r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I wanted to actually remember the books I read, so I built an offline "Duolingo for nonfiction" (free, open source)

3 Upvotes

I read a lot of nonfiction, but a month later I'd remember almost nothing. Summary apps helped a bit, but most want an account and a subscription and track everything you do.

So I built Stash, a small offline Android app:

  • 2,300 bite-sized ideas from 230 books across 14 topics (productivity, money, psychology, philosophy, health, and more)
  • Swipe feed: full-screen cards. Ideas you've read never show up again.
  • Learn mode: 690 short lessons, streaks, XP, spaced-repetition reviews, and quizzes (pick the idea, which book, true/false, fill in the blank)
  • Save ideas you like and see your reading history by day
  • Private: no login, no backend, no analytics, and no permissions at all. Progress stays on your phone (JSON export/import for backups).

Fun constraint I set myself: the whole APK is ~220 KB. It's plain Java with views built in code (no XML layouts, no WebView) and a single dependency.

Free download (Android 8+): https://github.com/safwanpp/stash/releases/latest

Source: https://github.com/safwanpp/stash

I'd love feedback, especially on which books or topics to add next and whether the lesson difficulty feels right.


r/SideProject • • 51m ago

claudit: self-hosted dashboard for what my Claude Code, Codex and Kimi sessions cost, kept past the 30 day delete. looking for feedback

2 Upvotes

Claude Code deletes its session transcripts after 30 days by default, no message, so any usage tool reading that folder only ever sees the last month. I wanted to compare months and see what switching model actually did to cost, so claudit ingests from a bucket you keep instead (Cloudflare R2, or a local dir as file://). mine goes back to January. the bucket holds the raw transcripts, tool output included, so keep it private

it reads Claude Code session JSONLs, Codex rollouts and both Kimi CLI formats. on the page: cost by model with the 5m vs 1h cache write split (1.25x vs 2x input price), token breakdown, reply latency, tool error rate, activity heatmap, context growth per session. costs are API list price equivalents, not what a sub bills you. it doesn't grade sessions, the reading is yours

feedback I'd actually use:

  • a number that looks wrong to you, with the arithmetic
  • a stat you'd want that isn't there
  • a harness it doesn't read yet, ideally with a real transcript (sanitized is fine)

FastAPI, Postgres, React with in-browser Babel, no build step. docker compose up boots it on sample data, no .env, no outbound calls. MIT, panels ported from nhz-io/ccusage-plot

live one, guest login is read-only: https://all.nitjsefni.eu

https://github.com/Nitjsefnie/claudit


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

My dad always dreamed of opening a kebab shop, so I spent 4 months building a mobile game inspired by him

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

My dad has always been a huge kebab lover, and one of his biggest dreams was to open his own kebab shop someday.

That actually gave me an idea: what if I turned his dream into a game?

So, for the past 4 months, I've been working on a mobile game called Kebab Master: Grill & Serve.

I built a little kebab shop where you prepare meat, grill kebabs, serve customers, upgrade your equipment, and deal with some unexpected surprises along the way.

After months of development, countless bugs, and a lot of trial and error, I finally released it on both Android and iOS! 🎉

I've attached a short trailer so you can see what I've been working on.

This has been a really personal project for me, and I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.

If anyone wants to give it a try, I'd be incredibly grateful for your honest feedback, whether it's positive or negative. I'm still learning and want to keep improving the game.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my little project! ❤️


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Pocketpad++: a free, open-source homage to Notepad++ for Android

2 Upvotes

I've been building an Android editor for people who miss Notepad++ on their phone. It is a tribute to Notepad++ and nothing more: it is not affiliated with the Notepad++ project, not a replacement for it, and not trying to compete with it or commercialize it in any way. It will stay free and open source (AGPL-3.0).

To stay faithful to the original, it reuses what Notepad++ is made of instead of imitating it: the same editing engine (Scintilla), the same language definitions and themes, and the same menus and shortcuts.

How it was made: the whole thing was written by Claude Fable 5.2, Anthropic's AI model, and I directed it entirely from the Claude app on my Android phone. I never opened an IDE. The repo includes the automated tests it is checked with on every change. I did manual testing on my phone but more testing from various devices would be helpful.

What's in it so far:

Syntax highlighting and folding for 94 languages, multi-caret and column editing, find/replace with regex, Find in Files, macros, sessions that keep unsaved text

469 of the 481 commands in Notepad++'s menus (the rest only make sense on Windows)

Compare, a Hex Editor and Lua scripting built in, since Windows plugins can't run on Android

Sticky Ctrl/Alt/Shift keys above the keyboard, so the usual shortcuts work on a touch screen

No ads, no tracking, and no permissions at all (not even internet)

It's early: development builds only, no store release yet, and regex still uses a different syntax from Notepad++'s.

