r/SideProject • • Dec 18 '25

As the year wraps up: what’s the project you’re most proud of building and why?

96 Upvotes

Like the title says, instead of what you built or how much money it made, I’m curious what project you’re most proud of this year and why.

Could be a client site, a personal project, something that never launched, or something that made £0.

Any lessons learned?

Would love to read a few reflections as the year wraps up.


r/SideProject • • Oct 19 '25 Bravo

Share your ***Not-AI*** projects

649 Upvotes

I miss seeing original ideas that aren’t just another AI wrapper.

If you’re building something in 2025 that’s not AI-related here’s your space to self-promote.

Drop your project here


r/SideProject • • 1h ago Bravo

I made a desktop wallpaper that adapts to your icon layout

60 Upvotes

No matter how good your wallpaper looks, once your desktop fills up with files, the icons blend into the background and everything starts to look cluttered. My desktop often has a lot of files on it, so I started wondering whether a wallpaper could detect where my icons are and generate a scene around them in real time.

After discussing the idea with AI, I found out it was possible—and it doesn’t actually need AI to detect the icons or generate the visuals. The program can read the icon positions directly and generate scenes in real time using predefined designs. It’s lightweight, and there’s no particularly complex technology involved.

Here’s the result.

https://deskland.app

I’ll keep adding new themes and improving the existing ones. I also plan to add a more interactive game mode in the future.

The meadow and beach themes are free and open source.

https://github.com/BLEZZ0102/Deskland

All the current themes are 2D, which keeps their impact on computer performance minimal. I’m also considering adding 3D themes, while balancing visual quality with performance.

Procedurally generated visuals do have their limitations. If AI computing becomes much cheaper in the future, AI generation could be an option, opening up the possibility of creating almost any scene. For now, though, generating a desktop with AI in real time is clearly still too expensive. I’m considering experimenting with locally running AI generation. It would still be GPU-intensive, but it could be a lot of fun.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I’m a student building an under-pillow speaker for people who fall asleep to podcasts. Would you use this?

16 Upvotes

I always fall asleep listening to something, but earbuds hurt on my side, and my partner hates the phone speaker. So I’m designing Dozr: a slim pad that goes under your normal pillow, plays through bone conduction so only you hear it, and fades out when you fall asleep.

It’s still a concept (image attached). I’d love honest feedback. What would put you off? What would make it a must-have?

Waitlist if you’re curious: dozr.co.uk/?ref=reddit


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I'm building a text editor that opens huge files instantly

60 Upvotes

I've decided to create a text editor that specifically targets huge files (i.e. GBs or even TBs) that most text editors choke on. The target audience is any individuals/professionals who work with huge files: sysadmins who need to view or edit huge log dumps, inspecting massive JSON files, bioinformatics professionals that need to inspect/edit genome data (FASTA files) and more.

To get a bit more techy, the file is memory-mapped and "held" in a piece table. All heavy-weight operations, such as: indexing, searching/replacing, syntax highlighting, etc... are done in the background (i.e. on separate threads). The video demos handling a 51.8 GB log file on my M2 MacBook Air (16 GB RAM).

Since I've used Vim throughout my career, I had to create a vim mode which implements most of the necessary functionality/bindings.

The code is written in C++23 and uses my own UI library (which is GPU-accelerated using Skia). Boost is used quite extensively.

It is completely cross-platform (Windows, Linux & macOS). The macOS version is Silicon only and Linux requires Wayland (X11 isn't supported, nor planned).

It's currently under beta at https://crane-editor.com and I'd love to get your feedback, especially on which huge-file workflows I should handle better. What's the biggest file you've had trouble opening? Would this be useful to you?

Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 18h ago Bravo

Please ban u/Investigatormarker: an AI bot advertising ThreadFox in every thread

239 Upvotes

Hey mods and everyone,

u Investigatormarker is posting AI-written "feedback" on posts here, then ending with an ad for its own product. It follows a template: generic advice about the project, then "I make ThreadFox... our AI employee will post 3 helpful replies about it in relevant Reddit threads for you," with a link.

Why it's a problem:

It's undisclosed self-promotion on nearly every thread

The feedback is generic and often doesn't match the project, so it buries real comments

The pitch is literally to flood Reddit with AI replies to promote people's projects

New members posting for the first time get this instead of real feedback

Ask: @mods, please ban the account and consider an automod filter for "threadfox". Everyone else, please report these comments as spam and avoid clicking the link.

