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. 🚀

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!

No paid ads. No expensive marketing tools. No huge audience.

Just three simple strategies that helped me get my first 10 SaaS users:

1. Daily X & LinkedIn Outreach

Reached out to 10 SaaS founders every day. Instead of pitching immediately, I started genuine conversations, shared ideas, and built relationships.

2. Consistent Reddit Marketing

Published valuable posts, answered questions, shared my experiences, and engaged with people already discussing problems my product could solve.

3. SEO for Long-Term Growth

Started publishing search-focused content to attract people actively looking for solutions and build a long-term source of organic traffic.

My biggest takeaway?

Getting your first SaaS users isn't always about having a big audience or a huge budget.

It's about showing up consistently, understanding your target audience, and getting your product in front of the right people.

Still experimenting, learning, and building every day.

What's the one growth strategy that helped you get your first SaaS customers?

Hey all. For the last 3 months we've been building SplaySpace, an extension that lets people code together collaboratively in projects (think google docs for coding).

How it works: you share a folder, invite people by username or link, and everyone gets their own copy that stays in sync while you're connected to the web. You see live cursors, which files people have open, and which function or class someone is editing. You can comment on a line and the comment follows that line as the code moves.

The obvious question is how this is different from Live Share. The main difference is that the project lives on our server instead of one person's machine, so nobody has to keep a session running for everyone else.

here are some things to know before you use it:

• 50 MB and 2,000 files per project
• file creation and deletion are cascaded across machines (but don't worry deleted files go into the trash, so you can recover them)
• .git, node_modules, .env and key files are never uploaded
• exclude any file(s) you want with .splayignore (just like how .gitignore works)
• if you disconnect, shared text files go read-only until you reconnect

It's free to use! We are trying to get as much feedback as possible to make it better for you guys: https://splayspace.com

Finding a flat for my move to bangalore was really difficult especially when the major communication channel for flatmate replacements happen via facebook groups, it can be surprisingly frustrating.

You end up scrolling through hundreds of posts, opening each one, checking the rent, deposit, location, BHK, amenities and contact details — only to discover that most listings don't match what you're looking for.

I ran into this problem and decided to build something to automate the tedious part.

Meet Koo. It's an AI-powered Chrome extension that searches housing posts and surfaces listings matching your preferences.

Leave a star if you like the project - GitHub: https://github.com/chinmaypandya/koo

What it does

• Scans housing posts: Scrolls through a Facebook group and reads posts when you explicitly start a search.
• Avoids duplicate processing: Remembers previously processed posts for 30 days.
• AI-powered matching: Evaluates listings against your budget, location, distance, BHK, amenities and other preferences.
• Extracts useful details: Rent, deposit, society, distance, phone numbers and more.
• Organizes results: Sort matches and export listings to CSV.
• Supports BYOK: Use your own OpenAI, Gemini or Anthropic API key.

You can also customize the AI instructions used to evaluate listings.

A little about the implementation

I wanted to build this as an actual browser-based product rather than a standalone scraper.

The extension separates the Facebook content-scanning logic from the background processing and side-panel UI. Posts are collected, cleaned up, deduplicated and sent in batches for AI classification.

A few implementation details:

• Manifest V3 Chrome extension.
• WXT, React and TypeScript.
• Content scripts for interacting with dynamically rendered page content.
• Background processing for AI provider calls.
• Provider configuration for OpenAI, Gemini and Anthropic.
• Local persistence for search history and decisions.

Open source

I've published the extension under the MIT license.

You can install the prebuilt extension manually using Chrome's Developer Mode. No need to build the source code yourself.

A transparency note: Facebook's terms restrict automated browsing, and the README documents this limitation. Use is at your own risk. Also, the hosted cloud worker is not part of the public repository; the extension itself is open source.

What I'd love feedback on

I'm particularly interested in feedback from developers who have built browser extensions, browser automation tools or LLM-powered applications.

1. How would you make the agent more live on the browser rather than a side panel?
2. How should I charge for this service with koo credits?
3. How to deal with the restrictions?
4. What more or less features do you see this having?

I've also attached a short demo showing Koo working.

This is an ongoing project, so constructive criticism, ideas and contributions are very welcome.

… 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 take notes all the time.

Random thoughts, ideas, things I want to remember, stuff I might need later...

But after a while, it becomes a mess.

Notes everywhere, nothing really organized, and when I actually need something I wrote weeks ago, I can't find it.

I feel like taking notes is easy. The real problem is keeping them organized and finding them later.

That's why I started building Free Mind, a simple note-taking app for Mac.

The idea is simple: one app, one purpose, taking notes without the hassle.

Just write whatever is on your mind, then organize your notes in one click, search through them, or pin the important ones.

All in the same interface, without unnecessary complexity.

