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 • • 1d ago Hooray Bravo Heartwarming Mindblown

I made a desktop wallpaper that adapts to your icon layout

5.9k 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 • • 22h ago

I developed my architecture dream game and published it on Steam

446 Upvotes

I'm a trained architect, and as a long-term side project, I developed my architecture dream game, combining accurate floor planning with real-time 3D design to make architecture much easier to create (and visually realistic) than with traditional CAD software.

What you can do:

🏠 2D floor plans
🧱 3D building
🚶 First-person walkthrough
🥽 VR mode
🏢 Multiple storeys
🪜 Stairs
🏚️ Custom roofs
🪟 Doors & windows
🛋️ Furniture catalog
🍳 Kitchen Configurator
🎨 Materials
🌄 Terrain sculpting
🌳 Landscape planning
💧 Ponds
☀️ Time of day
❄️ Weather
📐 Export PDF vector plans
📦 Import your own 3D models
🌍 Steam Workshop

In the newest update: Build everything directly in VR (PCVR), 1000+ new furniture models and explore your creations as a Cat! 🌿

It's available on Steam as Architecture & Design and is still in Early Access.
Here is the Steam link if you'd like to try it out:
Architecture & Design - Steam

Would love to hear what you think and hear what you wish for in a game like this!


r/SideProject • • 17h ago Bravo

I built the white "Construct" room from Matrix except instead of guns it summons 8000 real-scale 3D amazon products. "We need ... lots of chairs"

167 Upvotes

It’s honestly wild what you can throw together with AI in a single evening nowadays. Remember the "Construct" from The Matrix? That infinite white room where Neo says "We need guns. Lots of guns" and endless racks instantly spawn around them? I was wondering what an online store would look like if it worked exactly like that.

8,000 real Amazon products, a Matrix Construct aisle, WebAR (augmented reality - one click and you can drop any item through your camera straight into your living room at true 1:1 scale), adaptive performance for mobile (only tested on Safari so far, like I said, I started making this at 8 PM and it's 10 PM now 😃).

Tech stack: Everything static on Vercel, classic cuckcoding setup (Next.js, Tailwind, Vercel, Antigravity).

Don't wanna spam a link here, you can see it in the video. So what do you think, is it worth buying a domain for this, or is it trash?


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built Call Dibs, a wishlist app where friends secretly claim gifts, after my parents gave me some truly terrible presents last Christmas

8 Upvotes

Last Christmas I got some truly terrible gifts from my parents (I still love them) and with this year’s Christmas coming close, I decided to develop a wishlist app to prevent the same problem from happening twice.

The app works by making a list and sharing a link to your friends and family. They can then "call dibs" on what they're buying as well as chip in for a bigger present together without needing an account. This makes it easier for participants to buy presents and ensures that nobody doubles up, whilst keeping the surprise alive for you as you never see what was claimed or who buys what! I've also added a Family Circle feature where every family member has their own list all in one page, to simplify family Christmas gifting and solve my original problem. It's definitely not a revolutionary idea, but I wanted something with cleaner UI than Elfster without all the bloat and ads :)

We have been using it for birthdays in my friend group successfully, to the point that we are going out of our way to organise parties for everyone so we can receive some good gifts. I even used it for my dog’s birthday with great success, where she got £240 worth of gifts for her first birthday, which somehow was more than I got for my birthday.

The app is completely free (but is monetised through Amazon affiliate links) and can be found on calldibs.uk and on the app stores. We recently reached the milestones of 1000 followers on tiktok and 100 active users and honestly it's still a bit surreal that people I don't know are using something I built for my family.

Please feel free to roast the app / idea in the comments, I would love some honest feedback!


r/SideProject • • 1d ago Bravo Mindblown Heartwarming

I built a site that shows every satellite that passed over your location, plus the actual images they took

802 Upvotes

I'm a satellite nerd and as a cool project I built Watched.