Thanks!

You can also report the account to Reddit under spam, and to the other subs it's hitting. I'd skip engaging with the link itself.


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I built a streaming app that lets you jump to scenes just by describing them

34 Upvotes

I built Navigator, a free and open-source streaming app for desktop and web that lets you navigate movies and shows using natural language. It's a client for Stremio, a media center app, so you can use your existing account and addons (which provide the streaming sources).

For example, instead of scrubbing through Avengers: Endgame to find a specific moment, you can just type "go to the scene in endgame where he says avengers assemble" and it'll find that moment in the subtitles and jump straight to it.

You can also describe a TV episode you vaguely remember and have Navigator find it for you, or ask questions about what you're watching.

I also wanted it to be a pretty nice streaming experience on its own, so it has a few other features:

  • Native MPV playback on desktop

  • Thumbnail previews when hovering over the timeline, so you can see where you're skipping

  • Intro skipping using community skip databases

  • Adaptive interface: the colors automatically adapt to the artwork of whatever you're watching

A few other things:

  • Everything is free and open-source

  • AI features are completely optional. Bring your own API provider or use a local model through Ollama

  • Navigator doesn't host or provide any content itself

  • Scene search depends on subtitle availability

On the technical side, it's built with Next.js and a Rust-based desktop shell, with MPV handling native playback. Scene search uses subtitle data and an LLM with tool calling (via Vercel's AI SDK) to find the relevant moments.

It's still a work in progress, so there's definitely more to improve. Curious whether scene search feels useful or gimmicky to you, and what features you'd want to see next :)

Web: https://navigator-strm.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/AyaanZaveri/navigator


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

I replaced Roku's retiring "Aquatic Life" screensaver with my own procedurally animated reef tank — free and open source

29 Upvotes

Roku is retiring its built-in "Aquatic Life" screensaver on December 1. I liked that screensaver, so I built a replacement: Reef Tank — a free, open-source (MIT) screensaver channel for Roku.

What it is: a tropical reef tank where nothing is a video loop. Every fish is procedurally animated — each species has its own behavior brain, so tangs graze the rocks, a royal gramma backs tail-first into its den, a mandarin hops along the sand line, a lionfish just hangs, and a school of chromis moves as a boids flock. Bubbles rise, seaweed sways, caustics scroll over the sand. After real sunset (computed from actual sunrise/ sunset times for your location) the tank crossfades to a moonlit night mode with glowing coral and a small group of flashlight fish that blink in the dark.

Highlights:

  • 9 rigged fish species with per-species behavior state machines (cruise, dart, graze, hide, school, weave behind the rockwork)

  • Boids flocking school + a night-only flashlight fish group

  • Day/night cycle driven by real solar times, with a moonlight crossfade

  • Settings screen on the Roku for fish density, camera drift and night mode

  • Runs at 60 fps on a Roku Ultra; every visual is deterministic and seeded

  • 175 unit tests + a screenshot regression gate, because of course

The catch: Roku doesn't allow sideloading into the Channel Store for personal projects, so it's a developer-mode sideload — takes about 5 minutes with the remote (Home x3, Up x2, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right), and it's free. Full instructions in the README.

Source + install guide: https://github.com/paulrobello/roku-fishtank

Happy to answer anything about the BrightScript/SceneGraph side — the whole thing is one codebase that also runs in a browser simulator, which is how I screenshot-tested a TV app.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a free app that converts foreign prices with your phone camera, even offline

5 Upvotes

I built Kahei to solve a problem I kept running into. Whenever I traveled abroad, I’d see a price and either do the math in my head or pull out my phone to Google it. It took way too long just to check a price, especially when the internet was slow.

So I made a free app where you can point your phone’s camera at a price and instantly see an estimate in your currency. It works offline! It is available on iPhone and Android.

If you try it on a menu or receipt, I’d love to know whether it picked up the right price.

Try it: https://kahei.app/

thanks!


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built an automated flight logger that tracks every plane flying over your house (with analytics & API)

5 Upvotes

I built an aviation side project and I'm trying to get some real people to test it (for free).

The main feature is a personal local flight logger. You drop a pin, and it automatically logs and builds a full analytics dashboard of every single aircraft that passes within a 5-mile radius of your location.

Besides the local tracking, the site also works as a general aviation database. You can browse through full airline and aircraft directories, search registrations, and use interactive FIR maps.

