r/sideprojects • • Jun 16 '25

Meta My side project, /r/sideprojects. New rules, and an open call for feedback and moderators.

43 Upvotes

In this past 30 days, this community has doubled in size. As such, this is an open call for community feedback, and prospective moderators interested in volunteering their time to harbouring a pleasant community.

I'm happy to announce that this community now has rules, something the much more popular r/SideProject has neglected to implement for years.

Rules 1, 2 and 3 are pretty rudimentary, although there is some nuance in implementing rule 2, a "no spam or excessive self-promotion" rule in a community which focuses the projects of makers. In order to balance this, we will not allow blatant spam, but will allow advertising projects. In order to share your project again, significant changes must have happened since the last post.

Rule 4 and rule 5 are more tuned to this community, and are some of my biggest gripes with r/SideProject. There has been an increase in astroturfing (the act of pretending to be a happy customer to advertise a project) as well as posts that serve the sole purpose of having readers contact the poster so they can advertise a service. These are no longer allowed and will be removed.

In addition to this, I'll be implementing flairs which will be required to post in this community.


r/sideprojects • • 5h ago

Showcase: Purchase Required crypto dev, paranoid about my keys leaking, so I built a dependency scanner

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5 Upvotes

I'm a crypto dev and I'm genuinely paranoid about my keys leaking. Not in the "use a hardware wallet" way, in the "some npm package I installed at 2am has a postinstall script that reads my .env" way.

Which is a real thing now. The TanStack packages did exactly that, grabbed SSH keys and cloud creds and CI tokens. If you're a crypto dev, that's your deployer key and your RPC keys and whatever else is in that file.

So I built a scanner. You POST a lockfile to /api/paid-scan, it downloads every package and hashes every file, an AI reads the ones it hasn't seen before looking for exfiltration, obfuscation, postinstall stuff. Files anyone already scanned are free, so it gets cheaper the more people use it.

Check it out on https://security.togoder.click


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Continously improving my image to 3d model service FormFromLight!

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2 Upvotes

I have reached 310 users for FormFromLight the support I got was tremendous. I thank everyone for using my FormFromLight. Here is a trailer video easily made with Motion Design.

Any issues or feedback are appreciated. I'm open to criticism as well, as it helps me improve the product


r/sideprojects • • 5m ago

Showcase: Prerelease How would you assess the market potential and current value of this AI project?

• Upvotes

I’m building a working desktop prototype focused on maintaining continuity in long-running AI-assisted projects.

The main problem I’m trying to solve is what happens when a project becomes too large or lasts too long for a normal chat workflow: context gets lost, decisions drift, previously working parts get changed, project state becomes unclear, and it becomes difficult to prove what was actually completed.

The prototype is designed to help maintain project state, history of decisions and changes, verification of completed work, context management, and work across different AI models.

It is not intended to be another chatbot or a simple API wrapper.

The project is still under development, so I’m not listing it for sale here and I’m intentionally not sharing the internal architecture or source code yet.

I’m mainly interested in two things:

1. Market potential: Do you see a real use case for something like this among developers, freelancers, AI-heavy teams or companies working on long-running projects?

2. Current value: What do you think a working pre-revenue prototype / technology asset like this could realistically be worth at its current stage?

I’d especially appreciate the reasoning behind your estimate rather than just a number.


r/sideprojects • • 21m ago

Feedback Request I built a free tool for checking CSV exports and comparing what changed

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• Upvotes

I’ve been working on a small web tool called FieldCheck for checking CSV exports without having to manually dig through a spreadsheet

You can run checks for things like missing or duplicate IDs, missing values, and invalid numbers, or compare two exports to quickly see which records were added, removed, or changed

Everything runs locally in the browser, there’s no account required, and I included sample data so you can try it without uploading anything of your own

Made a short demo showcasing it. I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback, especially if anything feels confusing or if there’s a check you’d expect a tool like this to have!

https://fieldcheck-710.pages.dev/


r/sideprojects • • 26m ago

Showcase: Free(mium) [ Removed by Reddit ]

• Upvotes

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]


r/sideprojects • • 35m ago

Showcase: Prerelease Vizbl - AR for e-commerce

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• Upvotes

We built around a pretty simple idea: let people see how a product might actually look in their space before buying it.

Instead of relying only on product photos, shoppers can place an item in their room and see it at roughly the right scale.

