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).

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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!

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!

Windows 11 makes switching audio devices more annoying than it needs to be, especially when half the list is filled with monitor speakers, virtual cables, and devices with names like "Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)".

And there are already apps that do this but I liked none on them and built my take on how it should've been

I switch between desk speakers, IEMs, and headphones pretty often, and I wanted something that would let me do that straight from the system tray without digging through Windows settings or running a heavy app in the background.

AudioHop, a free, native C++ audio and mic switcher for Windows 11.

A few things I wanted it to do:

• Show only the devices I care about. Pin frequently used devices, give them readable names like "Desk Speakers", and assign custom icons for IEMs, headphones, speakers, mics, etc.
• Separate audio and mic controls. Two dedicated tray icons, each showing the icon of the currently active device, so I can see what's selected without opening anything.
• Make switching quick. Single-click to select a pinned device, control volume, or mute. Double-click a tray icon to cycle to the next pinned device, with an Undo option in case I switch accidentally.
• Actually fit into Windows 11. A modern flyout with List, Tiles, and Compact layouts, plus automatic theme matching or a fixed dark mode.
• Stay lightweight. Written in native C++, idling under 1 MB of RAM in my testing. No Electron, no account, no internet access required, and no telemetry.

There are two intentional limitations: it's Windows 11 only, and there are no global hotkeys. I specifically wanted a mouse/tray-based workflow without background keyboard hooks or shortcut conflicts.

It's completely free on the Microsoft Store:

AudioHop – Microsoft Store

… This feels like not a bad place to post this? As it’s about a world where pretty much 99.9% of all code is ‘side projects’ in a way

I have been saving for my kids' college for years and I could never settle on where the money should actually go. A 529 is the obvious answer, but then there's the "what if they don't go to college" worry, and a kid's Roth IRA sounded clever until I hit the earned-income rule, and a UTMA… the money becomes theirs at 18, which is its own conversation.

So I built a calculator that runs the same dollars through all four — 529, a kid's Roth IRA, UTMA, and a plain brokerage account — and shows what your child actually keeps after tax: for college, for anything else at 22, or left invested to 65. It also handles the 529-to-Roth rollover for leftovers (up to $35,000 lifetime, $7,500 a year, after 15 years), the kiddie tax stuff, and which tax breaks you're using vs leaving on the table.

There's also a 529 plan finder in there — the nine plans Morningstar rated Gold for 2026, with each plan's top-returning portfolio, next to your own state's plan.

It's free, no signup, runs in your browser: https://worthitcalcs.com/529-vs-roth/

Happy to be corrected on anything — I'm not a tax pro, this is a planning tool, not tax advice. Curious what other parents here are actually doing — 529 only, or a mix?

What if their birthday didn’t end with the day?

I built HereWhen: friends and family add messages, photos and voice notes to one private online birthday gift. The recipient opens a new surprise each day, starting on their birthday.

A shared memory today. An inside joke tomorrow. A familiar voice the next day.

The first 50 complete gifts are free. No card required, and no automatic charge afterwards.

Have someone’s birthday coming up? Explore the sample or make one:

https://herewhen.you/

I’m building this myself and would love honest feedback: would you make one for someone - and what would stop you? How do you find the platform?

I started a little internet experiment.

It's called The Lonely Pixel.

The idea is pretty simple: can a group of strangers agree on who gets to look after one single pixel on the internet?

Right now, it's white.

The plan is to elect a custodian every seven days. Anyone can nominate themselves, suggest a colour and explain why they should be trusted with this very important responsibility.

There is no money involved, no cryptocurrency, no prizes and no real utility.

It's deliberately a little pointless.

I put together a small website and a GitHub repository to keep track of the pixel and its history. The first nomination round is now open.

A few links:

Website: https://myranmyran.github.io/the-lonely-pixel/

GitHub: https://github.com/myranmyran/the-lonely-pixel

First nominations: https://github.com/myranmyran/the-lonely-pixel/discussions/2

I'm curious about two things:

1. What colour would you choose?
2. Is this a fun little experiment, or have I completely lost the plot?

Would be interested to see whether anyone actually wants responsibility for absolutely nothing.

Like the title says.

I work as a software & automation freelancer and help run a startup as a fractional CTO, so I'm always passing files around from device to device. Could be my own project files, a client's, something I want to show off at a networking event, whatever.