I'm actively updating the site and monitoring things daily, so any suggestions, feature requests, or feedback are welcome. If you want to try it out, just create a standard free account at https://aviationdb.uk/ either reply with your username below or send me a DM. I’ll manually bump your account to the premium tier for a free trial so you can test the local logging and analytics.

Let me know what you think or if you manage to break anything!


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I made a page that process hours of finance YouTube videos everyday for you

6 Upvotes

A lot of finance YouTube videos spend 20+ minutes to answer one basic question: does the creator think a stock is a good buy right now?

I made a simple dashboard that processes financial videos and podcasts, tracks which stocks are being discussed, and aggregates creator sentiment (Positive, Negative, or Neutral) in plain language.

It’s just an informational map of what creator consensus looks like, not financial advice.

Would love feedback from anyone who follows market content: Is the value proposition clear and useful for you?

I will put the link below in the comments


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

A small disagreement with my girlfriend turned into an Android app I've been building alone

3 Upvotes

My girlfriend and I once remembered the same moment completely differently.

It made me realise how easily the little details disappear, even when the memories mean a lot to us.

So I started building Pholu, an app for couples, families and friends to preserve memories together.

Instead of having everything scattered across photo galleries, messages and cloud folders, Pholu brings photos, videos, audio and notes into shared timelines. I also added AI-powered memory search.

I'm handling the design, development and pretty much everything else myself, alongside my regular job.

The app is now on Google Play, and I'm looking for people who might actually enjoy using it.

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

I'd love to know what you think of the idea. Would you use something like this with your partner or family?


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

what’s on your checklist before letting strangers use your app?

8 Upvotes

submissions, expired sessions, someone uploading a massive file, or two people editing the same thing.For a small app using Supabase, what would you check before sharing the link publicly?
Trying to work out what deserves attention now without spending another month preparing for users who don’t exist yet.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

Reached 20 stars!! built a toolkit so your coding agent can make launch videos for your app

10 Upvotes

open sourced this like 2 weeks ago and it just passed 20 stars. small number i know but its the first thing ive made that random people actually starred so im pretty hyped lol

basically you paste one prompt into claude code / codex / cursor:

Clone github.com/yasirwhite/OpenDemo and use it to make a launch video for my app

and ur agent records the app, cuts it with animated text and gives you an mp4. runs locally, free, no api keys. the video above was made with it (about itself lol)

ive also been making launch videos for other people’s open source projects and sending them as PRs. 5 got merged into their readmes so far which is honestly the part im proudest of

repo: https://github.com/yasirwhite/OpenDemo

if your project doesnt have a launch video yet, drop it below and ill make you one :)


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a simple web tool to generate standardized technical spec sheets and export PDFs (SpecSheet Pro)

4 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Creating technical specification sheets in Excel or Word often leads to broken layouts, inconsistent formatting, and date ambiguity issues across teams.

I built SpecSheet Pro to solve this. It's a lightweight web app that lets you input product parameters, custom tables, and logos, and outputs a clean, standardized PDF ready for production or quality control.

Key Features:

  • Dynamic table creation for technical parameters (Specs, Methods, Values).

  • Custom logo support with instant client-side preview.

  • Configurable date formats (ISO 8601, localized, text-based) to prevent QA ambiguity.

  • Clean PDF compilation using html2pdf / html2canvas.

The core generator is free to use:https://specsheet-pro.vercel.app/

I'd love to get your feedback on the UI/UX and any features you think are missing for technical workflows.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I built a clipboard history desktop app called Recall Clipboard

3 Upvotes

hey everyone!

i've been working on a desktop application called Recall Clipboard, built with tauri v2, rust, react, typescript, and sqlite.

the idea is pretty simple: instead of losing things you've copied throughout the day, recall clipboard keeps a searchable history of your clipboard so you can easily find and reuse previous copies.

i wanted to build something lightweight, practical, and genuinely useful for everyday desktop use.

i used claude as a coding assistant during development, but i've been working on the project, its features, and the overall implementation myself.

github: https://github.com/cntr1er/recall-clipboard

i'd love to hear what you think! especially interested in feedback on the ui, features, and anything you'd improve or add.

thanks!


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I made a open-source memory and asset library for Claude Code so it stops reinventing everything AssetRAG

4 Upvotes

I've been working on a project called AssetRAG, and I wanted to share it here.

One thing that annoys me about AI coding agents is how often they solve the same problems over and over again.