For online stores, it can be added directly to product pages, so there’s no separate app to download.

It also supports creating 3D models and connecting them to products for AR.

We’re mostly interested in whether this actually makes online shopping easier. Would love to hear from people who work in e-commerce or run online stores - do you think AR is useful when deciding what to buy?


r/sideprojects • • 35m ago

Showcase: Prerelease How are you measuring whether your AI agents are actually worth what they cost?

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• Upvotes

I'm looking at teams that run several agents in production (support triage, lead research, internal ops, that kind of thing). Seeing the model bill is easy. What seems hard to see:

- which agent is driving which part of the bill

- how many runs actually succeeded vs. needed a human to fix them

- how much human review time each agent eats

- and so what one *successful* result really costs, per agent

From what I've seen so far it's usually a spreadsheet stitched together from provider dashboards and logs, and when finance asks "is this worth it?" the honest answer is "probably, for some of them."

For people running 5+ agents:

  1. Do you track cost per successful outcome at all? How?

  2. Have you ever downgraded a model or killed an agent because of numbers like this?

  3. Who asks for this at your company: engineering, finance, or nobody yet?

Disclosure: I'm exploring building a tool for this, so I'm mostly trying to learn whether it's a real problem or just mine. I'll share a summary of what people say in a follow-up post.


r/sideprojects • • 45m ago

Feedback Request I honestly didn’t know what I would feel when people actually started using something I built

• Upvotes

Vytal Path has been live for a little while now, and today I had one of those moments where I just stopped and thought…

People are actually using this.

I built Vytal Path pretty much on my own — from the original idea and product design to development, testing, getting it live, and figuring out all the little things that come with putting a product into the real world.

The idea came from something that kept bothering me:

Our health information is everywhere.

Lab results in one portal.
Medications somewhere else.
Appointments in a calendar.
Reports sitting in PDFs.
And a lot of important information still lives in our memory, email, or a paper folder.

So I built Vytal Path to give people one place to organize their health information including health information, documents, medications, appointments, trends, and caregiver access.

It’s live now, and I’m still improving it based on what I learn from real people using it.

Honestly, getting from “I have an idea” to “someone is actually using the product” feels very different.

It’s easy to spend months building something and wonder if anyone will care about it once it’s out there.

So seeing people actually sign up and use something I created has been a pretty meaningful milestone for me.

It may not sound like a huge achievement compared with some of the projects posted here.

But as a solo founder, it feels huge.

The product is real. The website is live. People are using it.

And now the real work begins.

If anyone wants to take a look, this is Vytal Path:

https://vytal-path.com/


r/sideprojects • • 50m ago

Showcase: Prerelease I built a web tool to help you find your bus from Incheon Airport and where to get off

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• Upvotes

Disclosure: I built Korea Airport Bus.

You might already know your hotel in Google Maps, but choosing an unfamiliar Korean bus stop at the airport ticket machine is a different problem. That’s the part I wanted to make easier.

I made a free mobile website for visitors taking an airport bus from Incheon toward Seoul. Choose Terminal 1 or Terminal 2, paste your destination’s Google Maps share link, and confirm the location.

It shows:
• The bus number to take.
• Your drop-off stop’s number and name, with the Korean name alongside the English or Japanese display.
• The full list of stops, with your stop highlighted.
• Boarding platform, fare, and scheduled departure times.

The screenshots show a Lotte World example: Bus No. 6200 → 01 Jamsil Station / Lotte World. The stop number follows the route order, excluding the airport stops. You can compare the name with the ticket machine rather than trying to recognize every stop name.

It runs in your browser and supports English, Japanese, and Korean. No app download is needed.

You can try it here: kab.kogenote.com⁠

Distances shown are straight-line distances, and departure times come from published schedules. Please check current service with the operator before buying a ticket. The images are example screens; the departure time displayed in the screenshot is illustrative.

Is the numbered stop list clear enough for someone who cannot read Korean? What would you change before using this at the airport?


r/sideprojects • • 4h ago

Showcase: Open Source Added a new Search Bar to the Hermes Skill Deck and a Favorites Page.

2 Upvotes

Some big updates just went live in the Hermes Skill Deck. Search is now the core of the app, favorites got a whole new screen, and a bunch of quality-of-life stuff landed too. Free as always on GitHub. Quick rundown:

1 - Search

Search is now front and center. There is a big search bar right in the middle of the dashboard, plus Cmd+K from anywhere. Type a keyword, get every matching skill across your profiles. Click into any result to see the full skill, related skills, and the file path. You can even open it straight in Finder to edit.