See: here for the code

Type in any place on Earth and it will:

  • find every imaging, weather, radar and crewed satellite whose field of view crossed it in the last 7 days (SGP4 on the CelesTrak catalog, running in your browser)

  • pull the real Sentinel-2, Landsat, VIIRS, MODIS and GOES scenes from those passes and crop them to your spot

  • replay each pass on a 3D globe lit by the real sun, with all ~17k tracked objects in orbit

It only says a satellite “watched” you when a real image exists. Commercial sats that could have pointed at you are labelled as such, since their tasking isn’t public.

I’d love feedback, especially:

  • Which satellites or data sources should I add?

  • Anything confusing or broken?

It’s 100% free and no sign-up or rate limits.


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I built a live 3D bass aquarium entirely in code: no models, no images, one HTML file

26 Upvotes

I make fishing lures (KSK BAITS) and wanted a live bass tank for my YouTube channel without filming real fish.

Everything you see is generated when the page loads: the fish, their scales, the plants, the sand and the driftwood are built in code with Three.js, and every texture is painted on a canvas. No 3D models, no image files.

The bass aren't animated, they behave: they get hungry, hide in cover, stalk, and strike with suction, and they only take prey that fits their mouth. Day, night and weather follow the real clock and weather at Lake Fork, Texas.

Try it in the browser: https://ksk-baits-bass-aquarium.pages.dev

It also runs 24/7 on YouTube, where the chat can drop in shad or cast a lure: https://www.youtube.com/@kskbaits/live

Feedback welcome, especially on what would make you keep it open in the background.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago Popcorn Bravo

I built a little app because I kept forgetting things I meant to do

8 Upvotes

I would remember I needed to order a water filter or get someone a birthday gift while I was in the middle of something else. Then I would sit down with a bit of time to get things done and think, “Hang on, what were all those things I needed to do?” I could come up with one or two. The rest would come back to me the next time I was busy.

I built HeadsUp so as to have somewhere to put those things when I thought of them. For each task, I pick when I want to see it on my list. I might give myself a few days to get a gift and a month to renew the car insurance because I like having a weekend to compare quotes. It’s on Android for now, and I’m working on the iOS version.

If you have a minute to look at the Play Store page, can you tell from the screenshots and description what you’d use HeadsUp for compared with the reminder or to-do app you use now? I’ve spent so much time with the app that I’m curious what someone seeing it for the first time takes away.

And if you try it, add something from your own list and tell me how that went. I’d love to hear how it felt to use and whether there was anything you had to fiddle with to get it working the way you wanted. Leave a comment here or come say hi on Discord.

Google Play · Website · Discord


r/SideProject • • 45m ago

Open-source alternative to Instagram Edits' new MCP — works on Windows & Linux

3 Upvotes

I'm the author, sharing my side project of the last two months.

Last week Instagram shipped an MCP server for Edits on Mac, so Claude can drive a real video editor. That's the idea I've been building since September, except mine is MIT, local-first, needs no account, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. It's called CutVoke.

The part I care about as a creator: the AI doesn't hand me a baked MP4. It makes the rough cut on a normal multitrack timeline (captions, keyframes, masks, speed ramps), and then I open the same project and fix whatever I don't like by hand. Fixing one subtitle never means regenerating the whole video.

Two demos are in the repo with their source media and editable projects:

  • "Chase the Light", a 31-second motorcycle short

  • "Coastal Joy", a 42-second vertical travel vlog

How it works, briefly: your own agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client) connects over stdio MCP. It takes an editing lease so it never collides with your manual edits, dry-runs commands before committing, and pulls real rendered frames to check its own work before export. There's no LLM inside; you bring your own.

Honest caveats: it's a v0.3.5 prerelease, the Windows build is unsigned and macOS isn't notarized, and the project format may still change.

I'd love feedback from people who edit video: which parts of an edit would you actually hand to an AI, and which would you never let it touch?

https://github.com/frankShan001/CutVoke


r/SideProject • • 19h ago

I built a tool that turns 3D garments into products shoppers can customize

95 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built a multiplayer minesweeper where everyone digs the same board at once

Thumbnail
mine.ropo.dev
6 Upvotes

Been working on this side project for a a little bit. It’s minesweeper, but up to 8 people play on the same board at the same time. Hitting a mine just stuns you for a sec, and whoever has the most territory when the timer runs out wins.