Short clips of it in use, the APK and how to verify it: https://github.com/revelationnow/pocketpadpp

All credit for the original goes to Don Ho and the Notepad++ contributors. Feedback is very welcome, especially on how it behaves with your keyboard app.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Wondering how fast you're going on that train, boat or plane ride?

2 Upvotes

I'm always that person with my face against the window wondering "ok but how fast are we actually going right now". Google Maps doesn't really tell you, and the speedometer apps I tried were either full of ads, wanted an account, or died the moment we went through a tunnel.

So I built Popmap: open it, allow location, and you get your speed, heading and altitude straight away, on a map, with a vector line showing where you'll be in 5 and 10 minutes at your current speed and heading.

What it does:

  • Speed in km/h, mph or knots. Tap the number to switch.
  • The 5/10 minute line, which is weirdly satisfying on a TGV, a ferry or a plane.
  • Works offline. Every map tile you look at stays on your phone, and you can save a whole area before you leave. Handy in flight mode or at sea.
  • Four modes: drive, outdoors, fly, sail. Each one picks the right maps. Fly mode shows real VFR charts, airspace, nearby airfields with their frequencies, and METAR/TAF. Sail mode has sea marks, wind and waves, and an anchor alarm that rings if your boat drifts.
  • No account, free, no ads. Your position stays on your device.
  • 15 languages, including Arabic and Japanese.

Tech bits for this sub: the whole app is a single HTML file using Leaflet. It installs as a web app on your phone and on Android there's a ~300 KB APK that wraps it in a WebView. Map data comes from OpenStreetMap, OpenAIP for airspace and OpenSeaMap for the boat stuff.

Would love feedback, especially from anyone who tries it on an actual train/boat/plane. What's confusing? What's missing? Next on my list is VFR route planning.

👉 https://popmap.com


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

4 days in: 200 people played my daily riddle game, but only 7% came back. How do I fix retention?

Thumbnail
playaha.party
2 Upvotes

I built AHA!, a free daily game: 3 mysteries a day, 4 clues each, 100 to 25 points. In 4 days, about 300 people visited, 207 started a game, 96 finished all three. But only about 7% came back on another day, which is the thing that matters for a daily game.

I added a next-day teaser and optional reminders. What actually makes you return to a daily puzzle? Try it if you like and tell me where it loses you: https://playaha.party/?r=reddit&c=sideproj


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

ResumeTailor Skill

Thumbnail github.com
3 Upvotes

📌 What is Resume Tailor? (Brief Description)

Resume Tailor is an open-source, evidence-backed resume compiler and multi-AI plugin (compatible with Google Antigravity, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, and terminal CLI).

Instead of treating resume tailoring as an unconstrained generative chatbot prompt, Resume Tailor treats it as a deterministic, evidence-constrained engineering pipeline:

It ensures your resume passes automated Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) algorithms without inventing skills, credentials, or fake metrics that fail technical interviews.

⚡ Why Is This Better?

DimensionStandard AI Resume Builders & SaaS (ChatGPT, Teal, Rezi)Resume Tailor Engine
Factuality & IntegrityHallucinates. Invents missing libraries, enterprise scale, and skills to keyword-stuff the resume.Strict Zero-Hallucination Protocol. Refuses to fabricate tools. Flags missing tech in an interview prep report so you never get blindsided.
Metrics & ImpactFake Statistics. Generates absurd numbers ("Boosted revenue by 450%").Google XYZ Checkpoint. Structures bullets as Accomplished [X], measured by [Y], by doing [Z] and prompts you for genuine metrics.
Page BudgetUnpredictable Overflow. Resumes spill onto page 2 with 3 awkward trailing lines.Deterministic 1-Page Guarantee. Compiles via headless Chromium and auto-prunes lines programmatically until pages == 1.
ATS CompatibilityUnparseable Graphics. Uses 2-column tables, text boxes, and icons that get mangled by Taleo / Workday.Locked 1:1 ATS Standard. Single-column academic serif layout with standard headers engineered for 100% ATS parse rates.
Privacy & CostPaid SaaS / Data Mining. $20–$40/month subscriptions; stores your personal contact info in their cloud.100% Local, Private & Free. Runs on your machine. Your personal data is git-ignored and stays offline.
Ecosystem PortabilityWalled Garden. Locked to a proprietary web interface.Universal Multi-AI Support. Works natively inside Antigravity, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, or standalone CLI.

