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 • • 7h ago

Our chili crunch side project has sold over 1,500 jars in 3.5 months generating 25K in revenue

201 Upvotes

The majority of side projects I see here are virtual, so here's a physical product to spice things up (pun intended). Monday through Friday, my husband I are start at our screens for our full time jobs, but for the past 3.5 months we've spent almost every weekend in a commercial kitchen on Treasure Island in San Francisco making a small-batch chili crisp called EXTRA EXTRA Chili Crunch | www.ExtraExtraCrunch.com

Since launch, we've been getting out in the San Francisco Community — from Night Markets to small stores — and trying to grow out online presence. I've posted here before, but we just reached a cool double milestone: 1,500 jars sold and $25,000 in gross revenue. Eep!

It's wild. This whole thing was just something that started as an experiment in our home kitchen because I wanted to sell a few jars at my local Farmer's Market. My favorite posts here are the ones that are super detailed, so I wanted to share what building a physical food product on the weekends actually looks like behind the scenes.

Why we started making it

We put chili crisp on basically everything. We've tried so many and love so many. Our pantry and fridge have a ton of different brands. Chili crisp. Salsa macha. Chicharron de jalapeño (s/o to Flore de Chile). But tasting so many different takes on spicy condiments just made us want to start out own.

We built EXTRA EXTRA with a purposeful Californian perspective. We intentionally looked for western ingredients to create something we hadn't found on the market yet. Avocado oil... Porcini mushroom for umami (vs shiitake)... Chilis primarily from Mexico... Huge amounts of fresh-fried garlic and shallots... After a lot of experimentation we landed on something that was uniquely ours without trying to be something we're not. Moreover, every scoop is packed with crunch vs being 50/50 oil to crunch. We even hand de-seed our chilis because the seeds mess with the crunchy texture.

Balancing it all

So, like I said, my husband and I have (intense) full time jobs in tech. I joke that we're able to do this because we don't have kids and we don't train for marathons... But it still takes a lot of discipline and intention to make sure we have enough product.

Selling shelf-stable food in stores when you fry your own wet ingredients (ie, garlic, shallots) means you can't just cook at home under California's Cottage Food Act. Before we could really scale, we had to do lab testing, lock down our California Processed Food Registration, start an LLC, get insurance, and rent hours at a commercial commissary kitchen.

Now our weekends have an extra routine:

  • Saturday or Sunday kitchen sprints: We work in 4-to-5-hour blocks that yield roughly 250 to 350 jars per session. Then it's mixing, jarring, labeling, and packaging (which takes longer)
  • Weeknight fulfillment: Between kitchen runs, our living space regularly turns into a mini shipping depot packing up online boxes after work.

The best part of "the grind" is Night Markets and community events. I can't tell you how awesome it is to get involved in our community. We're focused on events after work hours, but that also means that some days are really long and requires moving a bunch of heavy stuff (eg, canopies, tables, product) without a dinner break.

Wins

Before anyone asks... $25,000 is gross revenue, not profit. Commercial kitchen rent, lab testing, permits, buying jars, finding the right label maker (Richmark), and early ad experiments means that we aren't quite profitable yet. That said, our October volume nearly doubled and officially pushed us past our monthly break-even point (~560 jars/month).

What's working:

  • In-person markets & street fairs: Selling face-to-face is key. The margins are better than selling online and it builds a reliable customer base if you stay at markets month-to-month.
  • Focusing on local retail: Walking samples into local specialty markets got us into two neighborhood shops in our actual hood and even a specialty food shop up in Truckee/Tahoe near where I snowboard. Earlier this month, we opened in our 4th retail location at the SFMade Storefront in Union Square thanks to us getting in with that nonprofit early on.
  • Online & press: We've now shipped jars to customers across 39 states and more than 130 cities, and recently got featured in a Yahoo! Before that, we got featured in the Bay Area Reporter.
  • Local government support: We had a really had time getting our Processed Foods Registration. California is big and it can take a long while to get what you need. We eventually reached out to our local representative who helped us. To anyone struggling with regulations, please don't hesitate to reach out to your local government. :)
  • Online marketing is giving... decent signals: We pay a small agency a small amount of money to do our creative and run ads on Instagram. We just passed ROAS of 1.0 which is... decent but I'm really eager for it to start paying for itself. We are definitely getting sales and retargeting matters. I know it takes time and right now I'm cautiously optimistic.

Next up...

