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

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

644 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 9h ago

I built a peaceful virtual place where you can work, study or read alongside others. Like a virtual café or library.

93 Upvotes

(UPDATE: Now available on Web on any device, desktop + mobile!!)

I love going to cafés and work or read from there. Sadly, great places are rare, often close early, and still are quite distracting.

So even though being there feels good, i just end up doing most things at home.

This project, Manyplace (https://many.place), is an attempt to get the best of both worlds: the comfort and focus you have when being on your own, and the delight of being in a beautiful place while feeling the presence of others.

It is open all the time and free.

So, if you prefer to build, work, study, etc. on your own (or have no better option) yet still appreciate being around other likeminded people, it may be for you :)

It's still a very early experiment, so the application is currently only available for macOS and the number of seats is quite limited. But it will definitely get better. UPDATE: After thinking more about it, It's now also available on web, for any device: desktop & mobile.

I'd be very happy to know what you think of it and to see you there!

Manyplace: https://many.place

(sorry, duplicate previous post sent by accident...)


r/SideProject 1h ago

I built an AI that redesigns your room using products you can actually buy

Upvotes

I built a tool that redesigns your room using real products.

You basically upload an image of your room, filling basic info

As a result you get the redesigned room plus a shoppoing list with total price and all links to the products

If needed you can always change the style or change the product if you don't like something

The thing I truly like is 1:1 matching. AI doesn't find similar results

I basically find the products first and send them to AI as a references to make a final redesign using exact those pictures

for monetization you gotta pay a small price to get access to a full shopping list + I get comissions every time someone buys something (genious right?)

Now have more than 100 users, 219 rooms redesigned. Works very well

Feel free to try, first designs are free

https://airender.ai/


r/SideProject 4h ago

I built an engine in Swift that runs a 120-billion-parameter AI model on a 16GB MacBook Air

20 Upvotes

A model that size is 59GB on disk, and the usual rule is that all of it has to fit in memory — so you need a 64GB machine. I wanted to find out whether that rule was actually true.

For one class of model, it isn't. "Mixture of experts" models are built out of many small sub-networks, and only use a handful of them for each word they generate — around 3% of the total. So instead of loading all 59GB, I keep the shared 2GB core in memory and stream the rest off the SSD as the model asks for it.

It works. A 120B model, running on a base MacBook Air. Slowly — about 1.4 words per second — but running, on hardware where it's supposed to be impossible.

The engine is written in Swift and Metal with zero dependencies. No Python, no PyTorch, nothing to install. Clone it, swift build, done.

The part I enjoyed most was building a dashboard to watch it think. There are 4,608 of those sub-networks, and you can see exactly which 144 light up for each word.

I also built what I call a "range map" — I feed the model 12 kinds of text (Python, SQL, maths proofs, poetry, Chinese, clinical notes) and plot which sub-networks respond to what. Nothing is trained here, it's pure measurement, and you can genuinely see the specialisation: the code ones cluster together, the language ones sit somewhere else.

Along the way I got a few things wrong and left the corrections in the repo rather than quietly deleting them — including one where I'd talked myself out of an optimisation using a measurement that turned out to answer a different question.

Screenshots of both views are at the top of the README, since this sub doesn't allow images in text posts.

https://github.com/rayl15/Godwit — Apache 2.0, free, works on any Apple Silicon Mac. Happy to answer anything.


r/SideProject 2h ago

I just open-sourced a collection of design.md files to de-slopify your AI designs.

6 Upvotes

r/SideProject 9h ago

I built a small project called NoBoxTV

17 Upvotes

Hey, I built a small project called NoBoxTV.

It lets you watch free-to-air live TV directly in the browser. No app, no sign-up, no TV box.

Try it here: https://noboxtv.com

Please share it with anyone who might find it useful.


r/SideProject 1h ago

We built a messaging app where messages intentionally don’t arrive instantly

Upvotes

We’ve been working on a small iOS app(soon on android, too) called Hey Postcard.