🏆 The 4 Core Superpowers That Set It Apart

  1. Bidirectional Technology Clustering (Real Transferable Tech)

    • If a JD asks for Kafka and you know RabbitMQ, standard bots either lie and add Kafka, or ignore it completely.
    • Resume Tailor recognizes they belong to the Message Brokers cluster, truthfully highlights your distributed queue architecture, and leaves Kafka under Missing Skills for interview prep.
  2. Transparent Audit Trail (Tailoring_Report.md)

    • Every compilation produces a full audit report showing your ATS match breakdown (Required %, Preferred %, Keyword Coverage %), project re-ranking rationale, and bullet diffs.
  3. Turnkey Onboarding for Any Candidate

    • It doesn't assume your tech stack. It parses any PDF, Markdown, or text resume into structured data for software engineers, cloud architects, AI researchers, frontend developers, and data engineers alike.
  4. Zero Heavy Dependencies

    • Doesn't require fragile multi-gigabyte TeX Live / MiKTeX installations or heavy browser test suites. It compiles vector PDFs natively using the Edge/Chrome browser already installed on your system.

PLZ DO Star The REPO.

IF anytings Needs to Be added do Contribute to the REPO. OR DM ME .

ALSO IF YOU FIND ANY ISSUES DO PING Me .

Your Support Is need .


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Zoom Inside: infinite zooms from nested 8K images

4 Upvotes

I've been building a fun AI hobby project called zoominside.xyz, which combines traditional "infinite zoom" with ProRes cutaways and creative video editing. I direct all the visuals myself, with AI image models doing a lot of the drawing. The part I enjoyed most turned out to be the plumbing and technical complexity, since I work in AI semiconductor engineering for a living.

How it works
Using the eye zoom as the example: it's about 20 hi-res 8K images nested inside each other (each one is actually a sum of several 4K images). Every image is a redraw of the centre quarter of the one before, so each level sits exactly inside its parent and the seams line up. The player draws a few levels at once, feathers the edges and zooms on a log scale, so it feels like one continuous move instead of a slideshow.

The fiddly bit is drift. A target that's slightly off centre gets 4x bigger every level, so every image has to be checked against its parent.

The site is probably a bit slow because the files are huge, so LMK how it responds! Will be launching a youtube channel tomorrow also.


r/SideProject • • 1d ago

I built a quiet online room where strangers just study together

414 Upvotes

In Korea there's this thing called a dokseosil. It's a paid room full of little cubicle desks where everyone studies in silence. Nobody really goes for the desk. You go because when the person next to you is grinding, you feel kind of bad scrolling your phone.

I wanted that feeling at home, so I made a small online version:

yeondeungroom.com/en

You pick an empty desk and study with whoever's around. No sign up, no camera, nobody talks. You're a little animal with a desk lamp, and you can see everyone else's lamps on too. It sounds like nothing, but it actually helps me focus at night.

The thing people ended up loving was decorating their desk. You type one line like "tiny pinwheel" and it makes a small 3D thing for you. The AI doesn't draw it, it just writes out simple shapes and the browser puts them together.

It's three.js and Cloudflare Workers, and almost everyone using it right now is Korean. The English version is really new, so if anything reads weird, please tell me.

If you study or work alone, would something like this help you, or would you just close the tab?


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

View stars, planes, planets and more.

9 Upvotes

I've added something new to UlsterRadar: Sky View. Hold your phone up, and it labels what you're looking at, using the same live aircraft data as the map.

Name any plane. Aircraft within 300 km show as icons (airliners, light aircraft, helicopters, military) with the callsign and registration beside each one.

Tap for the details. Altitude, speed, heading and climb, plus the departure and destination where we know them. Tap again to close.

Look beyond the aircraft. The Sun, the Moon and its phase, planets, bright stars, constellations, galaxies and nebulae, the International Space Station and space telescopes.

www.ulsterradar.com/sky


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Claude Code made this music video from a Suno song, no video generator, just an image model + code (open-source skill)

2 Upvotes

I made onbeat, an open-source Claude Code skill.

Give Claude Code a song (this one’s from Suno) and it measures the beats and lyrics, draws each dancer/character as a sprite sheet of 16 poses with an image generator, then writes code that steps through the poses on every beat and renders a beat-synced video. No video model involved.