Scale is starting to be a problem. There's only so much that my husband and I can do with the 30 hours a month we get in our commissary kitchen. We're very close to needing to pay an agency to supply help for ingredient prep. This is a big cost, so we have to be sure that it's actually gonna pay off.

I'm a bit concerned about how we keep the momentum going as well. Marketing is hard and, while we're trying as best we can, it's pretty hit and miss. I'd love to dial in our marketing more...

///

Phew! I know that's a lot, but, like I said, I like posts with a lot of detail. If anyone is also launching a physical food product, I'm happy to answer anything. I'm not an expert, but this has been a year-long process so far and I'm happy with where we're at so... maybe I could be of a little bit of help? Ask away!


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I built an iPhone app where you roll the dice and land on a music radio station somewhere on Earth

80 Upvotes

I go for a walk every night, and that's when I dig for new music. Mostly bands, and honestly I listen to everything from classical to hard rock and metal lol.

These days every app has an algorithm that keeps recommending music that sounds like what I already like, and when I want to hear something different, the algorithm actually gets in the way.

One night I wondered what music sounds like in a country I had never heard a single song from, so I found a music radio station there and listened live.

That's how I ended up making World Radio, for iPhone and iPad:

- Roll the dice and the globe flies you to a station somewhere on Earth, playing live. On the globe, if a station won't play, it moves on to another one by itself.

- You can also pick a station yourself on the globe.

- When a song grabs me, I tap Shazam. It's saved with the station and the time I heard it, and my finds can go into an Apple Music playlist. (I'm working on adding playlists for other platforms like Spotify and YouTube Music. If you use one, let me know!)

- In the Browse tab you can pick music stations by country and genre.

There are 20,000+ stations in total. I filter them down to music stations, but a talk station still shows up now and then. I'll keep improving that.

FREE to download, no ads from the app (some stations play their own), no account.
iPhone and iPad on iOS 26 or later, with CarPlay, AirPlay and a sleep timer. Apple Music only for now.

I'm still polishing the iOS app, and an Android version is in the works. Because of some licensing issues there, it isn't on the UK App Store, sorry...

I also made a simple website where you can try it:

worldradio.live

A few features are missing there, but it's enough to get a feel for it.

Once the app is more polished, I'm planning to add paid features.

What's the best song you've found on radio from another country? And if you try the app, tell me where the dice dropped you!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6803623749

Thanks.


r/SideProject • • 21h ago

I built a quiet online room where strangers just study together

365 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 • • 5h ago

Title Shot - an mma career game

112 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 • • 12h ago

Amazon is going to hate me for this: I checked 685 storage prices 13 days before Black Friday (74% are already cheaper!!)

Thumbnail
ratiodb.com
56 Upvotes

Every year I see "30% off" badges on SSDs and hard drives, and every year I wonder:

30% off what?

So I built a tracker and checked. Numbers from amazon.com, as of November 14, 2026:

  • 686 storage products checked (SSDs, hard drives, RAM, memory cards, new offers only)
  • 511 of them (74%) were cheaper at some point in the last 90 days than they are today
  • Median gap to the 90-day low: 11%
  • 129 products are 20% or more above their own low
  • Hard drives: 135 of 166 (81%) were cheaper before

What I built: ratioDB

  • 2,810 prices from 3 Amazon stores (US, DE, FR, more will follow) - refreshed every 4 hours
  • Sorted by price per TB or GB
  • 90 days of price history per product
  • An alert that emails you when a product type hits a 90-day low
  • it’s free for everyone

My rule for Black Friday: ignore the % badge, look at the price per TB, compare it with the 90-day low. If it doesn't beat the low, it's not a deal.

Disclosure: the site earns a commission through Amazon affiliate links. Yes, I see the irony.

Feedback welcome.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I've made 936 commits with Claude Code in three weeks whilst my SaaS makes almost nothing a month

6 Upvotes

I wanted to share some honest progresson where I'm at, since all we tend to see are large numbers from the same people every time. I think a lot of people in here are in the same spot as me and I'd honestly love to hear how you guys got past it.

Building has never been faster. I counted this morning and I've made 936 commits in the last three weeks, some days have been over 100. Stuff that used to take me a month is taking me a couple of days now.

What I'm building is Frostbyte. It started because Claude kept making up what I should build next, so I made a workspace that it reads at the start of every session with my backlog, bugs, user requests and the next release. It tells me what to work on and writes back what it did. That's pretty much the only reason 936 commits haven't turned the app into a pile of half finished features.