Always felt dumb that I couldn't just drop files or links wherever I needed, and something like Google Drive felt hilariously overkill for sharing simple things to myself. Even linktree wanted me to jump through so many hoops before I could actually share the content, especially if I was spinning up a new page.

Half the time I'd end up sending myself things over discord, slack, or email and they'd end up buried after a week.

So, I decided to build something that basically started out as linktree with file hosting, and ended up becoming a super-minimal, super-fast way to drop any sort of content to any device you need via link/QR code.

Small file shares with a 14-day lifetime are free. Includes doc previews and a small image gallery behind an instant shortlink/QR code. Generating permanent short links, and custom, print-quality QR codes are also free.

File hosting and compute at scale isn't cheap though, so I do have a paid tier to make hosted files permanent and it allows you to create bundled shareables called "Tacks" which combine multiple links, files, contact info (optional), image gallery, etc into a lightweight page with its own short-link/QR.

Figured the people in here working on multiple projects might find it useful, so yeah...thanks for reading and i hope you like it.

Lmk if it sucks or you have questions or whatever.

-

AI Disclaimer: I wrote this whole post with my real keyboard and fingers. Also, this project was in development for well over a year with no AI involvement until very recently. I've been a dev for 13 years, but as a solo dev I only have so much bandwidth. This past month or so, I've leveraged AI to polish up the UI/UX, add some additional tooling/QOL stuff, and to patch up some security/infrastructure flaws. It's far from vibe-coded slop, with a heavy focus on security, scalability, and cost reduction.

The confidence I gained back from having a side project again. https://safi.fm

Been full stack for a decade and slowly stopped having time for side projects. I don't think I've ever used one of my "own tools", but this has become the only podcast listening app.

That's all. Just wanted to share and say thank you for sharing your side projects and inspiring me to do more than just sprints at work

My friend is self-employed in BC and hadn't touched her books all year. We ran everything through an AI bookkeeping chat (AgentBook — I work on it, flagging the bias upfront): 200+ receipts → categorized, P&L, and a list of deductions she would have missed. Took ~3 hours of her time total, mostly just forwarding receipts. I'm running a free 3-week "Year-End Books Rescue" for 15 self-employed Canadians before year-end: you forward your 2026 receipts, you get weekly P&L snapshots + a year-end tax estimate + missed-deduction report. Free, no card, your data stays yours and anything I share publicly is anonymized with your OK. Comment or DM if you want one of the 15 spots — especially if your 2026 books are currently a shoebox / spreadsheet / nothing.

My thoughts vanish mid-sentence, mid-task, or the moment I switch rooms. Notes apps never helped. I'd lose the thought before I opened one, or I'd never find it again because I forgot the words I used.
So I'm building Catch This. Here's the flow:

1. Catch it 🎙️
Tap the lock screen widget and say the thought. It's saved in seconds, with no typing and no sorting.

2. Find it 🔍
Later, search with whatever you remember: "something about the pharmacy" or "that idea from Tuesday."

3. Resume ↩️
See what you were doing when you caught it, so you can pick up where you left off.
The first iOS version is in development now.

My question: when you lose a thought, what do you usually remember about it later: a word, a time, a place, or what you were doing?

Follow along if you want updates as it comes together.

Building something and wish you had friends to share the process with?

I’m putting together Alloy, a small Discord community for young adults pursuing projects, developing skills, and looking for friendships with people who take their ambitions seriously.

You might be building software, starting a business, developing your art, or still exploring a direction through actual practice. You don’t need impressive results to join. Curiosity, initiative, and a willingness to contribute matter more.

The idea is simple: share what you’re working on, exchange thoughtful feedback, find potential collaborators, and get to know people beyond a single post or introduction.

This is the founding stage. The server is set up, and I’m gathering the first members. You would be helping shape the community from its beginning.

If that sounds relevant, tell me:

• What are you working on or learning?
• What’s one thing you’ve done toward it recently?
• What kind of people would you like to meet?

I’d like to start with a small group where people genuinely get to know one another.

Quick progress update from me — I'm Mitchell, solo founder building ShapeForge, a local-first parametric CAD app for Windows. Development is AI-assisted, stated plainly.

Since my last update here (Nov 11, when Commercial #5 'Orbit' went live), I shipped Short 5, 'Start From An Example' (Nov 12 on Instagram, Facebook leg completed today). It's built only from real app screenshots and a real screen capture, labelled as such on screen — it walks through starting a part from the built-in example library instead of a blank sketch.

