r/SideProject • • Dec 18 '25

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

95 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

650 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 • • 11h ago

I made a live meeting cost ticker. It’s very uncomfortable to watch.

206 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 9h ago

A basketball app that tracks your shooting, with just your phone

92 Upvotes

I made an android basketball app to track your shooting, with nothing but your phone.

Its still in early beta testing but it's pretty rich with features.
Accurate tracking of your makes/misses, shot locations, recorded sessions, montage video of all your makes, and more. Eventually there will be more social features to play with friends but just individual for now.

See the video (sped up 2x)

Also, currently only on android in closed testing. And i'm looking for android beta testers to give it a spin. It would be sweet if you could give it a try 🙏.

Here is the google form link - https://forms.gle/SrJPBd5CaeFYKeYH9

Fill it out and i'll send you the play store download link.😊

Upvote and comment are appreciated for more visibility.


r/SideProject • • 12h ago

I sold a voice AI agent for 20K to my FIRST BIG CLIENT

97 Upvotes

​

I’m a developer at a super small company in my town plus I do some freelance voice AI work on the side and had built small bots and agents before but nothing at this scale. A friend who knows what I do referred me to an ecom company whose support line was getting messed up coz customers call in hindi, tamil and english and their current IVR just routes everything to humans who are overloaded and many many calls drop before anyone picks up and they were getting like 4 to 5k calls a month.

They did tell me two agencies had quoted them $40k to $60k and 3 4 months so when I quoted $20k and 8 weeks they were skeptical but my friend vouched and I did a live demo on a test number which got them convinced.

I built their setup on Gnani’s websocket streaming API for STT, it handles all 3 languages plus code switching on one stream so no separate models per language. TTS is also gnani, sounds natural enough on 8kHz that I didn’t need anything on top. Telephony runs through a sip provider, calls hit my server, audio streams to gnani STT in 100ms chunks, bot processes intent and pulls order status and shipping info from their CRM API in real time and IF intent confidence is below my threshold or the query is outside defined flows it does a warm transfer to a human with the full transcript attached.

their CRM had a decent REST API so integration wasn’t that hard but I spent 3 days just mapping their order status codes to natural language responses coz they had like 14 different statuses and many of them were the same thing. The actual Gnani integration took a day tho, most of the time was on the business logic around their specific workflows.

and on top of the initial $20k they pay $3k/month retainer and I priced it as such coz I figured 10 15 hours a month for maintenance and prompt updates and it’s not 3 4 hours of easy work like I expected coz new edge cases keep coming up that didn’t exist in testing like a customer asked about a return in tamil then gave some order details in English and the bot matched the wrong order coz my entity extraction was splitting on the language switch, took me a full weekend to fix that.

Their call drop rate went from 40% to under 10% and based on my logs about 65% of calls resolve without transferring to a human, they were going to hire 4 more support agents so from their side the investment made sense on day one and they didn't even negotiate.

I’m still at my job but thinking about whether to find more clients and turn this into a proper agency or keep it as one client and collect the retainer also not sure if I can manage more while working full time but the margins are really really good.


r/SideProject • • 54m ago

I built a free pregnancy app for dads. Looking for expecting fathers to try it and tell me what’s missing

• Upvotes

When my partner got pregnant all the apps I tried was written for her. I wanted something that told me what was going on that week and what I could actually do about it.

So I built ExpectDad. It’s free on iPhone (US only for now):

  • This week: her week in a few lines, the baby’s size (eggplant, pumpkin…), and three small things you can do today, picked for how she’s feeling. “Ten-minute back rub, because she has lower back pain.”
  • Visit guides: what each appointment is, what to bring, questions to ask, and somewhere to note what you learned.
  • Gear: what you actually need and by when, with picks at three budgets.
  • Dad’s Corner: a private space to check in with yourself and plan money and leave.

No ads. Your data is yours, and you can delete it any time.

What I’m asking: try it for a week and tell me honestly:

  • What’s useful, and what’s noise?
  • What did you go looking for and not find?
  • Anything confusing, broken, or a bit cringe?
  • What else would be useful ?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/expectdad/id6818917713

Comment here or DM me, and I read everything. If you’re past the due date or it isn’t for you, a share with an expecting dad you know helps too. Thanks!


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I split my one-person business across ~17 AI agents. Here's what worked and what didn't.