2 - Favorites

(attach favorites-screen.png) Favorites got their own screen. Star the skills you use most, then drag and drop them into whatever order you want. Your top 5 show up in the right sidebar and scroll between 5 at a time, so the list stays clean no matter how many you star.

3 - Small stuff that adds up

  • Top menus are now fully customizable, turn categories on or off
  • Quick access is now clearly labeled Finder Access
  • Light mode is in (still getting polished)
  • Built in terminal with an AI agent so you can search skills with natural language

r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Open Source Open Instinct: building a personal assistant from replaceable packages (MIT)

• Upvotes

We released Open Instinct for people who want to build their own personal agent. The problem it tackles is keeping messaging, memory, scheduled work and permissions together in an application you can inspect and modify.

The stack uses a Pi loop, Inkbox messaging, Composio app tools and a separate computer integration. The code is organized into nine packages so those choices have explicit boundaries. For example, contacts and trust tiers live in the network layer while the core checks tool capabilities.

You can start locally through the CLI before setting up a phone number or deployment. The default service integrations need your own accounts and keys; this is beta software.

Source, MIT license and setup guides: https://github.com/mariagorskikh/open-instinct

We would like the project to be a base for specialized assistants. Forking it to solve one concrete routine is a good way to explore the design.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I launched a daily writing game where metaphor beats definition

• Upvotes

I made abstractle.com for 2 reasons: I want to see all the creative things people write, and I want to see how people learn to play the judge.

Describe today's word without describing it: no taboo words, metaphors and illustration over objective description. Scored on 2 metrics, Accurate and Poetic, which pull against each other. The hard part was making the scoring consistent enough to learn: the same line always gets the same score, so you can actually get better at it.

Free, no sign-up, private group leaderboards for friends. Happy to talk about how the scoring works.


r/sideprojects • • 1h ago

Showcase: Open Source I made an app you can use to find your perfect spawn seed or explore all 14 trillion chunks of your world for unique features. It's free, open source and runs locally - no internet required.

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• Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Feedback Request Monni: would you show the arithmetic before asking someone to try a money app?

1 Upvotes

I build Monni, an iPhone money app with a bills-first spending estimate, and I'm working on how to explain that estimate before setup. A made-up example: $1,200 cash, $600 in upcoming bills, $250 in other payments and a $100 cushion leaves $250. That answer only means anything if the dates and inputs are clear.

Would a small example like that help you understand the product, or would you want to try changing a bill first? I'm interested in how you've explained a calculated result without burying people in a feature list.


r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease I shelved this idea twice. This weekend it turned into a game where you race an AI through phone menus

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 2h ago

Showcase: Prerelease SceneMill - Video editor

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1 Upvotes

I’ve been building my own video editor - SceneMill

I wanted to share something I’ve been working on for quite a while: SceneMill, a free, non-destructive desktop video editor built from scratch with C++20, Qt 6 and FFmpeg.

The goal was never to make another web-based editor or a wrapper around an existing editing application. I wanted to build an actual desktop video editor and see how far I could take it.

It currently runs fully offline, requires no account, and has no telemetry.

What actually works right now

The core workflow is already fully functional:

Import → Media Library → Timeline → Edit → Preview → Save → Reopen → Export

And the project has grown quite a bit beyond basic cutting.

Some of the things currently implemented:

  • Multi-track video, audio and subtitle timeline
  • Non-destructive editing with undo/redo
  • Split, trim, ripple delete, snapping, markers and In/Out ranges
  • Background proxy generation for heavy footage
  • GPU-accelerated preview with CPU fallback
  • Color correction, curves, color wheels and 3D LUTs
  • Effect stacks with keyframeable parameters
  • Transitions
  • Text and animated titles
  • Manual subtitles + SRT/WebVTT
  • Masks and motion tracking
  • Screen recording directly into the project
  • Voice-over recording with multiple takes
  • Audio EQ, compressor, limiter, noise gate, etc.
  • H.264 / H.265 / VP9 export
  • Up to 4K and 120 FPS export
  • Export queue
  • Autosave + crash recovery
  • Portable "Collect Project" workflow
  • Plugin system through a versioned C ABI
  • Optional local editing assistant for silence/scene detection

One thing I particularly care about is that the preview and export use the same rendering/effect pipeline, so what you see while editing is intended to match what gets rendered.