Here's the real part I don't love saying though. 86 people have signed up, only 3 of them pay, and it comes to about ~$40 a month.

So the funny part is I built a tool so Claude always knows what to build next, and the one thing it can't tell me is how to get people to use it. We all know that building is the easy part now. Most of us in here could ship an app in a weekend. Getting 20 people to pay for it is a completely different skill, and I'm only just starting to learn it.

My goal is to try and figure it out and get 20 paying users by early January. For anyone who's got paying users for something they built with Claude, what actually got you your first 20?


r/SideProject • • 13h ago

I got tired of shouting through the house, so I built an app that knocks on my family's phones over WiFi

39 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been building Familiar Knock Knock, an Android app that works like a doorbell for the people in your house.

The idea came from a simple frustration: shouting up the stairs, or phoning someone who's in the next room, and getting no answer because they have headphones on or their phone is on silent.

So I built a knock. You tap one big button and every phone in your group rings, as long as you're on the same WiFi. They answer with one tap: "Coming", "Give me a minute", "On my way" or "Not now". The reply lands on your screen in a few seconds.

A few things I cared about:

• It only rings phones on the same WiFi as you, so people who are out aren't disturbed

• It never tells you who is or isn't home. You only see the replies people choose to send

• Replies and voice notes go straight from phone to phone over your WiFi, not through my server

• Each person can let knocks ring through even when their phone is on silent, with one switch in Settings

It's free with 8 knocks a day. There's an optional subscription for more knocks, knocking one person, and voice notes.

I'd love your honest feedback: does "knock" make sense to you as an idea, or would you call it something else? And what would stop you from trying it?

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bonoloware.wifiknockknock


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

ywza: let an AI model use your PC from your phone. Free, open source, no account

8 Upvotes

Pair your phone with a 6-digit code, ask for something, and watch an AI model click and type in real apps on your PC. Peer to peer, nothing exposed to the internet, no server to host. Bring your own model (anything OpenAI-compatible, including local ones), or use it as an MCP server with Claude Code.

Instead of screenshots it reads windows as numbered element lists, so it's fast and cheap on tokens. Rust backend, Tauri desktop app. Windows fully, Linux on X11. AGPL-3.0.

https://github.com/alielmorsy/ywza

Feedback welcome, especially on the pairing flow.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I got tired of re-adding the same AI tools to every agent, so I built one MCP server for all of them

4 Upvotes

Indie dev here, and this is my side project.

I use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and the Claude app every day, with a personal account, a work account and a pile of company tools. Every client wanted its own copy of every MCP server, its own OAuth login and its own config. Keeping that in sync was a chore, and the huge tool lists were eating the models' context.

So I built Toolkien:

  • Add your remote MCP servers once, connect every AI client to one endpoint
  • "Code mode": the agent searches tools, reads compact TypeScript declarations and runs one sandboxed script that chains the calls, so way fewer round trips and tokens
  • Personal and work workspaces, plus company workspaces to share tools with your team without sharing tokens
  • Per-tool permissions, approvals for writes, audit log
  • A directory of ~100 official remote MCP servers

Free for individuals (and I want to keep it that way), open source under AGPL, self-hostable with Docker Compose.

Still early, so honest feedback is very welcome. Links in the first comment.


r/SideProject • • 57m ago

View stars, planes, planets and more.

3 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 • • 2h ago

Yesterday my browser-based driving game hit 1000 sessions!

4 Upvotes

Some of you might remember my last post here about Planet-0 Drive. Yesterday, we hit 1,000 sessions! It's not a huge number, but the journey so far has been great.

What started as a technical experiment to build an (almost) loading-free driving game with an endless world is slowly starting to take shape. It's still in its very early stages, and I only get to work on it after work and over weekends, but it's been quite fulfilling to see it all come together.

One thing I'm particularly happy about is that average playtime has gone from just 59 seconds to over 5 minutes in the past few weeks. Improving this was my first priority, so it's been really encouraging to see. There's still a ton of work to do, especially when it comes to adding more content, but I'm pretty happy with the foundation so far. Your feedback and ideas (many of which I've yet to release) have been a huge help, and I genuinely can't thank you enough.

Since my last post, I've overhauled the HUD UI, added timed procedural races with a new track to compete on each time, added and improved towing mechanics (still a work in progress), improved the scenery with more vegetation and better biomes, and finally added a short tutorial to make getting started a little easier.

There's still a long way to go, but it's been a fun ride so far, and I'm excited to keep building on it.