7 Upvotes

Each agent gets one job, its own memory, and its own folder, and they all share files on one box. Three lessons: narrow agents beat one giant chat, asking agents to "mark anything you couldn't verify" changed how much I trust them, and once making things is cheap, finishing becomes the bottleneck (15 books built, 6 live, 0 sales so far). Full writeup with real numbers: https://blakelapierre.substack.com/p/i-run-my-one-person-business-with


r/SideProject • • 12h ago

Built a JavaScript file that plays Tetris, but turns into Snake when you format it

Thumbnail trustsig.eu
38 Upvotes

A formatter, minifier or deobfuscator can be made to turn one script into another.

You can go try out all 186 techniques with this script: https://divergence.trustsig.eu/

Or try the Tetris-Snake demo here: https://divergence-game.trustsig.eu/

Techical breakdown: https://trustsig.eu/blog/javascript-divergence/


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I built a free, simple audio editor for trimming and merging clips

20 Upvotes

I kept running into audio editors that felt overkill for one simple task: trimming and merging clips on a visual timeline. So I built Waveform.

It runs in your browser, with no sign-up or uploads—your audio stays on your device.

You can trim, split, arrange, and mix clips, then export an MP3. Longer term, I’d like to turn it into a fuller editor with AI audio enhancers, but for now I’m focused on getting the basics right.

Try it: https://realaudioeditor.com/

Would love some honest feedback. What’s one simple audio-editing task you wish were easier?


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

You built it, you launched it… now how do you actually get users?

18 Upvotes

I recently launched my first app on iOS and Android, and now I’m realizing that building it was the easy part.
How did you get your first users without an audience or marketing budget?
What worked for you—social media, Reddit, ASO, paid ads, or something else? I’d also love to hear what didn’t work and wish you knew earlier?


r/SideProject • • 6h ago

The sports API I was paying for went down, so I ended up building one

9 Upvotes

I’m working on updating my media app Surge Player, and the sports API I was paying for went down. I needed that data for the app, so that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

My solution was apparently to give myself another project lol.

I built a small API on Cloudflare Workers that pulls together scores and schedules and returns them in a consistent JSON format. There’s a shared cache so every request doesn’t have to fetch everything again, plus API keys and rate limiting.

Getting the data into a consistent shape was a decent chunk of it. Different sports have different ways of representing game status, periods, scores, and missing fields. I wanted the code using it to stay pretty similar whether it was showing football or hockey.

I called it SportyApi. Just added a little scoreboard to the homepage that automatically finds games in progress, so there’s something to play with without making an account.

I also put together a starter repo on GitHub if you want to try building something with it. It runs with sample data out of the box, so you don’t need an API key to get started.

Still early, but now I have something I can use for Surge Player, and maybe it’ll be useful to someone else.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Prism World - a social content calendar with dates, timezones and campaign status in view

5 Upvotes

I'm the maker of Prism World, a browser workspace for preparing social content. I'd like feedback on its calendar, especially when plans change after a draft has been written.

A hypothetical example: a small business moves a Saturday event to Sunday. The useful next step is more than finding a new slot. Someone needs to identify the affected drafts, check their captions, review any scheduled timing and see whether anything has already been published.

Prism World's calendar view shows campaigns and their statuses. Unscheduled drafts are labeled as drafts, and the view offers All campaigns, Scheduled and Needs attention filters. It also states the timezone used for the displayed times. The filters group existing campaign statuses. In the event-change example, a person would still need to identify and review the affected captions.

You can change timing or pause before publishing starts. Automatic delivery requires explicit saved authorization; other schedules remain manual. Each destination also has its own delivery record, so a campaign's place on a calendar is only part of the picture.

The interface question I'm weighing is where to start when something urgent changes: start with the full calendar, or make the attention filter more prominent? If you manage a small content calendar, which view helps you catch the affected work without losing the rest of the week's plan?

The workspace, calendar and media tools are available. Direct publishing still depends on the network and eligible account, with provider reviews and limited pilots in progress. The availability page lists those restrictions.

Plans start at $15/month. The seven-day trial requires a card and bills automatically unless canceled before it ends.

Product: https://getprismworld.com/

Current availability: https://getprismworld.com/availability


r/SideProject • • 41m ago

I built InstaFix to make Instagram Reels playable directly in Discord

• Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I'm a developer from Brazil, and I built InstaFix to solve a small but annoying problem: when you share Instagram Reels on Discord, you often end up with just a link instead of a playable video preview.

InstaFix is a Cloudflare Worker that generates the metadata Discord needs to display video embeds. You can replace the Instagram domain with your InstaFix domain to share the link.

