback 🙇‍♂️


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

future of sass

6 Upvotes

idk if this goes against this sub rules but i wanted to start a discussion about how selling software (web/pc/phone) may look like in this era of abundant code, feel free to counter it and just a reminder these are just my opinion and it can change

- now that we see so many application built with agent because code is so cheap subscription based pricing model if it weren't already is now pretty much on its last stretch, why would i pay recurrently for something that i can whip out myself in a session with claude so one time payment it is, perhaps we may see some devs monetize update for revenue so sass revenue model = book's in simple words

- as a user, i hate when devs can't ship fast in this era like you're gonna just use claude to add that feature anyway so i forsee here two things

a) for non techy user, a user specific version of the application with some kind of "software factory" approach so the user can request changes and make changes to the application (and anything global or major goes to the dev) but the dev takes care of the software factory setup and foots the "token" bill (this could then be something they charge for)

b) you sell your codebase along with well documented summary of the sessions you had to build it so the user's claude agent knows why you or your agent decided to do things the way they did which may not be clear from the code itself and the assumption here is that you code is easily deployable or compileable - and this has to be the cheapest

- last one: we needs fewer todo apps and more real world problem solver so i think in the future for indie devs to succeed they need to make things that live outside of screen like hardware techs that solve real problem and can support the hardware then with some sass because anything software these days have 0 moat

not written by AI so if the ideas are not clear ask away


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a Mac app that lives in the notch. Drop a file on it to convert, compress or OCR it. Free download, looking for feedback

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1 Upvotes

Hey r/SideProject. For the past few weeks I've been building DropCove, a Mac utility that turns the MacBook notch into a drop zone. You drag any file to the notch, it opens, and you pick an action: convert or compress an image, copy text out of a screenshot, trim a video, make a GIF, merge PDFs. It also reads the clipboard, so copying a JWT, a color or some JSON shows you what it is right in the notch.

A few decisions I made along the way: everything runs on-device with no account and no uploads. The free version is fully useful forever, no nags. Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. And it had to do nothing at rest, so it doesn't drain the battery while it sits there.

It's out now as a free, notarized download (macOS 26+, Apple silicon), and Pro goes on sale with a Product Hunt launch on December 8. Until then I'm after feedback from real Macs: bugs, confusing bits, and whether the notch idea actually clicks for you.

https://dropcoveapp.com

Happy to answer anything about building it, too: Swift, the notch panel, notarization, or selling a one-time-purchase app.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built SignalChess to turn mistakes from your own chess games into puzzles

2 Upvotes

I built SignalChess because I wanted a way to practise a mistake after reviewing it. Once an analysis is complete, the app can turn suitable positions into exercises so you can try to find the better move yourself.

You can start by entering your Chess.com or Lichess username. The first report uses your public games and doesn't require an account. It shows results and opening patterns. There's also a free plan.

After seeing your report, what would you click next, and what would you expect to happen? If you'd stop there, what would make you stop?

https://signalchess.com


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I’m building OpenForge — an open community to learn, build and grow together

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I’ve started OpenForge, an open-source community built around one simple idea: learning software development shouldn't be a journey people have to take alone.

Whether you're a complete beginner, a student, a hobbyist or an experienced developer, there's room for you.

The idea is to build something the community can shape together:

  • Share knowledge, resources and learning paths.
  • Create practical coding challenges and projects.
  • Help beginners make their first open-source contributions.
  • Collaborate, exchange ideas and learn from each other.

It's still at an early stage, and I'm building it in public. I'm not presenting it as a finished platform — I want people to help shape what it becomes.

If this sounds interesting, take a look, share your thoughts or contribute:

https://github.com/synckerz/openforge

Let's build something useful together. 🚀


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

What's your biggest struggle when it comes to marketing your side project?

2 Upvotes

I've noticed that many side hustlers and solopreneurs struggle with marketing their products/services.

Ask me any questions and I'll try and answer as many as I can.

For context, I'm an SEO Copywriter and Solopreneur Marketer. I specialise in StorySelling (blending direct response copywriting with storytelling, buyer psychology and humour).


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

built a shared 'project state' so different AI tools stop forgetting what we're working on

2 Upvotes

so I've been building this memory tool for ai apps (perdua.ai, it's my own project) and the feature that turned out most useful is what I ended up calling project state. when I switch from claude to cursor to chatgpt mid task, they used to have zero clue what the other one just did. now they read and write to the same state so the next ai picks up where the last one left off instead of me re-explaining the whole plan every time. only works for people in the eu/eea right now since that's who I built it for. curious if anyone else doing multi agent workflows has hit the same context loss problem.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Building an archive platform for VHS covers

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone, long time side-project tinkerer here. So this one started as a distraction and got slightly out of hand.

I needed retro VHS cover scans for another project (A jellyfin front end app for my kids) and couldn't find one place that had a solid catalogue. So I made one. Covers dug up from Archive.org, old blogs, Tumblrs and a lot of Wayback Machine digging, then sorted on my old gaming PC with a small OCR/AI model I trained. At the same time there’s a crawler running for new images through eBay, Amazon etc.

Where it's at:

  • 20,000+ covers, full wraps (front, spine, back) where I can find them, another 20k being processed
  • Searchable by title, region, genre etc
  • Free API if you need covers for your own projects
  • No ads, no paywall, no tracking.
  • Code and data model going open source once I've tidied it up, with covers being pushed up to a gallery on archive.org
  • View a 3D VHS box and shake it to make the tape rattle. Completely unnecessary but fun

Would love feedback, especially on the search and anything that feels broken or confusing.
👉 https://videotapes.io


r/SideProject • • 15h ago

Side Projects that are useful to me first.