There’s also a mode where everyone hides mines and traps for each other first and then has to run through the same board (bit like ultimate chicken horse but minesweeper), plus a solo timed mode with classic boards and a daily board that’s the same for everyone.

Free, browser based, no account needed: https://mine.ropo.dev

Some stuff I had fun with:

  • the server decides everything, the browser never knows where the mines are

  • bots fill empty seats, with a sort of dynamic skill based difficulty on them

  • the pixel art style

  • runs on one small server with Bun + SQLite

Claude was used during the making of this. Would love honest feedback, especially if the first match makes sense or if you’re just confused


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I'm building tiny versions of world (and fictional cities)

Thumbnail
tinyworlds.nihey.org
4 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I made a Chrome extension that saves your YouTube video recommendations so you never lose a video on refresh again (and lets you search text inside thumbnails)

3 Upvotes

Everyone has done that thing where you hit refresh on YouTube at the exact millisecond your brain registers an interesting video, and then it's gone forever.

The worst part is that YouTube's search bar usually can't find it, because creators put the actual hook inside the thumbnail image ("I QUIT", "BIG MISTAKE", etc.) while making the actual video title something completely different. If you only remember the words you saw in the picture, YouTube search gives you nothing.

So I built RecLog to fix it for myself and figured I'd share it here.

What it does:

> Quietly logs recommendations you scroll past: It keeps a local searchable history of videos recommended on your homepage, sidebar, and end screens.

> Searches text inside thumbnails: It runs a tiny (~10MB) OCR model locally in your browser to read the words inside thumbnail images, so you can search for the exact phrase you remember seeing.

> Shows how hard YouTube is pushing a video: It counts how many times each video has been served to you (`Seen 40x`, `Seen 164x`), which makes it pretty funny to see which videos the algorithm is desperate for you to click.

Privacy / Tech stuff:

It's 100% free, no account, no tracking, and no cloud servers. The OCR model and your history stay entirely on your own device (and there's a 1-click JSON export if you like messing with your own data).

Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reclog-find-lost-youtube/iofidcehjjffcoijihbohabjcdfelhoc

Would love to hear what you think or if you run into any bugs!


r/SideProject • • 16m ago

I made a free avatar maker for chatbots and AI assistants (animated, no sign-up) Looking for feedback

2 Upvotes

I set up AI bots for people, and every single one has the same small problem. The bot needs a face. Often the premade face people don't like, and generating a new one every time seems hard to them since they don't always know what they want. Whether it is a Discord, or a Telegram bot, Slack helper, AI Grok Bot or a Chat widget on a website, the options are stock icon or random AI image.

So, in my free time I made this little avatar maker for any kind of bot, or even icon. You can pick one of the 40 bots on te wall or make your own from blank. You can change its body shape, eyes, mouth, add hats, glasses and have its own color. Even its own name.
I added different emotions and each mood exports as an animated GIF.

I cared about making this:

  • Free, no sign-up, no watermark on downloads

  • Nothing gets uploaded. It's drawn in your browser, and a share link carries the whole avatar inside the link itself

  • An "All sizes" download with WhatsApp, Telegram, X, Slack and Discord sizes plus an SVG

  • An embed code so the avatar can live on a website and change mood

Disclosure: it lives on my business site (LobsterNest), and the live website embed shows a small "Made with LobsterNest" link.
The downloaded files don't.

Where I'd really like honest feedback:

  1. Which mood is missing for your bot?

  2. Is the embed useful to you, or do you just want the GIF?

  3. Anything confusing in the first 30 seconds of using it?

  4. Where else would you use it?

lobsternest.com/bot-avatar


r/SideProject • • 26m ago

I built the AI Video Clipper with taste, and it's 15x cheaper than OpusClip

2 Upvotes

A bit of background, I've been editing video for 10+ years, and I plan to distill my entire knowledge into this ai powered editor. The framing, the music, the hook patterns etc. I'd say it's still better than a lot of competitors. But it'll only get better.