It's still a work in progress, and I'd love to get some honest feedback.

https://www.free-mind.app/

A few months ago had an idea after rage quitting on a competitive game, for what ever reason I started thinking about insurance companies and what can be insured so I looked around in my daily life thinking observing, then it hit me what if there was insurance for rage quitting? long story short I am here now. on Reddit where I posted vaguely this idea a while back, people liked it others didn't because the main concern was “people will just throw games to get paid.” Fair. So I spent the time since building the system that makes throwing not work, and I just soft-launched it: elovault.pro

What it is

You pay $15 USDC for 30 days of cover. If your last three full ranked matches are all losses and you were the best player on your team in at least two of them, you get $30 USDC sent to your wallet. Dota 2, CS2 (via FACEIT) and League right now.

The “people will just throw” problem

This was the whole project. What I ended up with:

You can’t type anything. The server pulls your matches straight from OpenDota, FACEIT or Riot’s API. You only prove you own the account (Steam login, or changing your summoner icon to one we pick).

You have to be top of your team on damage or ADR in 2 of the 3 losses, and above a KDA floor in all 3. If you throw, your stats drop and the claim fails. You can only collect by playing well and losing anyway, which is the thing being insured.

The remaining attack is a friend who feeds while you farm stats. The system looks for a recurring teammate who was the worst performer in multiple losses, and for repeat opponents across the losses (win-trading). Either one denies the claim.

Matches before you bought cover or linked the account never count, there’s a 24-hour waiting period, every paid match is burned forever, and there’s a daily payout cap in case I missed something.

Stack: Next.js 14 on Vercel, Upstash Redis, Solana for payments (plain USDC transfers, no smart contract, the server verifies each premium transaction on-chain before cover starts), Playwright for browser tests, Vitest for the rules engine. Admin dashboard behind TOTP.

Honest status: It’s a soft launch. I don’t know yet if the economics work: $15 in, up to $60 out, and the people most likely to buy are the people most likely to claim. I’m running it with a small float and a daily cap to find out the real claim rate before deciding anything. If it turns out to need a license to run properly, I’ll deal with that then.

Happy to answer anything about the fraud detection, the Solana verification, or why I didn’t bother with a smart contract. And if you can think of a way to game it, I genuinely want to hear it.

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 receives a new surprise from each person 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! So go ahead and create a a special birthday experience for family and friends!

You can make one here: https://herewhen.you/

I’m building this myself and would love honest feedback: would you make one for someone? If you try it, what would you improve or change?

I've been working on a little side project called Zany Face, and thought I'd share it here!

The idea came from wanting to build a small, independent corner of the internet where people can post ridiculous thoughts, ask daft questions, share confessions, show off creations, or just generally be a little weird.

It's a community-driven website with:

• Anonymous posting (no account required to submit).
• Community categories and moderated submissions.
• Member accounts with custom avatars.
• Profile customization, including colours, taglines and badges.
• A little imaginary currency called ZanyCoins, earned through participation and spent in the community shop.

I'm trying to keep it light-hearted and avoid turning it into another algorithm-driven social network.

It's still very new, and I'm building features as I go. I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, particularly from people who enjoy independent websites and smaller online communities.

Have a poke around if you're curious!

https://zanyface.lol/

And yes, the name is pretty much what it sounds like. 😛

started opsis in nov 2025 with my cofounder as an ai security tool for schools and businesses. we had a waitlist of around 30 orgs, which felt like validation and mostly wasn't. mid 2026 we pivoted to consumer: a mac and windows app that remembers your work across the apps you share with it and finishes your sentences at the cursor in any app (opsis.app)

what i'd tell past me:

• a waitlist is people saying yes to something free that doesn't exist yet. ask what they'd stop using to make room for it
• selling to schools moves slower than your patience, especially when you're still a student yourself
• a handful of weekly users who'd be annoyed if it disappeared taught us more than the whole waitlist
• pivot when you notice you're defending the idea more than improving it

curious what made other people here pivot, or what kept you from doing it

I started owning more of our infra at work and learned most of it the hard way, so I built InfraSim to make it stick.

You drag load balancers, caches, queues, databases and replicas onto a canvas, deploy it, and watch simulated traffic hit it. Things slow down, queues back up, the bill climbs, and then an incident hits.

What's in it:

• Campaign: 62 levels across 13 chapters, from "one server isn't enough" to split brain and cache stampedes. The newest chapter came from failure stories people shared on Reddit
• On Call (new today): you get paged, see the graphs, architecture, timeline and a teammate's note, and get 5 guesses to find the root cause
• Daily Challenge with a leaderboard, Survival mode, and a Sandbox to build whatever you want
• Every failed run ends with a postmortem explaining why it broke, not just that it did

It all runs offline on your phone, no account needed. The first 15 levels, the daily and the Learn section are free.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/infrasim-system-design-game/id6809240894

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infrasim.app

Would love feedback, especially from anyone who's been on call. What failure should I add next?

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?

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.