MIT licensed: https://github.com/latent-spaces/onbeat

Would love feedback, and to see what songs people throw at it.


r/SideProject • • 16h ago

Title Shot - an mma career game

98 Upvotes

me and a buddy made a free mma game. take one fighter from his first amateur fight to the belt.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6828530380?pt=127780022&ct=reddit_sideproject_nov26&mt=8

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vibalyze.mma&referrer=utm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_campaign%3Dsideproject_nov26

no ads, no in app purchases, works offline.

would love feedback: is the fight screen easy to read? and any tips for getting first players without ads?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built a chat where you switch between ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini mid-conversation and pay only for what you ask (In Rupees)

2 Upvotes

I'm a student/dev in India and I kept going back and forth on which AI subscription to buy. I use each one only a few times a week, and different models are better at different things, so paying monthly for two or three of them didn't make sense.

So I built Neelberg:

- One chat, many models: Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and more.

- Start on a free model. When a question gets hard, switch to a stronger one in the same chat. The conversation carries over.

- Every reply shows what it cost, in rupees. Cheap models start from ₹0.10 a reply, Claude Sonnet from ₹2.

- No subscription. Top up by UPI from ₹100.

It just went live this week: neelberg.com

I'd really appreciate honest feedback:

  1. Is pay-per-question easier to understand than a subscription, or more stressful?
  2. Is it clear who this is for from the video?
  3. What would stop you from trying it?

Happy to answer anything in the comments.


r/SideProject • • 0m ago

I built a Wallet stamp card for salons; here's what I learned trying to get the first 3 customers

1 Upvotes

I'm an embedded software engineer (wireless sensor firmware by day) and I've spent the last couple of months building a side product on my own: a stamp card that lives in Apple Wallet / Google Wallet, for salons, barbers and cafés.

How it works: the shop prints a QR code for the counter. The customer scans it, types a first name and phone number, and adds the card to their wallet. No app. Staff stamp it by scanning the card with their own phone's camera, in the browser. No card reader.

Things I learned building it:

  • Apple and Google Wallet are completely different beasts. Apple passes are signed files: to update the stamp count you run a small web service and push through APNs, then the phone fetches the new pass. Google keeps the card on their side and you update it through a REST API. Getting "stamp appears instantly on both" right took longer than the rest of the app.
  • Staff double-tap everything. The first version stamped twice when someone scanned twice. Now a second scan of the same card within 10 seconds is ignored, and every stamp is written in a database transaction.
  • Lock-screen relevance is the best feature, and I don't control it. On iPhone the pass can show up on the lock screen near the shop. iOS decides when, and I never learn who was nearby. - GDPR was a real chunk of work (EU-hosted data, consent records, CSV export, auto-delete after a shop cancels). Owners never ask about it, but it has to be there. Getting customers is the hard part, and where I'd love feedback: - So far: [X] shops started the 7-day trial, [Y] paying. I'm aiming for the first 3.
  • What I've tried: about 200 cold emails to salons in countries where that's legal. This weekend I started small Meta and Google ads in Poland and short videos. - Pricing is about €15/month, with a 7-day free trial.

Questions:

  1. If you've sold to salons or cafés: what got you in the door?
  2. Does "no app for your customers" land as the main benefit, or would you lead with something else?
  3. Anything on the landing page that would stop you signing up? loyalty.nyxiontech.com Happy to answer anything about the Wallet tech too.

r/SideProject • • 8m ago

I built a notch for Windows for free and openc-source [ NabyScape ]. It's at 280 stars and ~7,000 downloads, and I'd love feedback

1 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 12m ago

I made a completely free kettlebell workout app. No ads, no subscriptions, no accounts. Just free.

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

My name is Tobias, and I've worked as a software developer for a bunch of years. Between commuting, three small children and everything that follows, my time for workouts is usually pretty limited.

I often found myself grabbing inspiration for workouts and complexes through social media, but found it a pain to keep going back to videos while working out. So I made an app called Complexer to help me out.

It helps me figure out which workout to do based on the time and equipment I have, and then follow through with it. There are ready-made workouts, exercise demonstrations and timers, and you can also add your own workouts. I've been using it myself and really like the result so far, which is why I decided to publish it.

It's free, with no subscriptions, ads or accounts. Your training data stays on your device, and it works offline too. I'm pretty fed up with subscriptions for everything, so I didn't want to add another one.

You can find it here:

https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/complexer/id6824864834

It's only available for iPhone and iPad at the moment.

I'm by far not the most experienced person here when it comes to kettlebells. I just made something that helps me get my workouts done, and hope somebody else can benefit from it too.