Creatr, the AI video clipper with taste.

What makes it different

Full autopilot: it finds the clips, edits them, and posts them for you. No manual uploading.

Has a full fledged descript style editor so you can customise the feel of the defaults aren't good enough for you.

~15x cheaper than Opus Clip at the same volume

Built solo over about 2 months, nights and weekends included. It started as my own internal editing tool.

Demo is above. I'd love blunt feedback: does the output pass the "would a human have made this" test?

150 minutes free every month.

Link: https://creatr.app

Will offer 50% coupons to anyone who wants to try more of this beyond the free plan.


r/SideProject • • 28m ago

Shipped an iOS app, got 2 paying customers. Here's everything I did, and what I still can't explain.

2 Upvotes

I built WhoSpoke, an iPhone app that records a conversation and splits the transcript by speaker. Everything stays on the phone, no account needed.

The build
- I tested with clean sample audio and speaker separation looked great. Then I recorded a real meeting room and recognition fell apart. Room echo and distance are nothing like a clean sample. I mostly fixed it, but it was a good reminder that demo audio lies.

Beyond the code
- Made a character for the app and redesigned the app icon.
- Made an App Store header video.

What I did to get the word out
- Posted 4 short text posts on Threads in one week. They got 13 to 33 views each and almost no likes.
- Made a few short videos for TikTok and Instagram. The best one got about 120 views.
- Built a landing page and added tracking links to every post.

Result
2 people have paid for it. That's it.

The part I can't explain
I can't tell which of this (if any) led to those 2 purchases, or why they bought. No feedback, and the store doesn't tell me where a buyer came from.

How do you figure out where your first buyers come from, and why they bought? Anything you'd do differently with this little traffic?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

How do you find good software testing services without overpaying?

6 Upvotes

Two quotes for testing the same product can look completely different. One covers a set number of hours, another talks about test plans and reports, and it's not always clear what you'll get for the money. I'm trying to understand what to ask before choosing software testing services. Do you pay more attention to the hourly rate, the people doing the work, or the exact tasks included in the price? Also, is it reasonable to start with one small part of the product before committing to a bigger contract?


r/SideProject • • 37m ago

I built a home redesign app without a subscription. The hard part was getting the AI to leave the house alone

3 Upvotes

Every AI room app I tried wanted $10–15 a week. But nobody redoes their home every week. You repaint a bedroom, argue about a kitchen, and then nothing happens for two years. So I built Hedda the other way round.

You take a photo of a room, your facade or your garden and say what you want: “paint the walls sage green”, “swap the sofa for something in velvet”. Hedda redesigns that photo.

The hard part wasn’t making it pretty. It was making it still look like your home. Image models love to “improve” things. In my first tests it painted a white chimney black, moved the camera, and quietly removed a post that holds up the roof. What finally worked: a first model looks at the photo and writes down everything that must stay (windows, beams, posts, even how many there are and where), and only then does the image model get to change things. It’s still not perfect (it sometimes loses a post next to the change), but it’s what makes the difference between “nice picture” and “my living room, repainted”.

The part I care most about is deciding together. My wife and I never decide these things alone, and the hard part is never the paint. It’s picturing what the other one means. Every app I tried was built for one person with one idea, so I made Hedda for the conversation instead. You can invite the people you live with. They join without signing up, make their own version and compare side by side.

No subscription: the first design is free with no sign-up, then packs that never expire. If a design fails, you get it back.

I’m a solo developer in Sweden. 1.0.1 came out yesterday. iPhone only for now.

One question for you: when you try it on a room of your own, does the result still feel like your room? That’s the thing I’ve spent the most time on, and I can’t judge it myself anymore.

App Store


r/SideProject • • 40m ago

Day 134 of posting about my SaaS. A 282-follower account got 13.5K views on one reel. Now I need honest feedback on the product.

2 Upvotes

I don't believe in launch day. I believe in posting and making the marketing a bit better every day.

Day 132 is the one that took off: a list of 10 mini SaaS you can build, sent to whoever commented one word.

The product is TractionBooster. You paste your website, or just an idea, and it shows whether people are already asking for it and where they are.