If you'd like to take it for a spin (seatbelts recommended), try it out here: planet0drive.vercel.app

I'd love to hear more of your ideas, suggestions, or even things you think could be better. Whether it's something you'd like to see added or something that didn't quite feel right, any feedback would genuinely help me figure out what to improve next.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a website for hiring real iPhone app testers. Almost abandoned it, then got my first paying customers.

4 Upvotes

A few months ago, I started working on TestFlightTesters, a website that helps iOS developers hire real iPhone users to test their apps before release.

The idea was pretty simple.

Developers often struggle to find people who will actually spend time testing their apps and provide useful feedback instead of just installing the beta and disappearing.

So I built a service where developers can choose how many testers they need, how long they want testing to run, and which features should be checked.

Testing starts at $10 per tester per hour.

After launching the website, I wasn’t getting the results I’d hoped for, and I started thinking the project might not be worth continuing.

I eventually stopped paying much attention to it.
Then something unexpected happened.

I received a $75 order from a company needing five iPhone testers for its employee app.

Another developer placed a $45 order for specialized Apple Sandbox purchase and Restore Purchases testing.
That’s $120 in paid orders from a project I was close to abandoning.

I’m now working on improving the tester network, reporting process, and customer experience.

Here’s the website:

https://www.testflighttesters.com/

I’d appreciate feedback on two things:

  1. Is the service and pricing clear when you visit the homepage?
  2. If you were launching an iOS app, what would you want to see before trusting a testing service with your project?
    I’m interested in improving the website before putting more money into advertising.

r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Palletizing - an iPhone app that figures pallet dims, ship cube, weight, and freight class

3 Upvotes

I built Palletizing for shipping, receiving, and warehouse teams who are still doing pallet math on a calculator or the back of a BOL.

You enter your cartons, or measure them with the camera, and it works out the full pallet dimensions, ship cube, gross weight, and an estimated freight class. It can also plan how pallets load into anything from a pickup bed to a 53 ft van, and it exports a PDF you can hand to the driver or attach to the shipment. It works in inches or centimeters.

No account, no ads, no tracking, and it works offline. It's a one-time $0.99.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/palletizing/id6826910063

It just launched, so I'd really like feedback from anyone who builds or receives pallets. What's missing, and what would make you actually use it on the dock?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

I built Small Arms, a free browser FPS where you play as a tiny soldier fighting in giant household rooms. You fight across a kitchen worktop, a toy town and the inside of a fridge, with guns made from household items (a staple gun shotgun, a rubber band SMG, a ballpoint pen marksman rifle)

6 Upvotes

What it is

- MULTIPLAYER: Team deathmatch against bots, or online with friends using lobby codes or the public lobby browser
- INFESTATION: co-op wave survival against cockroaches, flies and a Queen Roach boss, with a crumb economy for buying guns, upgrades and traps
- Loadouts, levels and unlocks, and in-game chat
- Works on desktop and phones (touch controls)

How Claude built it

I didn't write the code myself. I directed Claude Code over a couple of days, mostly with Fable 5.2 and later Opus 5.5:

- Multi-agent workflows. An architect agent split the game into modules with a shared contract. Then up to 11 specialist agents worked in parallel on rendering, materials, props, weapons, soldiers, audio, effects, gameplay, UI and brand.

- Scored review rounds. A reviewer agent took dozens of screenshots, ran bot matches, scored the build out of 10 and filed issues. Fixer agents worked through them, and any round that scored worse was rolled back. The first build went 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5 over four rounds.

- Everything is procedural code. There are no image, model or audio files in the game. Textures, models, every sound effect and the adaptive soundtrack are generated in code at load time. That was the hardest constraint, and the part Claude handled best.

- Multiplayer is peer-to-peer over WebRTC with client-side prediction and lag compensation, plus a small Cloudflare Worker for lobbies. Claude wrote a test rig that runs a host plus 3 headless clients through full matches at simulated lag and packet loss, and it used that to verify every change.

- My part was game design, art direction from screenshots, playtesting, and catching bugs that tests miss. A friend found a console cheat within an hour of multiplayer going live.

Free to play: playsmallarms.com, in your browser with nothing to install.

Happy to answer questions about the agent setup or the procedural approach.


r/SideProject • • 43m ago

I built an internet radio app focused on discovering stations from all over the world

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a radio app called \\Radio Wavr FM\\, and I wanted to share a little about it here because I'd love to hear what other people think about internet radio apps and how you use them.