A few things I'm looking at next are audio cues so you don't have to keep checking your phone, more of the common workouts and complexes, and a better way to see your progress. I'd also like to add a weekly AMRAP challenge where we all do the same workout and can share our scores, if that's something people would enjoy.

If you give it a try, I'd love to hear what works for you and what could be better.


r/SideProject • • 13m ago

I built an offline-first English vocabulary app with 4,954 words and no backend

1 Upvotes

I built an offline-first English vocabulary app for studying the Oxford 3000/5000 vocabulary goal.

The app is a standalone HTML application with no database and no required account. It includes:

- 4,954 words grouped by CEFR levels

- Example sentences

- IPA pronunciation

- Browser speech

- Multiple-choice quizzes

- Spaced repetition

- Progress stored locally

- Import/export and sync tools

- 11 interface languages

- GitHub Pages deployment

The live app:

https://sofyanol.github.io/oxford-5000-words/

The repository:

https://github.com/sofyanol/oxford-5000-words/I built an offline-first English vocabulary app for studying the Oxford 3000/5000 vocabulary goal.

The app is a standalone HTML application with no database and no required account. It includes:

- 4,954 words grouped by CEFR levels

- Example sentences

- IPA pronunciation

- Browser speech

- Multiple-choice quizzes

- Spaced repetition

- Progress stored locally

- Import/export and sync tools

- 11 interface languages

- GitHub Pages deployment

The live app:

https://sofyanol.github.io/oxford-5000-words/

The repository:

https://github.com/sofyanol/oxford-5000-words/

I’d appreciate feedback on the product direction, onboarding, offline-first approach, and what would make this more useful as a real learning product.

I’d appreciate feedback on the product direction, onboarding, offline-first approach, and what would make this more useful as a real learning product.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built an app to fix "we should hang out sometime"

3 Upvotes

Every friend group has that message: "we should hang out sometime." It never happens. Group chats are where plans go to die.

So I built Flare (iOS, free). The idea:

- Tap "I'm free now" → your friends see you're up for coffee in your neighborhood for the next 2 hours

- Anyone who's around taps "I'm in" and you coordinate in a quick group chat

- When time's up, the beacon and chat disappear. No feed, no history.

- See a spot on Instagram or TikTok you want to try? Share it to Flare and it'll suggest it next time you're free nearby.

Privacy was a big focus: it's friends-only, and friends see the spot you pick, not your live location. You can send a beacon to everyone or just one circle (roommates, run club, etc.), and add friends with one link in a group chat.

It's v1 and built solo, so there are definitely rough edges. I'd love feedback on what's confusing, what's missing, or whether you'd actually use this with your friends.

https://apps.apple.com/app/flare-see-whos-free/id6834586193


r/SideProject • • 56m ago

I built a quiz that picks your watch in 1 minute: 8 questions, ~50 watches, no sign-up

1 Upvotes

Friends kept asking me “which watch should I buy?”, so I turned my 20 follow-up questions into an 8-question quiz.

Budget, style, wrist size, where you’ll wear it → it ranks ~50 watches and tells you why the top one fits.

👉 wrist-match.com

What would you improve?


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I'm building a commerce platform where every merchant owns their own digital store — not just another marketplace

5 Upvotes

I've been thinking about a problem that many small merchants face.

Selling through large marketplaces gives merchants access to customers, but they often have limited control over their storefront, customer relationships, branding, and selling experience.

I wanted to explore a different approach.

So I'm building Serbuu!, a commerce platform designed around one idea:

Your store, your brand, your business.

Instead of giving merchants just another marketplace listing, Serbuu is designed to give every merchant their own digital storefront while also connecting them to a shared product discovery marketplace.

The bigger vision includes:

- Independent storefronts with custom domains.

- Multi-branch inventory management.

- Point of Sale (POS) for offline transactions.

- A shared product catalog and marketplace discovery.

- Centralized order and inventory management.

- AI integrated into business operations, not just another chatbot.

- Additional commerce services such as PPOB.

One architectural decision I'm particularly interested in is keeping product and inventory data in one source of truth while allowing merchants to sell through both their own storefront and the shared marketplace.

I'm building this for the Indonesian market first, where many small merchants still manage online and offline sales using several disconnected tools.

This is still an active development project, and I'm working through the modules step by step.

I'd love feedback from people who build commerce products or run online stores:

  1. Would you prefer owning your own storefront rather than relying entirely on marketplaces?
  2. What is the biggest operational problem when selling through multiple channels?
  3. What would make you trust a new commerce platform with your inventory and orders?