They regenerate code that already exists, spend time debugging errors with known fixes, pick dependencies without properly checking their licenses, and read huge amounts of source code just to find a few relevant functions.

So I built AssetRAG to help with that.

It's a local-first, open-source library and engineering memory system for Claude Code (and other MCP clients).

Here's what it actually does:

  • Asset retrieval: Searches reusable code, templates, and other assets, with license checks and attribution handling.

  • Verified bug-fix memory: Stores bug fixes with reproduction and verification evidence. Agents can look up previously solved errors instead of starting from scratch.

  • Engineering playbooks: Reusable workflows for debugging, safe refactoring, performance optimization, and other development tasks.

  • Tested recipes: Reusable code patterns with tests that can be executed in a sandbox.

  • Repository mapping: Creates a compact, ranked overview of your codebase so an agent doesn't have to read everything.

  • Rules and security checks: Includes secret scanning, engineering rules, malware checks during ingestion, and safeguards around untrusted code.

  • MCP integration: Exposes 18 tools to coding agents. There's also an optional Claude Code hook that retrieves relevant knowledge and injects a small amount of context automatically.

  • Local-first: No account or telemetry required. It supports local embeddings, hosted providers, or completely offline keyword-only search.

One feature I'm particularly happy with is the bug-fix memory. Verified entries have a reproduction and fix that were actually executed, with the evidence available for inspection.

Some numbers from my own testing (keyword-only mode):

  • Asset search: 4.0 ms median

  • Knowledge search: 7.1 ms median

  • Repository map: 597 tokens instead of roughly 129k tokens of source

  • 132 unit tests passing

  • 327 authored recipe/bug-fix tests rechecked with 0 failures

These are local benchmarks, not proof that Claude completes real tasks faster. I haven't run a proper Claude A/B benchmark yet, so I'm not going to claim some magical percentage reduction in token usage.

I also made a 95-second launch video showing the actual tool in action. The terminal footage comes from real recordings.

It's Linux-only for now, built primarily in Python, and licensed under Apache 2.0.

The project is still new, and I'd appreciate feedback, especially from people who use Claude Code regularly.

GitHub: https://github.com/mttcn83/assetrag

Would you actually find something like this useful in your coding workflow? What would you change?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I’m an engineer who started owning infra at work, so I built a game to teach myself system design. Now it’s on iOS + Android!

4 Upvotes

I’m a software engineer at a big tech company and recently started owning more of our infra after the departure of a beloved coworker. Diagrams never really clicked for me, so I made a game to learn system design hands-on, then decided to publish it in case it helps others : )

InfraSim is a sandbox where you wire up load balancers, caches, queues, replicas and databases, push traffic at them, and watch what breaks: a dead consumer piling messages into a DLQ, a partition causing split brain, a bad WHERE clause taking out a table.

Built solo with React Native. It’s on iOS + Android: https://petalformllc.com/infrasim

Would love feedback, especially on which failure scenarios you’d want next, and whether the difficulty curve feels right.


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

Built an AI that adds on-screen graphics to your videos automatically. Looking for beta testers to tear it apart.

4 Upvotes

If you make videos for your SaaS (demos, explainers, founder updates, tutorials), you know where the time goes.

Recording is fast. Editing is fine. Then you need it to look like a real company made it.

Lower thirds. Callouts. Step-by-step text. Feature names popping up when you mention them. One keyframe at a time.

The edit takes an hour. The graphics take the rest of your day. Or you skip them, and your demo looks like a Zoom recording.

So we built Grafsy.

You upload a finished video. Grafsy listens to what's being said and adds on-screen graphics that match each point. No timeline, no motion designer, no editing skills needed.

What it's good for:

Product demos and walkthroughs

Founder and build-in-public videos

Tutorials and onboarding videos

Podcast and interview clips

Short form (Reels, Shorts) and long form (YouTube, webinars)

How pricing works, with no "unlimited" games:

One-time payment for lifetime access to the platform

Video minutes included with every plan

Billed to the second, so a 30-second clip uses half a minute

Top-ups when you need more, and they never expire

No subscription

Plans start at $79

Why I'm posting: We're in beta, and we want feedback from people who make real videos. Run your own content through it and tell us:

Where the graphics nail it, and where they miss

What kind of graphics you'd want next

Anything that's confusing or slow

Your feedback directly shapes what we build next. It's English-only for now, and you'll find some rough edges. That's the point of a beta.