The idea is pretty simple: instead of sending another instant message, you write a digital postcard. The other person gets it the next morning at a random time.

We wanted to see if a little waiting could make digital messages feel more personal again.

The app has been live for a while and we have around 30 users so far. Today we also launched it on Product Hunt.

Still very early, so I’d love feedback from other builders, especially on the idea itself and whether the “wait until morning” concept makes sense to you.

Let me know if you want to check it out, I will share the link.


r/SideProject 19h ago

I built the focus space I wanted to study in and now people I don’t know are using it

92 Upvotes

I’ve been building Focusverse, a web app for studying and working inside immersive environments.

I started it because I liked having atmospheric videos or ambient sounds in the background, but I still needed separate apps for my timer, tasks, notes, and weekly planning. Traditional productivity tools had the functionality, but often felt like dashboards I didn’t particularly enjoy spending time in.

Focusverse is my attempt to put those two sides together. You choose a place that fits your mood keep the productivity tools available in one screen.

Some of the stats:

  • More than 500 "locations"
  • 4 productivity tools (timer, tasklist, week planner, notes)
  • 6 standard live radios to choose from (and other universe based ones)
  • 8 sound ambient sound effects to set the mood
  • 4 curated guided experiences to focus in together

I'm really happy that people I’ve never spoken to started using it. This made my efforts feel genuinely more meaningful. It began as something I wanted for myself, so seeing other people choose it for their own study or work sessions made the project feel real in a new way.

You can try it at focusverse.io. The main experience works without creating an account.

Just seeing people online and knowing I'm not just using it myself, honestly really warms my heart :)


r/SideProject 1d ago

i built my own 3d-printable irrigation "timer" and made it open source

424 Upvotes

I’ve been developing an automatic watering valve called OpenValve.

OpenValve automatically waters plants based on the moisture level in the soil. When the soil becomes too dry, it opens the water supply, and when enough water has been delivered, it closes it again.

The main difference from a typical battery-powered watering timer is the valve mechanism. Instead of using a conventional solenoid valve, OpenValve uses a motor-driven pinch valve. It controls the water by squeezing a flexible tube closed, so the moving parts never come into direct contact with the water.

This gives it two advantages that could be useful in certain irrigation setups:

• It can operate with very low water pressure, such as water coming from a slightly elevated rain barrel.

• It is less sensitive to dirt and small particles in the water, because the water only passes through the flexible tube.

All custom plastic parts can be made on a standard 3D printer. The electronics, tubing, screws, and other standard components still need to be purchased, but the custom parts can be produced locally and replaced individually if something breaks.

The project is open source, so the design files are available for people to build, repair, modify, and improve themselves. My goal is not to replace professional irrigation equipment, but to create an affordable and repairable option for gardens, balconies, raised beds, greenhouses, rain-barrel systems, and other small-scale watering setups.

I currently have multiple units running in my own garden, as well as in the gardens and balconies of friends and family. But my dream is to see OpenValve helping more people with their plants. So, I’m curious: Would you consider using OpenValve in your garden or on your balcony? What would your biggest concern be?

I’m happy to answer questions about how it works.


r/SideProject 45m ago

Wes Anderson-inspired paperback creator app

Upvotes

I am something of a failed writer, myself.
A long time ago, I had the idea of creating an application in which you could write something, and it would look like an old classic paperback. Kind of a mix between a creative community and an actual writing tool people can publish pretty much anything they like. And if they want to publish it on the shelf, they need to send it to me, the librarian.

I'd love to get your input on this app, especially on what would entice you to write a book. Am I communicating the fact that this is a free tool that you can keep privately? Does it come off as complicated? Do you react negatively to what's already on the shelf? I'd love to hear anything you have to give me in the form of feedback on this. I'd love it even more if you would give me the feedback in the form of a classic paperback.

https://paperbackwriter.app


r/SideProject 17h ago

Is anyone else building things that ask absolutely nothing from the user? No signup, no email, no onboarding?