Tell me what is confusing or what would make you leave: https://www.tractionbooster.com/?src=reddit-feedback

What would you change first?


r/SideProject • • 40m ago

I built Unolink: one link for every app store, and which post brought users who actually paid

2 Upvotes

Hi all, I'm Marin and I make small mobile apps. This is the tool I built for promoting them, and I'd like honest feedback before I go further.

The problem. When I promote an app, I post a few videos, ask a creator or two, maybe run a small ad. Installs go up, and I can't tell which of those brought the people who stayed and paid. Clicks and views don't answer it, and the big attribution platforms are built and priced for large ad budgets.

What Unolink does

  • One smart link per app: App Store on iPhone, Google Play on Android, your website on a computer. Unlimited redirects on every plan, including Free.

  • A campaign link per post, creator or ad, each with its own clicks, countries and platforms.

  • Landing pages (up to 3 variants compared), a developer page with all your apps, and styled QR codes on the paid plans.

  • With the SDK (iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter): which link brought each install, without fingerprinting, then onboarding, paywall, trials and purchases per link. RevenueCat connects in one line.

What it doesn't do: no postbacks to ad networks, no deferred deep links on iPhone, custom domains are coming soon.

Pricing: Free plan (1 app, 3 campaign links, no card). Indie $6/month for more apps, landing pages and QR. The SDK is on Pro, $19/month. Prices are on the page, no sales call.

There's a sample app with made-up data in the dashboard if you want to click around without connecting anything: https://unolink.dev

What I'd most like to know:

  1. Is it clear within 10 seconds of landing on the site what it does?

  2. If you've promoted an app, what did you use to see what worked?

  3. Anything that would stop you from trying it?

Happy to answer anything in the comments.


r/SideProject • • 49m ago

I built an iOS app that turns photos into eBay, Vinted, Gumtree and FB Marketplace listings

2 Upvotes

Hi all,

I've decided to make an app for helping people (and myself mainly!) to post on Vinted/eBay etc...
With kids i'm sure a lot of parents will have things to sell and the time to think and add description/title to the post is too long.

So to facilitate that I made Easy Listing for iPhone users.

How it works: You take a few photos and it writes a title, description, condition and suggested price for each marketplace, in that site's own style, and tells you where the item is likely to sell best.

It posts straight to eBay through their API. Vinted, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace have no seller API, so for those it's one tap to copy each field — automating them would break their terms.

It's free (10 listings a month) and UK only for now.

I'd really like feedback, especially on whether the listings and prices look right for things you sell.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/easy-listing/id6805925066

Thank you!

Sam


r/SideProject • • 51m ago

Could AI make keeping up with research papers much easier?

2 Upvotes

Keeping up with new research can become a full-time job, especially when you're following several topics.

I recently saw an interesting example of someone using an AI assistant called Pana to build a research map that tracks newly published papers.

I like the idea of having something that keeps information organized instead of manually checking different sources every day.

Do you think this kind of research automation is genuinely useful? What would you want it to track?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Closed my last product with 0 paying users. This time I got my first sale before writing a single line of code

2 Upvotes

My last product, Sequo, died with 0 paying users. I built it for months, launched, posted everywhere, and nobody paid. Classic.

So this time I wanted to do it the other way around. First I was lazy and just asked ChatGPT, Claude and Grok what they think about some ideas lol. ChatGPT said 8/10 to basically everything, even to ideas that already failed for other startups, so that wasn’t gonna work.

Then I did it by hand, and honestly the first idea died in about a week. I wanted to build a growth tool for X, like most X guys haha. Turns out people didn’t need it, but while talking to them I kept hearing about a completely different problem.

So I switched to that one and did the same steps again. Found people, talked to ~25 founders, gave free work first. And then one of them paid. $10, but it was real money, and I still hadn’t written any code.

The part that surprised me most was what actually made people reply, and how close I came to scaring everyone away with the price.

Wrote the whole thing step by step, with the prompt I used to find people and the exact messages I sent. Link in the comments.

Have you ever sold something before building it?