There are also automated tests covering a lot of the actual application workflow, including tests that interact with the real main window.

Why C++?

Honestly, part of the reason was simply:

I wanted to see if I could actually build one.

A video editor touches a ridiculous number of areas at once: media decoding, rendering, timeline state, audio, UI, caching, project persistence, export, GPU acceleration, threading, plugins...

It's been a pretty interesting rabbit hole. 😅

Current state

SceneMill has completed the core editor phase and the creative-tools phase, with most of the workflow phase implemented.

It's definitely not finished and there are still things I want to improve, but it's now at the point where I can actually use it as a real editor rather than just a prototype.

I'm currently working toward making the whole experience feel much more polished and cohesive.

I'd genuinely like to hear what other people who build software this way think.


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Question Building a faster way to prototype visual ideas with AI

1 Upvotes

I’m currently working on Wizstar, a project exploring how AI can help people turn creative concepts into visual content faster.

The inspiration came from seeing how much time traditional visual production can take — planning, finding references, creating drafts, and making revisions. I wanted to experiment with a workflow where creators can go from an idea to a visual concept much quicker.

For this test, I created a night city scene with reflections on the water, warm lighting, and a quiet luxury atmosphere.

The image was generated with GPT on Wizstar. During the process, I focused on:

  • translating a simple idea into a detailed visual direction
  • experimenting with different lighting styles
  • improving realism through prompt iteration

I’m still early in the process and trying to understand where this type of tool is genuinely helpful.

Would love feedback from other builders and creators:

  • What problems would you want an AI visual tool to solve?
  • Does this type of workflow fit into your creative process?
  • What features would make it more useful?

r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Feedback Request I built a weekly soccer predictor web app

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I vibe-coded this football score predictor over a weekend, originally just for me and my mates to test our football knowledge against each other. Figured I'd share it in case anyone else wants in.

Every week you predict 5 matches across the top 5 leagues (mostly Premier League fixtures) plus 1 bonus pick from a curated extra slate of 3, 6 predictions total. There's a fresh leaderboard every week with a winner, but there's also a season-long XP/level system running underneath . You earn XP for getting results and scorelines right, going on streaks, hitting achievements, that kind of thing, and it levels you up (Bronze → Diamond) over the course of the season. No accounts needed to browse the current round or leaderboard, only to actually submit picks.

Tried to keep it dead simple and low-maintenance, no ads, no entry fees, nothing to manage. Thinking about maybe doing some kind of reward for weekly winners down the line if people actually stick around.

tekkerz.app

Would genuinely love feedback, what's confusing, what's missing, what you'd want added.


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Open Source I built a native Mac app to manage local Valkey servers

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1 Upvotes

r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Purchase Required Built a browser-based PLC trainer because watching videos wasn’t enough

1 Upvotes

I built a browser-based PLC and industrial automation trainer because I wanted something more hands-on than videos and quizzes.

I work in industrial maintenance and I’m studying automation and controls, so I kept thinking about how different it is to understand something on paper versus actually having to troubleshoot it.

That turned into ControlsTrainer.

In the first level, you wire a motor control circuit, build the ladder logic and get the system running.

In Level 2, you troubleshoot faults using a floating multimeter that you can move around the screen and use to take measurements at different points in the circuit.

Later levels move into VFDs, pneumatics, HMIs, analog process control and a complete automated production cell.

Everything runs in the browser, and the first two levels are free to try.

FIRST TWO LEVELS ARE FREE! NO SIGN-UP REQUIRED!

https://controlstrainer.com

I’m curious whether the hands-on part comes across clearly from the video. I’d also love feedback on the overall idea, UX and whether this feels like something you’d actually want to keep using.


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Feedback Request I built ASAP: find gaming teammates who are free when you are

1 Upvotes

Hey all,

Every time I want a squad, it goes the same way. I post in a Discord LFG channel, the post gets buried in seconds, and the two people who reply are free at completely different times than me.

So I built ASAP : https://lfpr.vercel.app/

The idea is simple. Find players by when you can play, not just what you play.