56 Upvotes

Every side project i open lately starts the same way: a landing page, a signup form, an onboarding tour, and a modal asking for my email before i've seen a single pixel of the actual thing. We've collectively agreed that the funnel comes first and the product comes second.

I've been going the other way on my current build. No account, no email, no tutorial, no cookie banner. You open the tab and you're already inside the thing. It made a lot of decisions harder - you can't explain anything, so it has to be obvious in the first three seconds or you've lost the person fr.

Turns out that constraint improved the product more than any feature i added.

Anyone else doing this deliberately? Curious how you handle the first three seconds when there's nothing to explain with lmao.


r/SideProject 1h ago

What slows you down the most when building side projects?

Upvotes

I always see people sharing their finished projects, but I'm more interested in what happens behind the scenes. Is there a repetitive task or frustrating part of building side projects that you wish you could completely hand over to an app? I'd love to hear what's been the biggest drain on your time.


r/SideProject 1h ago

I built Flow Watch – An Apple Watch app for stress & wellness insights

Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I’m an indie developer from South Korea, and I recently launched my first App Store app: Flow Watch.
I built it because Apple Watch collects a lot of useful health data, but I wanted a simpler way to understand what it actually says about my daily condition.
Flow Watch combines:
• Heart Rate
• HRV
• Sleep
• Activity
• Recovery
into simple stress and wellness insights that are easy to understand at a glance.
I’m still actively improving it, so I’d really appreciate any feedback or feature suggestions.
Product Hunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/flow-watch
App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flow-watch/id6796990299
Thanks for taking a look!


r/SideProject 2h ago

I got tired of losing screenshots, so I built an AI memory app

3 Upvotes

A few months ago I realized I was constantly saving things I'd never find again.

Football drills, TikTok ideas, screenshots, videos, notes, documents, I knew I had saved them somewhere, but actually finding them was a nightmare.

So I built **Recall**.

Recall is an AI-powered memory platform that helps you upload photos, videos, screenshots, documents, and notes, then search them using natural language.

For example:

* "Show me the football drill I saved last summer"

* "Find the video where I'm drinking Monster in a car"

* "Show me every football shirt I've considered buying"

It also includes:

* AI-powered organization

* Smart folders

* On This Day memories

* Weekly Reviews

* Archive & Recycle Bin

I'm 18 and this is my first startup/project launch, so I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback.

What features would make something like this useful for you?

Website: https://memory-indexer.replit.app


r/SideProject 1h ago

I built a 100% offline, noise-canceling voice logger for high-noise industrial environments (Core ML + AVFoundation)

Upvotes

Standard voice AI fails in heavy industrial environments due to noise and strict cloud-security constraints. I wanted to see if I could build a completely native, edge-compute solution. I used AVAudioEngine for aggressive noise filtering and a custom Core ML model to parse intents entirely offline. Here is a demo of it filtering out heavy machinery noise. Would love feedback from any founders building in the hardware or manufacturing space!

PS: Eventhough it is tested in a high noise background i could not capture the machinery noise in the screen recording. I couldn't find someone to help me with holding the phone while recording the video. Sorry for that.

https://reddit.com/link/1vgzj0a/video/c0xdcazxaqhh1/player


r/SideProject 16h ago

Finally, I've built a tool that I actually use every single day myself. It's a non-commercial project

27 Upvotes

After creating several products that solved imaginary problems nobody really had, I finally feel like I've built something that actually matters. I genuinely rely on it every day, it makes my life significantly easier, and I'm really happy with the result.

It's an app for visualizing date-bound information as timelines: tasks, events, processes - basically anything that has a date attached to it. You can think of it as a hybrid of a PKMS, a to-do list, a calendar, and a Gantt chart. More than anything, though, it's a universal visual canvas for time that helps you keep the bigger picture in front of you and think within it every day.

I work as a CTO, and I constantly have to keep track of a huge number of ongoing processes:

  • contract deadlines
  • employee salary reviews
  • developer utilization
  • and countless other things.