🔗 Try it: https://instagfix.com
💻 GitHub: https://github.com/konojohny/instafix
❤️ Support the project on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/16979168/join

The service is free to use, and I'm still improving it. If you'd like to support ongoing maintenance and future development, Patreon contributions are completely optional.

I'd love to hear your feedback!

  • Does it work as expected for you?
  • Have you encountered any issues?
  • What would you improve or like to see added?

Thanks for checking it out!


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

My approach to building my first app, what worked, what didn’t and what I’d do differently

5 Upvotes

A few months ago I started building my first Shopify app, True2Size: Chart & Recommender. It’s a tool that helps clothing stores create size charts and recommend the right size to their customers.

I’ve recently started seeing my first real signs of success. Merchants are installing the app, people are actually using something I built and I’ve had some really interesting conversations with store owners along the way.

I’m obviously still very early in the whole process, but I wanted to share a few philosophies I’ve had since the beginning that I think have helped me a lot. And also some things I wish I’d done differently.

My first philosophy was to build something that could do everything my competitors could do, and more.

Before I started building, I spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at existing apps in the same category. I tried pretty much everything I could find, looked at their features, how their interfaces worked and what merchants were complaining about in reviews.

And instead of picking one competitor to improve upon, I wanted to take the best parts of all of them and combine them into one product.

If competitor A had a feature I really liked, I wanted that functionality in my app. If competitor B had a completely different approach to something that worked well, I wanted to offer that too. And wherever I thought something could be done better, I wanted to improve on it.

The idea was pretty simple. I wanted a merchant to be able to recreate whatever they had already set up with another app, but then have even more possibilities available to them.

In my head, this would remove one of the biggest reasons not to switch. Why would someone stay with their current app if they could do everything they were already doing, plus more, potentially for a better price?

Obviously that’s not exactly how it works in reality haha. People value familiarity, trust and not having to spend time switching software. But as a mindset for building the product, I still think it was really useful.

It forced me to look beyond what I personally thought was necessary and understand why different competitors had built certain features in the first place.

My second philosophy was that the app should feel like it was made specifically for every merchant who installs it.

I know that sounds a bit unrealistic, and to some extent it probably is. But that’s always been the mindset I’ve tried to have.

Every merchant runs their store differently. They have different products, different preferences and different ways they want things to look and function. I didn’t want someone to install my app, realize it almost does what they need and then have to compromise because a certain setting or feature is missing.

So whenever someone installs True2Size, I try to get in touch with them. I offer to help set everything up, sometimes through a call, and ask them what would make the app perfect for their specific store.

And I actually try to do something with those answers.

If someone needs a feature that isn’t there yet, I’ll look into adding it. If something is confusing, I’ll try to make it easier. And if I notice multiple merchants struggling with the same thing, that immediately becomes a priority.

I also have a habit of writing down literally every idea that comes into my head. Doesn’t matter if I’m working on the app, walking somewhere or lying in bed. If I think of something that could make the product better, I write it down.

And if I genuinely think it’s important, I try to implement it as soon as possible.

I’ve basically been repeating this process for months now. Build something, let people use it, listen to what they need, improve it and repeat.

But there’s a problem with building this way that I didn’t really expect.

At some point your app starts becoming a bit of a mess.

You keep adding features, settings, options and little exceptions for different use cases. And while every individual addition makes sense, eventually you end up with an interface that has way too many things going on.

This is where I think a completely different kind of work begins.

Instead of adding more, you have to start removing things. Or at least removing unnecessary complexity.

You start combining settings that belong together, reorganizing features, simplifying the interface and figuring out how to make all those possibilities feel like one simple product.

And honestly, I think this is one of the hardest parts of building good software.

It’s relatively easy to make something with very few features look clean and minimalistic. It’s much harder to build something that can do a hundred different things while still feeling like anyone could figure it out in a few minutes.

That’s what I’m trying to achieve with True2Size. I want merchants to have the freedom to configure everything exactly how they want, without feeling like they need a tutorial just to get started.

I’m definitely not fully there yet, but every time I simplify something without losing functionality it feels like a bigger achievement than adding another feature.

Something else I’ve learned is how valuable it is to personally help your first users.

Especially when your app has quite a few settings, don’t just expect everyone to figure everything out themselves.

Offer to set things up for them. Jump on a call, walk them through the interface and actually watch where they get confused.

I still offer this to new merchants, and those conversations have probably taught me more about improving the app than anything else.

