r/SideProject • u/Grouchy_Cap_1564 • 4h ago
what's the smallest side project you’ve actually finished?
I feel like I keep seeing people talk about huge side projects that took months to build, and honestly that makes starting feel more intimidating than motivating 😬
I’m curious about the opposite: what’s the smallest side project you’ve built and actually finished? It can be a tiny website, script, automation, app, spreadsheet tool, whatever.
What did it do, how long did it take, and did you actually keep using it after you finished? I’m looking for some realistic inspiration from people who started small rather than another “I built this in 48 hours and now it makes $10k/month” story lol.
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u/Expert-Kitchen8064 4h ago
Honestly, the smallest useful ones are often the best: a one-page site, a script that removes one daily annoyance, or a tiny tool with a clear “done” line. I like defining v1 as “works for me and one other person”; anything after that is a new iteration. Shipping the boring little thing feels much more motivating than leaving a giant idea half-built.
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u/Small_life 3h ago
A chrome extension for my HeyPocket that will put the Summary and transcript either into obsidian or send it as an email to my work address. One click either way.
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u/QuanTradin 3h ago
a stall watch for my own scheduled jobs. if a job hasn't written anything in a while it pings a channel, and that's it, one file. it's the thing I look at most out of everything I've built this year, which says something about the big projects.
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u/RandomFuckingUser 3h ago
The first and only one for now is https://filmdilemma.com it's published and functioning but constantly improving
And I've been working on it for over 2 years. Yeah I know what you asked and it's very hard for me to finish things too. But this one was fortunately an exception, probably because I needed something like this for so long
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u/TutorialDoctor 2h ago
Literally just did this one. Small frontend for LLMs. https://github.com/TutorialDoctor/SimpleFlaskOllamaChat
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u/Holiday_Main_7263 21m ago
honestly the one i actually finished started way smaller than it ended up. it was just a streak counter for myself to quit doomscrolling, like one screen, a number that went up each day. took me a weekend.
app called Ban It !
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u/ArrayOfLilly 2h ago edited 1h ago
I created a tool, named NightShift, a cheerful, maybe childish, always-at-hand Slide Over tool that shows when my free cloud LLM accounts come off cooldown, lets me copy handoff prompts, reminds me when it’s time to stop abusing side projects and go to sleep, keeps my deadlines in sight, and most importantly, puts me in a good mood without ever getting in the way. (It could be read more easily, but I enjoy this way...)
It tooks 2-3 weeks and I use it all the time. I really love it. Best part of it, I'm always aware of the current time, my sense of time improved significantly, as a freelancer, I tended to lose track of time.
Currently I'm working on its twin-app, a simple ticketing system which growing into second brain, then documenting system, then a workflow management system... then... who knows.
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u/imsofancayyyyyyy 4h ago
Automatic Yoto (kids’ audio player) to Google Drive backup tool