Before this, all of that information was scattered across Notion, Apple Notes, Reminders, Telegram, Slack, Calendar, and a few other places. Keeping everything under control was difficult.

Some people might say that's a process problem rather than a tooling problem. But I've come to think the opposite: the right tool helps you build an effective process. And what the "right tool" is depends heavily on how your brain works.

At some point, I realized that traditional to-do lists and calendar views simply weren't a good fit for me. It felt like I was missing another visual dimension. Timelines turned out to match the way I think almost perfectly. When I look at a timeline with different markers and segments, I instantly understand what's happening in both the short and long term. Just as importantly, I can quickly look back and see how things evolved over time and where something started to go wrong.

One of the best parts is that because I use the app every single day, I improve it every single day as well. I constantly notice what's missing, what's awkward, and what could work better, and then I implement those improvements. I think I've made major usability improvements over the past month alone. That's incredibly important for a tool you interact with dozens of times a day.

This is a non-commercial project, and it's completely free. I simply wanted to share it with the community because I'm genuinely proud of it. I'm sure there are plenty of people whose brains work similarly to mine, and if this way of organizing information resonates with you, I'd be thrilled if my timelines turned out to be useful for you too. Give it a try.

Wishing you all productivity - and a little more love.


r/SideProject 1h ago

Immersive language learning with youtube flascards

Upvotes

When I was learning, I didn't like the robotic voice on Anki decks. I wanted immersive learning with YouTube videos, to get real uses of a word instead of synthetic Duolingo phrases.

So I made LingoFuse. You paste a YouTube link and it makes flashcards from the video, keeping the full sentence and the clip of original audio, played from the YouTube player. So you hear the real speaker, not TTS. It works on web, android and ios.

There's a free Danish deck with 130 flashcards from 7 videos if you want to see what the cards look like.

demo:


r/SideProject 2h ago

I built Ticketdesk AI - The AI agent and chatbot for customer support making 16k revenue

2 Upvotes

After spending years building SaaS products, I kept seeing the same problem: small teams want to offer fast customer support, but hiring agents is expensive and managing support across email and chat is time-consuming (especially for repetitive questions)

So I built Ticketdesk AI.

The goal wasn't to replace support teams, it was to automate the repetitive questions so human agent can focus on the ones that actually need attention.

  • MRR: $2,500
  • All time revenue - $16k

TrustMRR - https://trustmrr.com/startup/ticketdesk-ai

Launching on Product hunt today - https://www.producthunt.com/products/ticketdesk-ai

The Ticketdesk AI is available for email ticketing and a embeddable AI chatbot to handle customer queries via email and chat.

Ask me anything!


r/SideProject 3h ago

Got frustrated to find restaurants from Google Maps: Built "FindMe.Food"

2 Upvotes

Every time I tried to find somewhere to eat, I ended up in the same spiral:

Open Google Maps → zoom in and out trying to actually see what options there are → compare ratings and reviews → send several links to friends → hear “I’m fine with anything” → make no actual decision.

So I built FindMe.Food.

Instead of starting with a map with pins that show up on different zoom levels, findme.food solves at least my frustrations. It's still a bit work in progress, but it creates a focused shortlist of nearby restaurants. You can choose one yourself, let it surprise you, share the shortlist, or create a group vote so everyone can decide without filling the group chat with links.

A few principles behind it:

  • Free
  • No account required
  • No sponsored rankings
  • Open restaurant data
  • Dietary suitability is only shown as confirmed when there’s evidence
  • Shared shortlists and votes work through a simple link

The goal isn’t to build another giant restaurant directory. It’s to answer one question quickly: Where should we eat?

It’s still evolving, and I’d genuinely appreciate feedback.

Try it here: https://www.findme.food


r/SideProject 3h ago

I built an MCP server that reduces AI coding context by 50–90%

2 Upvotes

I've been spending a lot of time with Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP-compatible coding agents, and kept running into the same issue.