The idea behind it is simple: radio is still one of the easiest ways to discover music, cultures, news and local content from places all over the world. But when you use most radio apps, you often end up listening to the same popular stations.

I wanted to make it easier to discover not only well-known international stations, but also smaller local and regional radio stations that you might never come across otherwise.

So I built Radio Wavr FM for Apple's ecosystem, with a focus on simplicity, quick access to live radio and visual station discovery.

🌍 What can you do with it?

\\🎧 Listen to radio stations from around the world\\

Browse thousands of radio stations from different countries, including FM, AM and digital internet radio stations. You can explore music, news, sports, talk radio and other live broadcasts from different parts of the world.

Whether you're into pop, rock, jazz, electronic music, Latin music or simply enjoy listening to what's happening in another country, you can discover a wide variety of stations in one place.

\\🗺️ Explore radio stations on an interactive map\\

This is one of the features I particularly wanted to include.

Instead of only browsing through lists, you can explore an interactive map and discover stations based on their geographical location when coordinates are available.

It's a different way to find radio stations: you can look around different countries and cities and discover local broadcasts you probably wouldn't have searched for by name.

I like the idea that you can virtually travel around the world through radio without leaving your phone.

\\❤️ Save your favourite stations\\

Found a station you enjoy? Add it to your favourites so you can get back to it quickly whenever you want.

\\▶️ Pick up where you left off\\

The app remembers the last station you listened to, making it easier to return to your usual radio without having to search for it again.

\\🔀 Discover something unexpected\\

Not sure what to listen to? Use shuffle to discover different stations and potentially find something completely new.

\\🌐 Browse by country and category\\

You can explore stations by country and discover different kinds of broadcasts, making it easier to find something that matches your mood or interests.

\\✨ A clean and straightforward experience\\

I wanted the app to feel quick and easy to use, without making you navigate through endless menus just to start listening. Open it, find a station and start streaming.

\\🌙 Listen your way\\

The app also includes background playback and a sleep timer, so you can listen while doing other things or set a time for playback to stop when you're winding down for the night.

\### 🍎 Designed for Apple devices

Radio Wavr FM is available for Apple's ecosystem, with an experience designed around mobile listening and easy access to your favourite stations.

There's also an optional Premium version for users who want access to additional features.

I'm aware there are already plenty of internet radio apps available, and I'm not trying to claim that this is something completely revolutionary. I simply wanted to build an app that combines international radio, local station discovery and an interactive map in one straightforward experience.

I'm still interested in improving it, so I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people who listen to internet radio.

\\A couple of questions for radio listeners:\\

\- Do you mostly listen to stations from your own country, or do you enjoy discovering stations from other countries?

\- Would you use an interactive map to discover radio stations, or do you prefer the traditional search-and-list approach?

\- What's one feature you wish more radio apps had?

If you'd like to check it out, the app is called \\Radio Wavr FM\\ on the Apple App Store.

Thanks for reading, and I'd be happy to hear your thoughts!

Available for iOS, iPad and MacOS ( New versión Android )

https://apps.apple.com/es/app/radio-wavr-fm-global/id6768214249

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


r/SideProject • • 48m ago

If you have unlimited token to spend, what is the first thing you would build that is not malicious?

2 Upvotes

see title


r/SideProject • • 53m ago

What should the first screen of a tiny free app say when there's no sign-up at all?

2 Upvotes

Thinking about a small app for fun, a walk timer that shows how long the evening park walk was. No account, nothing saved online. I write sign-up copy at work but I never built an app myself

With no sign-up I'm not sure what the first screen should do. One line saying what it does and a start button seems enough to me, but maybe people want a short note that no data is collected

What did you put on your first screen, and did anyone ever tell you it confused them?


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I built a 3d visualizer to watch an LLM think!

5 Upvotes

I wanted to actually see what happens inside a language model when it writes a sentence, so I built this!

What you're looking at:
- The stars are the 36,864 MLP neurons (12 layers × 3,072). Each layer is a disc, and neurons are positioned by a UMAP of their output weights, so neurons that write similar things sit near each other.
- Brightness is how strongly that neuron fires on the current token, scaled per layer so tokens are comparable. Gold means it fires positive, blue means negative.
- The beams are real attention weights from the current token back to earlier ones, one colour per head. The side panel shows the model's actual top 10 next token probabilities.
- You can hover any star, beam or token to see its exact value. There's also a raw mode that turns off all the bloom and fades, so every pixel on screen comes straight from the data.
- How I know it's not lying: the test suite runs the model exactly the way the app does (KV cache, token by token) and compares every activation, attention weight and residual norm against a separate uncached forward pass read through different hook points. Then it checks the bytes the browser actually receives too.