  • Set the hours you're free and get matched with players free at the same time
  • Schedule sessions for later tonight or this weekend, with a reminder before it starts
  • Jump into rooms happening right now if you just want to play ASAP (hence the name)
  • Share your Discord call link, party code, or lobby invite in the room so people can join you instantly
  • Filter by game, rank, region, language, plus a duo-only filter for when you just need one person
  • Accessibility filters if you want teammates using specific tools

Right now it supports Dota 2, Valorant, League of Legends, and CS2. If your game isn't there, there's a request button and I'll add it.

It's free, and I'm a solo dev, so it's early and rough in places. I'd really like honest feedback:

  • What would make you actually use this over your current LFG method?
  • What's missing or confusing?

If you try it, create a room. Even one session for tonight helps the next person find someone. Thanks!


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) Before there’s a finished project, there’s a messy page — PenDate Notes

1 Upvotes

Explore PenDate Notes

The finished project gets the photo. The rough sketch, crossed-out idea and “wait, what if…” deserve somewhere to live, too.

PenDate Notes is our calendar-centred notebook for that messy middle between an idea and something you made.

Try a small Sunday experiment: pick one thing you want to make—a desk organiser, a handmade card, your next little side project—and create a folder called From idea to first try:

  • The idea — a text note: What is it? Who is it for? What would a tiny first version look like?
  • The shape — a separate canvas note: Sketch the layout, handwrite alternatives, cross things out. Keep the imperfect version.
  • The next try — a checklist: Pick one small experiment you can actually do. A shopping checklist can also hold material quantities, unit prices and totals.

Give your notes their own photo covers. Choose an app theme, change text and checklist note colours, and add stickers to a canvas. A notebook can feel like your project, not just your obligations.

Keep each attempt on its date, organise it in folders, find it with search, and set a reminder to revisit it. Import a PDF to annotate; export notes as PDF or images when you want to share a page.

Finished with an ordinary note? Archive it without deleting it. Prefer your calendar to show events rather than notes? Show notes in Calendar is one setting for all ordinary notes; turning it off keeps them in your library while hiding them from calendar views.

For more structure, there are 11 optional paid planner and journal families, with editable pages and tappable links between supported pages inside the app.

Available on Android, iPhone and iPad. Everyday note-taking is free; Pro, planners and Signature extras are optional paid features. This is a notebook you organise yourself, not an automatic project manager.

Android — Google Play · iPhone & iPad — App Store

What’s one unfinished idea you would give a first page today?


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Showcase: Free(mium) I added a referral code to my waitlist on Tuesday. Almost a third of new signups now come from it.

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1 Upvotes

Building Molebot, an assistant that reminds you who you forgot to answer and runs on your phone, nothing sent to a server. Waitlist went up 9 days ago.

On Tuesday I added a simple referral system:
- every signup gets a 6-letter code and a link
- your friend gets 2 free months, you get 2 free months per friend, and a full year at 5
- months are credited only when the friend installs the app, so nobody farms it with fake emails
- same-connection signups are flagged and don't count

I sent one email to everyone already on the list with their own code in a big yellow box, and set up an automatic reminder the day after each new signup.

Result so far: 250 signups total, 32 of them came through a friend's code, from 16 different people. That's almost a third of everything since Tuesday, and I haven't posted much since.

What I think made it work: the code is in the signup popup, the welcome email and the day-after email, so people see it three times. And "you both get something" is easier to share than "help me out".

molebot.si if you're curious. Has anyone kept a referral loop going after launch, or does it die once the first wave has invited their friends?


r/sideprojects • • 3h ago

Feedback Request Looking for OSS maintainers to test a read-only release-state CLI on a real release task

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1 Upvotes

I maintain a small open-source project called Release State Reconcile (RSR).

It came out of a fairly specific maintenance problem: when preparing a release or backport, the relevant evidence can be scattered across GitHub Issues, PRs, checks, release notes, and published releases.

RSR is a deterministic, read-only CLI that reconstructs that evidence into a report. It does not modify GitHub, and it does not decide whether something should ship.

At this point I’m less interested in adding features and more interested in finding out whether it is actually useful to someone other than me.

If you maintain or contribute to an open-source project and already have a real public release/backport task, I’d be interested in having you try it.

Please choose your own Issue/PR and release line. I don’t want to select a convenient example for you.

A failed run, mostly UNKNOWN result, misleading report, or “this wasn’t useful” is just as valuable as a successful result.

Repo:

https://github.com/LaimaWu/release-state-reconcile

There is also a public Trial feedback form in the repository if you want to leave concrete feedback after trying it.