Sometimes you’ll discover that a feature you thought was really important barely gets used. Other times someone will ask for something that seems so obvious afterwards that you can’t believe you didn’t think of it yourself.

And that’s exactly why I think getting real people involved as early as possible is so important.

Now for the things I wish I’d done differently.

My biggest mistake was waiting too long before properly marketing the app.

I was so focused on building the perfect product that I kept telling myself I wasn’t ready to start promoting it yet.

There was always one more feature I wanted to add, one more thing to fix or one more part of the interface that didn’t feel quite right.

Looking back, I think I should’ve started getting people to try it much earlier.

Because the reality is that the perfect product doesn’t exist. And even if you think you’ve built one, the first person who actually uses it will probably find something you never considered.

You need those people to make the product better.

Another thing I’d recommend is trying not to lose momentum. I personally try to never go more than three days without working on the project in some way. It doesn’t have to be a full day of coding. Sometimes it’s just fixing something small, answering a merchant or writing down ideas.

For me, once I stop working on something for too long, getting back into it becomes much harder. Keeping that momentum has helped me a lot.

And probably just as important is learning how to prioritize.

Not every idea needs to be built immediately. Even if it’s a great idea. I’ve definitely wasted time working on things I was personally excited about while ignoring things that would’ve made a much bigger difference to actual users.

I’m trying to get better at asking myself what will have the biggest impact before deciding what to work on next.

One last thing about perfectionism.

I actually think being a perfectionist can be a really good thing when building software, as long as you’re perfectionistic about the right things.
If you’re going to build something, build it properly. Think about how it’ll work six months from now, not just whether it works today.

Spending a little extra time making something reliable and easy to maintain can save you so much work later.

But don’t confuse doing something properly with needing everything to be perfect before anyone can use it.

That’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far.

I’m still figuring out a lot of this myself and I’m sure I’ll look back at this post in a year and disagree with some of my own advice haha.

But seeing something that started as a random idea slowly turn into a product that real businesses are using has honestly been one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had.

I’m curious how other developers approach this. Do you try to make your product as customizable as possible, or do you prefer keeping things simple even if that means some users won’t get exactly what they want?

And for people who’ve been building SaaS products for longer, at what point did you realize you needed to stop adding features and start simplifying what you already had?


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Indie app founders who aren’t getting many downloads, how are you currently marketing your app?

6 Upvotes

I’m interested in how smaller app founders approach marketing when they don’t have a dedicated team or a large advertising budget.

For those struggling to attract users, what does your current marketing routine actually look like?

Are you actively promoting your app everyday and trying different channels, or mostly relying on people discovering it?

And which part of the process has been the most difficult?


r/SideProject • • 17h ago

I made a website that helps you find a perfect mouse/keyboard/mousepad

58 Upvotes

r/SideProject • • 7h ago

1,000 buttons. Each can be pressed only once, ever, and you have to leave a message to press one.

7 Upvotes

buttons.mojitiles.com

A free, funny little social experiment. Pick any empty button, leave a message in it and choose a color. It stays forever. Tap any pressed button to read what a stranger left in it.

5 presses a day each. When all 1,000 are gone, the page is finished for good.


r/SideProject • • 12h ago

I rebuilt my portfolio as a Windows XP desktop, complete with a working Command Prompt

17 Upvotes

I’m a 17-year-old software engineer from Tbilisi, and I got bored of portfolios that all look the same, so I turned mine into Windows XP.

  • Bliss wallpaper, a working Start menu, and a draggable “System Properties” window
  • A real Command Prompt: try whoami, projects or open github
  • Projects in Explorer-style Tiles / Details / List views
  • Even “Turn Off Computer” works

Built with Astro and hosted on GitHub Pages: https://sababurduli.dev

Feedback welcome


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

I'm 17, and I built an AI math tutor that refuses to give you the answer

7 Upvotes

I used to copy my math homework from ChatGPT and then fail the tests. You can't cheat your way through high school, so I built the opposite.

you type or snap a math problem with your work. It finds the exact line you got wrong and asks you one question about it. Hints get bigger only if you ask, but it never gives the final answer, even if you say, "My teacher said it's fine" (people try that a lot lol).

It's free to try right on the homepage, no account: theoremed.com

would love brutal feedback on the site and the first reply you get


r/SideProject • • 48m ago

plopscotch, a knowledge + geography puzzle that is entertaining (i hope)

• Upvotes

guys ignore this playing I'm extremely terrible.

Regardless, I hope you guys enjoyed what I made, this is found on plopscotch.com and I (hopefully) want this to be comparable to something like krillion or wordle. (Let a man dream 😭 ).