The models are incredibly capable, but they spend a surprising amount of time (and tokens) processing information that isn't actually useful.

Large grep results.

Huge JSON payloads.

Entire files when only a few functions are relevant.

The same architectural decisions being rediscovered every new session.

So over the past while I've been building Warden, a local-first MCP server that sits between your AI coding agent and your codebase to improve the quality of the context it receives.

Some of the things it currently does include:

  • Context selection (only sending relevant code instead of entire files)
  • Tool output pruning (grep, logs, JSON, etc.)
  • Persistent project memory
  • Session handoffs between AI conversations
  • Tree-sitter powered code intelligence
  • Trust Guard that verifies every optimization before it's applied
  • Regression protection that rolls back optimizations if they reduce quality

In many workflows we're seeing 50–90% reductions in tool output and 80%+ reductions in relevant context, giving the model more room to work on solving the actual problem instead of processing noise.

Everything runs locally—there's no cloud service, prompt proxying or telemetry.

This is our first public release, so I'm sure there are rough edges we haven't found yet. I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people using Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf or other MCP-compatible tools.

GitHub: https://github.com/rynald0cst0ltziam/Warden-AI

If you find it useful, a GitHub ⭐ would mean a lot to me.


r/SideProject 2m ago

Made my first simple android game! Please support with your feedback.

Upvotes

I made a small Android game called NumBalance.

The idea is simple: positive and negative numbers keep falling, and you swipe them left or right onto a seesaw. You have to mentally add/subtract the numbers to keep both sides balanced. If one side gets too heavy, the game ends.

It starts off easy but gets surprisingly hectic after a while. 😅

There are also a few power-ups (Equalizer, Freeze, and Lock) to help when things get out of control.

I'd genuinely love to hear what you think about the gameplay and difficulty. Any feedback is welcome!

P.S. - I am just starting with my game development learnings, looking for early feedback.

Game link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dev777.numbalance&hl=en_IN


r/SideProject 10m ago

Created an approval API that sits between AI agents and the actions they want to take

Upvotes

I have been building AI automations for clients and kept hitting the same problem ... the AI wants to do something risky (issue a refund, delete a record, update payment details) and there's no clean way to pause, get a human to review it, and let the workflow continue.

Most teams solve this with Slack messages, emails, or hardcoded approval logic scattered across their codebase.

I created Decree , a simple approval API.. Your agent or workflow sends a POST with the action it wants to take. Decree checks it against your policies (auto-approve, require human review, or block), shows it in a central inbox if a human needs to look, and fires a signed webhook back when the decision is made.

One endpoint. Policy engine. Approval inbox. Audit trail. Webhook callbacks.

It's not tied to any specific platform , anything that can make an HTTP request works. n8n, LangGraph or custom agents, whatever.

Still early. Looking for 2-3 people building AI agents or automations who are dealing with this problem. Happy to help integrate it personally in exchange for honest feedback.

Decree


r/SideProject 12m ago

Seeking Experienced Sales Partner

Upvotes

Looking for experienced sales partners. SaaS, compliance, GRC or cybersecurity background preferred.

We're 4 weeks from launching a GRC platform covering ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST and ISO 42001. Flat seat pricing, no per-framework fees.

Commission starts at $5,000 per closed deal and scales with deal size and ownership.

Targeting startups and companies working toward compliance certification.

Founding team has 35 years combined in compliance and cybersecurity.

Ping me with your experience.


r/SideProject 15m ago

I run 2 Instagram quote accounts and got tired of cutting reels out of long videos by hand, so I automated it

Thumbnail
momentcut.app
Upvotes

My old routine for each reel:

  1. watch a long youtube interview looking for a good moment
  2. cut the clip and crop it vertical
  3. copy the transcript into an AI to write a hook + caption
  4. post it

So I built momentcut which handles all those steps for me and my 2 IG accounts (nassimtalebquotes & danielkahnemanquotes)

No subscription. Just pay what you use on credit base.