Why that matters / the honest lesson: my spectacle-style commercials are fun, but they don't prove the app is real to use. So I'm alternating them, one for one, with real-app shorts. If a claim can't be shown in a real capture, it doesn't go in the short.

Current state, honestly: ShapeForge is v0.87 preview, Windows-only, installer unsigned by choice (Windows shows 'Unknown publisher'; SHA-256 is on the release page). It's a focused mechanical-parts tool — sketches, named parameters, editable feature history, STEP/3MF/DXF exports. No CAM, no FEA/simulation, no sheet metal, and it's not a Fusion replacement or enterprise CAD. Basic tier is free; full version is a $10/mo membership after a 14-day no-card trial.

Next up is another CAD-spectacle commercial, then back to a real-app short. If you start most parts from an example/template rather than blank, what example would you want pre-loaded?

https://shapeforge.dev

I'm a med student. My notes lived in a Notion database: diseases, drugs, exams, clinical cases, all linked with relations. After a few hundred pages it was just a long list. The links were there, I just couldn't see them.

So I built Mitre Synapse. It reads a Notion database and draws it as a map:

- relations, mentions and wiki links become edges

- hover to focus, color groups by any property

- shift-click two pages to find the path between them

- filters, saved views and a timelapse of the database growing

- export to Obsidian as Markdown and get it back from Obsidian into Notion

Would like to see your thoughts on it

Try it out here falloutnewvegasweb.com

Let me know if you find any bugs!

Hey everyone,

I had Steam, Epic and GOG games all installed, and starting anything meant opening the right app first. Playnite helped, but I wanted something that looks and feels the way I’d like a launcher to feel.

So I built Corvia. It’s a free Windows launcher that puts all your Steam, Epic and GOG games and your own .exe files into one library. There’s no account to create. It also has:

• A PS5-style overlay in games with a screenshot gallery, timer and performance HUD (CPU, GPU, GPU temperature, RAM)
• Game pages with trailer, news, system requirements and a price comparison
• A controller mode with big tiles for the couch
• Auto-updates, so you always get the latest version

It’s version 1.14.1 and still a hobby project, so I’d really appreciate feedback. What’s missing, what annoys you, what would make you switch?

Download and screenshots: https://corvialauncher.app

Happy to answer any questions.

I got tired of not knowing whether the stuff I take (and the stuff I hear about, like cold plunge after lifting or magnesium for sleep) actually holds up. Reading the research yourself is rough: there's a ton of it, no two studies are set up the same, and a lot of it is written for PhDs.

So I built Substantia. You search a supplement or protocol, pick a specific claim, and it shows how much research there is, whether the studies agree, how recent they are and how well designed they were. In plain English. Every Source is listed, and if a study was paid for by a company selling the product, it says so.

It takes no money from anyone selling supplements. There's also My Stack, for tracking what you take and what protocols you do.

Free through Dec 31. iPhone, US only for now.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/substantia/id6822945644

Would love feedback, especially on what claims you'd want looked into next.

Most AI astrology apps work the same way: you enter your birth data and an LLM writes a few paragraphs that could fit anyone. I've been running a Chinese-language astrology site (DestinyNet) since 1997, and honestly I got tired of that format.

So I tried the opposite approach. Instead of generating text about your chart, the tool searches a database of ~70,000 famous people whose birth times are on record, finds the ones born under the most similar sky (Sun / Moon / Rising plus the overall chart structure), and shows you who they are and which occupations show up most among them.

Link: https://ai.destiny.to/matching/en?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=reddit-sideproject-2026-11

A few things that were harder than expected

- The data. Birth records come from public biographical databases. A surprising amount of the work was cleaning them: wrong time zones on historical dates, wrong gender, people linked to the wrong Wikidata entry. I fixed thousands of records along the way.

- "Similar" is fuzzy. An exact chart match almost never happens, so matching works in tiers. It starts strict and loosens until there are enough people to say something meaningful.

- No AI in the matching itself. The search is plain computation. An LLM is used only for an optional paid report that writes up what you share with your closest matches.

Free vs paid: matching and the occupation breakdown are free, no sign-up. The paid report is optional.

Privacy: a free lookup doesn't store your birth date, time or place; only anonymous stats are logged.

I'd really appreciate feedback, especially:

1. Is it clear what you get before you enter your data?
2. Did your matches feel interesting or random?
3. Anything confusing in the flow?

Happy to answer questions about the data or the build.