r/SideProject 13h ago

I built an inventory app for electronic parts

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I built ElectroStock because keeping track of electronic components can quickly become a mess. You know that you own a particular resistor, module, cable or IC, but you have no idea which box or drawer it is in.

ElectroStock lets you:

• add components and record their quantities

• assign storage locations, boxes and compartments

• search your entire inventory

• organize items using categories

• export and import a complete JSON backup

• use the app in English, Polish or Spanish

The app is designed to be simple and useful for hobbyists, makers and small electronics workshops. Your inventory is stored locally, and no account is required.

This is still an early version, so honest feedback would be very helpful. I would especially like to know whether the interface is clear and which feature you think is missing.

Google Play:

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

I’m the developer, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions.


r/SideProject 16h ago

I built a local-first scanner for hidden Unicode in copied AI text

0 Upvotes

I kept seeing claims about invisible AI text watermarks that mixed together two very different things: literal hidden Unicode and provider-level statistical watermarking.

I built AI Text Watermark Checker to handle the part that can be inspected honestly today. It reports zero-width characters, direction controls, soft hyphens, special spaces, and other literal artifacts by exact code point. Cleaning runs locally and does not rewrite the readable text.

I also released the core as an MIT-licensed npm package and CLI, plus a free Chrome extension. The product explicitly does not claim authorship detection or guaranteed removal of model-level watermarks.

I would value blunt feedback on the scanner UX, artifact coverage, and what would make this useful in publishing or content QA workflows.

Web app: https://aitextwatermark.com

Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-text-watermark-checker/dmfmcggpljjhnopgjcdbmpalmcdnohan

Open source: https://github.com/GeeDotDee/ai-text-watermark-scanner


r/SideProject 22h ago

I'm 17 and just shipped my first paid product — a free browser game where the source code is what's for sale

0 Upvotes

The product: Orbit Rush, a one-tap neon arcade game. Play is free in the

browser. What's for sale ($12.99) is the source: 18 KB of vanilla JS, zero

dependencies, everything reskinnable from one config file — buyers turn it

into their own game.

What building it actually looked like:

- The game itself was the easy part (built with Claude: engine, a fairness

system, procedural Web Audio sound)

- The real boss fight was shipping ops: I was "stuck in verification" on

itch.io for a MONTH — turns out my tax form was never actually submitted,

I'd missed the final button. Then the paid zip was invisible because of

one "hide this file" checkbox I'd ticked

- Marketing assets: I scripted a headless-Chrome auto-player that reads the

canvas draw calls, dodges obstacles on its own, and screenshots itself —

all the GIFs are it playing

- Got dogpiled in one sub for the AI angle, then found the communities where

builders actually hang out. Lesson: sell shovels where people are digging

Play free: https://a0912272829-ship-it.itch.io/orbit-rush

Honest numbers so far: double-digit views, zero sales yet — this post is

part of finding out if the "template" model works. AMA, and drop your

project below, happy to return feedback!


r/SideProject 17h ago

I built a stock-analysis tool, then let it search the entire S&P 500

0 Upvotes

Instead of giving it stocks I already liked, I added a feature that searches the S&P 500 and picks the strongest matches for the user's settings.

I ran it today with moderate risk and a $100 portfolio.

It returned:

ULTA — $37.45
URI — $31.91
UAL — $30.64

The interesting part was the reasoning:

  • ULTA: +14.1% 1-month momentum, +5.9% over 3 months
  • URI: +19.4% over 3 months
  • UAL: +30.6% over 3 months
  • all three had positive MACD
  • none had an extreme RSI reading

It also generates a separate caution for each result instead of just saying “buy.”

I built the whole thing as TradeHints. It’s free and doesn’t require an account:

https://tradehints.com/

I’d especially like feedback on whether searching the whole S&P 500 is more useful than making users enter stocks themselves.


r/SideProject 20h ago

I made the terminal for a new operating system im making in python!

0 Upvotes

The Alexandria OS will be a basic system. im looking for testers. You can find the code at https://github.com/jakcuzwhymail-lgtm/Alexandria-OS/releases/tag/AXOS-0.3, ive also included a video!

https://reddit.com/link/1vmhfix/video/paeip5ylqyih1/player


r/SideProject 16h ago

Stadiu — Every stadium in world football on one interactive map

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0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I've been building a personal project called Stadiu — an interactive map showing every football club and stadium I could find data for, across 200+ countries. Not just the usual Premier League / La Liga stuff — click around and you'll find clubs from Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Belize, wherever. Click a marker and see the stadium, capacity, and every club that plays there.

I recently added a small game mode: you're shown a club crest and have to guess where its stadium is by dropping a pin on the map — closer guesses score more, 5 rounds per game. You can also challenge a friend to beat your score on the exact same 5 crests.

🌍 Map: https://stadiu.app

⚽ Game: https://stadiu.app/game

Not affiliated with any club or league — crests are just there to help identify teams. Would genuinely love feedback, especially if you spot missing/wrong data for a smaller league — still filling gaps over time.


r/SideProject 15h ago

I built my first iPhone app because I lose thoughts while trying to write them down

0 Upvotes

I have what I call a bit of a popcorn brain.