There is no plans to monetize, and there is no monetization right now so yeah, also right now (because I have no users) the distribution chart & average is basically a mock, however I do average it out with more values. I did make some minor changes after taking this video, but I hope you do enjoy.

Side note: thanks so much wikidata for the data holy shit that's been a life saver as well as the map thingy saves much much much time

Also ik I'm bad at this game? But can you get higher 😉 😉 love yall!

edit PS: it is cropped video so you would be seeing more...


r/SideProject • • 59m ago

On paternity leave I wanted a GitHub contribution graph for my newborn's feedings, so I built one (and then a whole baby tracker)

• Upvotes

Our son was born at 35 weeks, so every ml counted and we were logging every feed anyway. I wanted to see it like my GitHub contributions: a square for every hour, darker when he ate more.

That turned into Milo, which my wife and I built together. The grandparents and the night nurse log from their own phones, and the favorite feature by far is the one-photo-a-day gallery (the grandparents comment on every single one).

Demo with a made-up family, no signup: https://fennimore.milo.baby/demo

It's on Product Hunt this week too. It's a side project, the price is just there to cover the Postgres bill. Feedback very welcome!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I made a nature documentary about the wildlife in League of Legends. Here's the first minute.

• Upvotes

Episode 1 is about Teemo, but it opens with a tour of the map's wildlife before the players show up and ruin it. I write it like a real nature doc, and the narrator keeps a straight face the whole time.

I pulled the map, the champions, the monsters and their animations out of the game's files and rebuilt them in three.js, so I can put the camera anywhere. A script renders every frame in a headless browser and pipes it into ffmpeg.

One episode out so far. The two bugs that cost me the most time were the river reeds glowing white (wrong color space) and the whole map coming out mirrored.

If you've never played League, does it still land? That's the part I can't judge.

Full episode (8 min): https://youtu.be/Bp5MTn4-rco


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built an uptime monitor. Free Pro plan for Redditors with code REDDIT

• Upvotes

Hey everyone, I'm the founder of Spot Downtime, an uptime monitoring tool for websites, APIs, ports, DNS and cron jobs.

To get honest feedback, I'm giving Reddit users the Pro plan free for 6 Months. Use code REDDIT at checkout.
What Pro includes:
150 monitors, checked every 30 seconds
Alerts via Slack, Discord, Teams, email
Status pages on your own domain
Every failure confirmed from 3 regions (US, EU, Asia), so no false alarms
15 team seats and 2 years of history
The free plan also stays free forever and allows commercial use.

👉 spotdowntime.com

https://spotdowntime.com/promo/REDDIT


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Turn anything you read into a note and build argument maps & connections between notes

2 Upvotes

Basically I made this thing where you can highlight anything you read and attach an idea that came to you, then you can analyze this idea and be prompted to make argument maps or further develop the idea.

Its a beta.

Yay or nay? And why?

Ps: if anyone is interested in helping me develop this idea further by testing it out, drop a dm!


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

I launched Chrome Appearance Switcher on Product Hunt today — a 100% open-source tool to toggle Chrome's actual browser UI to Dark Mode with Alt+Shift+D

4 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

I just launched Chrome Appearance Switcher on Product Hunt today, and I wanted to share the project with you all.

The Problem it Solves:

If you’ve ever tried toggling Chrome’s appearance, you probably noticed the Manifest V3 limitation: extensions can darken webpage contents, but none of them can change Chrome's actual browser frame (the tab strip, omnibox address bar, and toolbar) due to sandbox isolation. You usually have to dig into `chrome://settings/appearance` every time.

How it Works:

  1. When Chrome is set to "Device" appearance, it mirrors Windows OS theme signals.

  2. The extension uses Chrome's official Native Messaging API to dispatch `WM_SETTINGCHANGE` notifications in Windows.

  3. Chrome receives the event and repaints its active window frame instantly — zero browser restart needed.

  4. Includes a global keyboard shortcut (Alt + Shift + D) to toggle anytime from any tab.

The project is 100% free, MIT open-source, and collects zero telemetry or analytics.

🚀 Check it out and share your feedback:

* Product Hunt Launch: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/chrome-appearance-switcher

* Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/chrome-appearance-switche/giipkopljmnjmlkecknneemdkobcapnk

* GitHub Repository: https://github.com/tljafar/chrome-appearance-switcher

If you find this useful, I would really appreciate your feedback, questions, and support on Product Hunt today! 😻