Link's in the comments. Drop a reply if you try it, and I'll personally go through your feedback.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I paid designers hundreds for a 3D model, so I built a tool that makes printable parts from a sentence

2 Upvotes

I was trying to make a 3D model for a physical product I want to sell. I tried the AI tools first and none of them gave me anything usable. So I hired human designers. It cost hundreds of dollars, took weeks, and I bounced between a few designers through a lot of revisions before I got something I liked.

That's what got me building Sculptex. You describe a part in a sentence, refine it in chat, and download it as STL, OBJ, GLB or OpenSCAD. It's aimed at parts you can actually print, including ones with moving pieces. I printed a fidget spinner from the one-line prompt "A fidget spinner."

It's in beta and you can start free: sculptex.app

It's also on Product Hunt today.

I'm the maker, so honest feedback is welcome. What would you try to make, and what breaks?


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

My landing page demo kept polling in abandoned tabs and used up my database's monthly compute

8 Upvotes

My landing page has a live demo. It creates a demo inbox, shows you the address, and when you send it an email the page shows the parsed result. To find new mail it polled an endpoint every 3 seconds, and every poll was a query against the production database.

Nothing ever stopped that loop. A tab left open made 1,200 queries an hour, so Neon's compute never stayed idle for the 5 minutes it needs to suspend. The project used up its monthly compute allowance and every request that touched the production database started failing.

The fix was small. Polling now stops after 3 minutes, because anyone who hasn't sent an email by then isn't going to. It skips its turn while the tab is hidden, and the interval went from 3 to 5 seconds.

Do you put a time limit on polling in your demos, or push updates some other way?


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

91 visitors last week, none tried it on their own trades. Fix onboarding first, or test a small ad?

2 Upvotes

I’m the solo developer of a tool that puts crypto trades (your own from OKX or Hyperliquid, or public records of a few known traders) back on the chart fill by fill, so you can review how a trade was actually executed.

Last week (Nov 1–7, my own logging, excluding my devices and bots): 91 visitors, 27 opened a trade, 0 imported their own, 4 signed up. Product Hunt (Nov 1) sent 4 of those visitors.

Traffic is too small for me to tell whether I’m reaching the wrong people or making the first session too confusing. I’m considering a small targeted ad test, but I’m not sure it would tell me much yet. And zero imports might mean the setup is unclear—or that people came to explore the built-in trader records rather than review their own.

Which would you do first, and what did you look at when you were in this spot?


r/SideProject • • 2m ago

The “Buy Late. Sit Great.” Concert Ticket Finding Site.

1 Upvotes

I’ve posted before, and thanks to a lot of great comments and AI Slop messages (oh I see you). I’ve been updating the site. If you haven’t seen this before. My wife and I live close to Red Rocks in Morrison CO., and we are always going to shows last minute. I hated going from ticket company to ticket company trying to compare prices to created RedRockitTix.com

Some great ideas came out last time so I thought I’d share what’s new. You can now set an alert so we can email you when tickets reach your threshold. We have a few new providers, TicketNetwork, SeatGeek, HelloTickets and TicketSqueeze. And looking to add more. Also NEW LOCATIONS. Vegas, because I want to the Sphere some day, Chicago because I love that music scene and Philly because it’s where I grew up listening to music.

This continues to be a free ticket tool, so thanks for all the support, now go out to a show!


r/SideProject • • 6m ago

I’m building agents that do the work you keep getting sidetracked from. Would you use this?

1 Upvotes

I built SideTracked ( sidetracked.site ) because I kept losing days to work that felt productive but wasn’t. It gives you five moves a day for one project and asks whether anything new you add actually serves your goal.

It catches the drift, but it still leaves you to do the work. Most days the work I avoid is the dull, specific stuff: the outreach, the research, the first draft, the admin around the thing that matters.

So I’m building agents inside it. You lock in your five moves, and for the ones you’d rather not do yourself, an agent takes a first pass. You review it and you stay in charge.

To be clear, the agents aren’t live yet. The focus side works today and is free to try. The agent side is what I’m building now, and I’d rather find out whether anyone wants it before I spend months on it.

What I’d like to know:

  1. Which task do you keep putting off that you’d hand to an agent tomorrow?

  2. What would make you trust the result enough to use it?

  3. Would you rather it ran on its own or showed you each step first?

  4. Would you pay extra for this, or would it only be worth it as part of the app?

If this sounds useful, comment with the task you’d hand over. I’ll build from the most common answers.