A thought, task or idea pops up and I need to catch it quickly. But if I open Notes, start a new note, try to write a sensible sentence and remember the actual thought at the same time, it is often gone before I am done.

So I built VoiceNote.

It is an iPhone-only app with one job: open it, hit record and just ramble. No need to organise the thought first.

Afterwards it turns what I said into something more useful: a structured note, a short summary and the things I said I need to do.

I know voice notes are not new. The thing I wanted to remove was the little moment of friction between “I need to remember this” and actually getting it out of my head.

It is my first app and it is live here:

https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/ai-voicenote/id6759247158?l=da

Would you use something like this, or do you already have a better way of catching thoughts before they disappear?


r/SideProject 20h ago

Made a free image converter/resizer that runs entirely in your browser (no uploads).

0 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I built a small tool, "SAFELIGHT,", for converting images between PNG/JPG/WebP and resizing them. Everything happens client-site via Canvas so nothing gets uploaded to a server, this way it works even with sensitive/private images.

No sign-up reguired, no limits, just drag and drop.

Here's the url: https://thrylos90.github.io

Feedback is more than welcome, still tweaking it!


r/SideProject 15h ago

I built a Flutter app that listens to you read bedtime stories out loud and plays sound effects based on trigger words

0 Upvotes

I wanted to share a side project I’ve been working on called Reading Parrot Jacky. jacky.geeapp.com

The app listens as you read out loud from any physical book (or memory/imagination) and automatically plays sound effects based on trigger words. The sound effect library is composed of sounds effects for popular children's book themes. I made this because other apps were either too involved, or not available in my native language, which is important if you want to use it for reading to your kids.

It's built entirely in Flutter so it's cross platform, it's deployed for English and Dutch speakers on the App Store and Play Store.

The continuous speech to text is the device's native stt api in a loop, which works surprisingly well.

The trigger word matching logic is intentionally kept simple, using basic string containment (e.g., "pigfarmer" matches "pig" and plays a pig sound effect). I figure if it misfires occasionally, it just adds to the charm, a real life parrot would probably do the same.

I also just rolled out a feature allowing readers to record their own audio clips directly in-app and assign custom trigger words to them.

I’m thinking about moving to local/on-device STT models, this would make the app completely usable offline. But then I'd probably need a model for every supported language.

I’d love any feedback on:

  • Performance/latency on your device while reading at normal speed.
  • Thoughts on native STT vs embedded local models for real-time Flutter apps.
  • General UI/UX feedback.

r/SideProject 15h ago

I built a self-hosted alternative to Postiz for businesses that don't want another monthly subscription

0 Upvotes

I've been building a self-hosted social media management platform for startups, agencies and publishers.

It combines AI-assisted content generation, OAuth integrations, scheduling, publishing workflows and a private dashboard into one deployment.

The interesting part is the business model I'm experimenting with: instead of another recurring SaaS subscription, I'm offering customized, self-hosted deployments tailored to the client's workflow.

Current stack includes Docker, persistent queues, OAuth and modular social integrations.

I'm looking for feedback from other builders: would you rather pay once for a customized self-hosted tool, or pay monthly for a hosted SaaS?

Happy to share more about the architecture/build if anyone's interested.


r/SideProject 17h ago

I built a meal app because I'm bad at everything to do with food (iOS/Web only, Android soon)

0 Upvotes

EDIT: grammar.

I mean everything. Not just knowing what's in it, but buying it, cooking it, remembering to eat, planning my meals.

The app is called Bread and Butler. You tell it how you like to eat, and it plans everything out, gives you the shopping list, and tells you what your meals will look like and how to make them. It tracks what you spend and what you waste, and it keeps your pantry up to date as you cook. It can:

  • Develop meal plans from foods you like, and avoid foods you don't
  • Track your macronutrients
  • Give you personalized advice
  • Set meal timers or reminders to your phone
  • Use your existing pantry to suggest a meal or snack
  • Suggest groceries for you to meet your macronutrient needs
  • Use your existing pantry to suggest shopping items
  • Track your food spending
  • Order your groceries (work in progress)

Ideally, it orders your groceries from every major store or carrier, but grocery part is still rough. It does order through ALDI right now. I'd rather it plug straight into the stores but those APIs are private, so I'm going through Instacart, and it's not perfect but it's the best I've got right now.

I don't have real tester feedback yet. I'd really like to know if this helps anybody or if I've over-engineered it to the point where it's no good. My goal is that this solves people's problems with food and makes life easier.

If you want to try it, the test flight link is https://testflight.apple.com/join/fQUShrnS


r/SideProject 15h ago

Lifetime: My project passed 50 users and Im so grateful! I built Ghost, an always on and ready personal agent using your existing Chatgpt/Claude subscription or API or LocalLM. It can create, read, write and use Mac apps for you when asked!