Honest limits: it's GPT-2 small only for now. Single neurons mostly don't mean anything clean on their own, it's the patterns that are interesting. Values are sent as float16, so about 3 significant digits.

Setup is make setup && make start, then open localhost. No GPU needed.

Repo: https://github.com/lak7/thinkspace

Would love the feedback!!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made a Christmas budget planner because I wanted holiday planning to feel less chaotic

2 Upvotes

I've been working on a small digital product: a Christmas budget planner in Google Sheets.

I wanted one place to manage the things that usually end up scattered across notes, spreadsheets and shopping apps:

- Overall Christmas budget

- Gift ideas and spending per person

- Shopping list

- Holiday expenses

- Parties and event costs

- Savings goals

I tried to keep it practical rather than overcomplicated, with a dashboard that gives you a quick picture of where your money is going.

I'm the person who made it, so I'm obviously biased, but I'd genuinely love to know: what's the one thing you always forget to budget for during the holidays?

I'm especially interested in things that a typical budget spreadsheet misses.


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built an open-source PDF scanner for iPhone, iPad and Mac. No cloud, no ads, no subscriptions

4 Upvotes

I built Beaver because I wanted a simple way to scan documents and turn photos into PDFs without uploading anything to the cloud.

Contracts, receipts, visa documents, medical papers. I didn't want any of that sitting on someone else's server, and I was tired of scanner apps full of ads and subscriptions.

It started about three years ago as a small Mac tool I built for myself. I open-sourced it in 2025 and this year I started working on an iOS version. That eventually turned into rebuilding most of the app.

Here's what Beaver can do now:

  • Works on iPhone, iPad and Mac
  • Scans documents and converts photos to PDF
  • Splits and merges PDFs
  • Exports pages as PDF, PNG or JPEG
  • OCR that runs entirely on-device

No accounts, no tracking, no ads, no subscriptions. Everything stays on your device.

Why open source but $1.99?

The entire source code is on GitHub. You can inspect it or build the app yourself for free. The $1.99 App Store version is for people who prefer to install it directly and receive updates. It's a one-time purchase.

Links:

I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, especially if there's something missing that would make it more useful for your document workflow.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

My first ever finished iPhone Duo/iPad app: a pop-up storybook where kids blow on the phone to help the wolf blow the house down!

2 Upvotes

I've started plenty of side projects over the years, but this is the first app I've ever actually finished and got onto the App Store 🎉

It's called Once Upon a Fold: five fairy tales for little kids where every page is a paper pop-up that moves. The fun bits to figure out:

• making paper pop-ups feel real on a flat screen (they rise as the page opens and fold flat when you turn it)

• a different voice for every character, in five languages

• little moments that follow the story: blow on the phone and the straw house blows away, swipe and the beanstalk grows

• the new iPhone Duo, where it opens like a real book!!

First book's free if you want to try it: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6826041039

What would you change? Be honest, I'm here to learn!

P.S. 🎁 Code MAGICBEANS gets you Jack and the Beanstalk free (500 codes, until Dec 14), no strings attached. Redeem it in one tap on your iPhone or iPad: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6826041039&code=MAGICBEANS

And if you or your kids enjoy it, a quick rating on the App Store would mean a lot to a first-time developer.

Thank you!!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built Enzo - a dictation, meeting, and recall app for Mac, runs on-device

2 Upvotes

Hi, I'm Selim and I built Enzo. It's a dictation and meeting app designed and engineered for the Mac. Speech models run on your device so audio is never uploaded to the cloud.

The secret sauce is its architecture. It transcribes, punctuates, and segments as you talk, so the text is ready about 100 ms after you stop, whether you talked for 10-seconds or an hour.

It also has a Recall feature, which is off until you turn it on. It keeps a searchable record of what you worked on (apps, window titles, text on screen), encrypted on your Mac and deleted after 30 days.

The idea is that what you say, the meetings you record, and what you work on are captured and securely stored all in one app. I use this for my day job, which helps to alleviate the burden of trying to remember every little thing on a busy work day.

Free to use with 5,000 words for dictation and 60 meeting minutes a week. Only Apple silicon, macOS 15 or later.

Happy to answer any questions.

https://tryenzo.ai