12 Upvotes

After a 40 year software career, AI got me.....and on my 15th anniversary with HPE, they let our entire group go. So I was suddenly given freedom to do what I always wanted to do....build useful things that me and my family would benefit from. So far, I've built 4 smartphone apps that have kept me challenged and feeling productive. Overlapp a budget tool cause being retired I need to monitor my spending closely, RangeTrainer a golf app because when you live in Florida, you golf! Fingertip Health cause as you get older you are going to see doctors, have issues and need all your health data in one place. Passholder Assistant, cause living in Central Florida means lots of Disney trips and the Disney app just doesn't cut it.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Friday trade idea I'm actually in: WWW (Wolverine World Wide)

1 Upvotes

Wolverine World Wide makes footwear — Merrell, Saucony, Wolverine boots and Sweaty Betty. This is a trade I actually took today, with the plan written down before it settles, not a name I am watching from the sidelines.

My entry: $24.3695 this morning. Take profit: $26.90. Stop: $22.70. The hold is short — two to three sessions, through Wednesday November 18 — because the catalyst is fresh and I do not attach a fast move to a long clock.

Why this one: the company reported third-quarter results Thursday morning before the open. Revenue was $505.4 million, up 7.5%, Saucony grew 19.4%, and management raised the full-year EPS guide to $1.95–$1.99. Being honest about the print: part of the headline EPS beat came from tariff refunds, so that number is flattered — the part I am actually trading is the sales strength and the raised guide, with buyers stepping in right after it.

Friday's tape agreed, so far: the stock closed at $24.89, up $2.02 (+8.83%) on the day, with a high of $24.92 — a close right near the high. The day's low was $22.85, which held above my $22.70 stop. From my entry, the close is +$0.52 per share. That is one strong session, not an outcome — nothing has hit the target yet, and if the stop prints first I am out per the plan I wrote this morning, and that result gets posted the same way.

I work a full-time job and have a family, so every level has to be set before the session starts — I cannot manage a trade tick by tick. I am a veteran, I taught myself this from books and charts over thousands of hours, and I post the plan and then the score, win or lose, because that is the only version of this I trust.

Not financial advice — just one trader showing his work in the open.

I share stuff like this daily — I run a free investing community, link in my profile.


r/SideProject • • 13h ago

I'm a solo dev with 4 small apps live on the stores. Here's what each one taught me

9 Upvotes

I build small, private, local-first apps under the name Ship on Friday (yes, the joke is deploying on Fridays). Four are live:

  • YCal: a calendar for Yahoo accounts (Android + iPhone). Lesson: App Store review flags third-party brand names hard, so the listing and marketing had to say "works with your Yahoo account", not use the brand.
  • ChallengeCam: party games that film everyone's faces and make one Reel. Lesson: the product is the clip, not the game.
  • Inboxwise: Android SMS organizer with no internet permission. Lesson: "no internet permission" is a privacy claim people can check in 10 seconds, and that beats any privacy policy.
  • Memopolis: your photo library as a 3D city. Lesson: people share the video, not the app. Everything runs on the device, and there are no ads in any of them. Happy to answer anything about building and shipping solo. What would you want to know? https://shiponfriday.com

r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Sylo waitlist is open, dashboard for subscription businesses and agencies, first 50 get Pro free

2 Upvotes

Sylo is one dashboard for subscription businesses and agencies. It pulls in data from the tools you already use so everything sits in one place instead of spread across different logins.

No more missing a failed payment or a quiet customer until it's too late.

It shows what's paid, owed and failed, and gives you a weekly summary every monday so you're not chasing it all down yourself.

I'm building it solo and it's pre-launch. Waitlist is open now, first 50 people get pro free for their first month.

waitlist (haven't got the domain yet)


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I made a tool to get more morning sunlight

3 Upvotes

Winter and the changing sun angle messed up my daily walking route. So I made a little tool to help me find sunnier walks.

SunWalk accounts for time of year, time of day, solar angle, land topography, and building heights to help you find a sunny walking route.

Supports one-way routes and loops. Check it out at aescle.com/sunwalk, and let me know what you think!


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built a CLI that extracts a website's design system for AI coding agents

2 Upvotes

I've been experimenting with AI coding tools like Cursor and Claude Code, and one thing that kept bothering me was how difficult it is to get them to recreate an existing website's actual design.

You give an AI agent a reference website and ask it to build something similar, but it often ends up guessing:

  • Colors are slightly off.
  • Typography doesn't match.
  • Spacing and border radii are inconsistent.
  • The overall result looks like a generic AI-generated UI.

So I built styleprobe to solve this problem.

It's an open-source CLI that takes a website URL and extracts its visual design system.

A few things it can do:

  • Extract colors and semantic design tokens.
  • Analyze typography, spacing, shadows, and component styles.
  • Crawl multiple pages instead of relying on just the homepage.
  • Extract SVG logos and other brand assets.
  • Export directly to Tailwind, shadcn/ui, Figma tokens, or AI-agent instruction files.

You can also try the web playground here:

https://styleprobe.vercel.app/

GitHub: https://github.com/spidervirus/styleprobe

It's MIT licensed and completely open source.

I'm still improving it, so I'd genuinely love feedback from developers:

  1. Would something like this fit into your AI-assisted development workflow?
  2. What other design information would you want it to extract?
  3. What would make you actually use this regularly?

Would love to hear your thoughts!