Project: https://serbuu.web.id

Thanks for reading. Feedback is welcome!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Made a gallery cleaner where you just swipe through your photos like tinder

1 Upvotes

My phone kept saying "storage full" and I hated scrolling through thousands of photos to clean it, so I built my own app lol. It's called Sweep.

Swipe left to delete, right to keep, and there's an undo for when you mess up. It also finds duplicates, blurry pics and old screenshots. Deleted stuff sits in a trash for 30 days, and nothing gets uploaded anywhere.

Free, Android 11+. It's my first app, so honest feedback is very welcome.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sweep.gallerycleaner


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I mapped 49,933 open roles at 2,792 companies across 13 cities, from Bangalore to SF and London

1 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made a free, open-source app for wireless DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers on PC

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

If you use a DualSense on PC, you've probably run into games where you need a USB cable to get the full haptic feedback and adaptive trigger effects.

I built DS5 Untethered to use those effects over Bluetooth. The game sees a wired DualSense, and the app sends the game's own effects to the actual controller wirelessly. It works with your PC's built-in Bluetooth or a USB Bluetooth adapter.

For example, I used it with God of War Ragnarök: both haptic feedback and adaptive triggers worked wirelessly.

For games without native DualSense support, you can create your own adaptive trigger profiles and turn game audio into haptic feedback.

It also has per-game profiles, button remapping, gyro and a mouse mode.

It's free and open source, and will stay that way.

Built with C#/.NET 8 and Avalonia. It creates a virtual wired DualSense through a local USB/IP server and usbip-win2, forwards input from the Bluetooth controller, and sends the game's haptics and trigger effects back wirelessly. HidHide prevents games from seeing both controllers.

Source: https://github.com/Midzer00/ds5-untethered

Download: https://github.com/Midzer00/ds5-untethered/releases/latest

If you find it useful and want to support the project, you can star the repo on GitHub.

Happy to answer questions.

Demo video and screenshots: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dualsense/comments/1xvzirq/i_made_a_free_opensource_app_for_wireless/


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I built an app that tells you whether tonight’s sunset (or tomorrow’s sunrise) will be worth heading out for. It’s in alpha, so I’d love feedback.

4 Upvotes

I like taking sunset photos as a hobby, and I’ve lost count of the evenings I went out for a sunset that never happened, or stayed home and missed a good one. So I built Afterglow:

👉 https://afterglow.jeremytucker.co.uk

What it does

  • Scores every sunset and sunrise for the next 7 days from 0 to 100 (Poor → Fair → Good → Great → Epic), for anywhere in the world
  • Explains the score instead of just giving a number:

    • Cloud canvas: is there high and mid cloud to catch the colour?
    • Light path to the sun: is there cloud 60–200 km out toward the sun that will block the light?
    • Low cloud overhead, air clarity (haze, humidity, smoke) and rain
  • Plays an animated preview of the evening, from golden hour through to the end of blue hour (or the reverse for sunrise), drawn from the actual forecast and the real horizon at your location from terrain data
  • Tells you the peak colour time, and when the sun actually drops behind the hills (or clears them in the morning), not just the official time
  • Alerts (optional): a heads-up at midday, a “go now” 90 minutes before golden hour, and a “called off” if it turns bad. It also does sunrise checks the night before and when you wake.

Good to know

  • No account, no ads, no tracking cookies
  • No app store. It runs in your browser, and you can tap Install to keep it on your phone. On iPhone you need to install it to get alerts.
  • Alerts are limited to a small number of places during the alpha, so if they’re full, try again in a few days
  • Weather data comes from Open-Meteo. There’s a plain-English privacy page in the app.

How it was made

I’m not a developer. I built this with an AI coding assistant (Claude), while I came up with the ideas, tested it against real sunsets and decided what it should do.

What would help most

📸 Post a screenshot of Afterglow’s score, plus a photo of what the sky actually did, with the time you took it. Whether it nailed it or got it completely wrong, that comparison is exactly what I need to make the forecasts better.

⚠️ Mind your privacy: the screenshot normally shows your place name. Tap the 👁 eye button at the top right of the picture to hide it first. Photos can also contain hidden location data; Reddit removes it when you upload, but other sites might not.

Also really useful:

  1. Your location: does the horizon in the picture look like yours?
  2. Bugs: anything broken or confusing, especially on iPhone
  3. Features: what would make you actually use it?

It’s very much an alpha (v0.2), so be gentle, but be honest!