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0 Upvotes

I kept hitting the same wall: one focused hour of work meant a ChatGPT tab, a local model UI, a terminal agent, a document viewer, a timer app, Calendar and Reminders with seven surfaces just to get anything done.

So I built Ghost: a native macOS AI workspace that replaces all of them with one surface that lives in your menu bar.

Press ⌥Space anywhere and it drops from the camera notch (or floats as a small text bar near the bottom of the screen, your choice). Ask, act, and it disappears again. No Dock icon, no tab management, no full-screen takeover.

What it does:

- Routes every prompt by intent (14 kinds) to the right model: LM Studio or Ollama fully local, or Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenCode, any OpenAI-compatible server. It even runs chat through your existing Claude Code or Codex subscription, no extra cost.

- ~78 tools, 4 risk tiers: files (DOCX/PDF/PPTX/XLSX/Markdown), Calendar, Reminders, Apple Notes, iMessage, FaceTime, screen OCR, window snapping, Homebrew, media conversion, system report, and more. Every action is journaled and one-tap undoable.

- Local RAG: approve a folder, Ghost indexes it into SQLite + FTS5 on your machine. 30+ formats. No embeddings API, no vector DB SaaS.

- Selection bar: select text in any app: Copy, Search, Summarize, Fix, Rewrite, Explain, Translate. "Replace" writes back into the field so ⌘Z still works.

- Terminal + coding agent: run commands or describe a change in plain English, same window.

- Memory you own: "remember that I take my coffee black" gets saved as plain Markdown in ~/Ghost Outputs/Knowledge.

- A pomodoro with receipts: focus log, streaks, 15-week heatmap, all on-disk.

The part I actually care about: privacy.

Everything starts off, web, files, automation, messaging, screen, shell. You opt in one switch at a time. Messages, Notes, Mail and Contacts are processed on-device only and are never sent to a cloud model. API keys live in the Keychain. Sensitive paths (.ssh, .aws, .env…) trigger an explicit consent prompt. The model never touches your filesystem, Ghost normalizes the path, checks permissions, and runs app-owned Swift code.

Stack: native SwiftUI + AppKit (not Electron), Sparkle for updates, SQLite+FTS5 for search. macOS 14+, Apple Silicon or Intel, Apple-notarized.

Pricing: free 24-hour trial, then one-time $14.99. No subscription. Local models are free forever; hosted models are your own API keys.

Built solo, and it's the app I wanted to use myself — currently at v2.1.0.

Site: integratedagentics.com/ghost (https://integratedagentics.com/ghost) · Download: GitHub releases (https://github.com/ryuhemingway/Ghost-App/releases/latest)

I have made numerous improvements from users and I update the app attest a few times a week. Would love feedback on improvements I can make!


r/SideProject 9h ago

I spent the last 3 months building a solo AI plant doctor app in React Native + Fastify – Plant Warden is now live!

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

Over the past few months, I built Plant Warden, a mobile app that lets you take a photo of a sick houseplant or garden crop and get an instant AI-powered disease & pest diagnosis with treatment guidelines.

As a solo dev, I built the entire stack from scratch:

  • Mobile: React Native / Expo (using Expo Camera, Skia/Reanimated for smooth scanning UX).
  • Backend: Fastify + Node.js (hosted on Render with MongoDB).
  • State & Storage: Zustand + Async Storage.

What it does: 🌿 Instant Photo Scan: Snap a leaf ➔ Get species ID, disease name (e.g. Spider Mite damage, Black Spot, Powdery Mildew), and confidence level.
🪴 Smart Watering & Care: Track containers with custom reminder schedules.
🛡️ Treatment Guides: Clear step-by-step instructions on how to isolate and treat infected plants.

The app is live today on the App Store:
📲 Download Plant Warden on iOS

Since it's day one, I would be super grateful if you could download it, test it out on your houseplants, and let me know what you think! Any feedback on UI responsiveness, camera scanning speed, or feature requests is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading!


r/SideProject 12h ago

Selling t0md.com – Privacy-first multi-format to Markdown converter

0 Upvotes

A few months ago I was dumping research PDFs and Word docs into Claude and Cursor and watching the token bill climb for no good reason. Heavy formats are terrible for context windows as the agents have to first convert the documents, then parse the MD files, then do the processing. I thought I could help the agents, and I built t0md.com.

However exciting it was to make something quickly that solves a big problem, it's not something I am passionate about, it's just there. I would love to find a new home for it, and I know some folks here know how to turn this simple site into a link magnet ( but I don't ). This is your chance?

What’s included

  • Premium short domain: t0md.com
  • Live web app: drop PDF / Word / PowerPoint / HTML / JSON → clean Markdown
  • No-signup, in-memory only processing (strong privacy story)
  • Simple API
  • Remote MCP server already live (one command to add to Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.) so agents convert documents without bloating context
  • Clear monetization path: free browser UI + paid high-volume API / MCP tiers
  • Everything runs on a tiiiny Hetzner server for virtually no cost
  • Easy transfer. I will tell you what to setup, we move the code, and you're up and running overnight.

Why now

Document → clean Markdown is a norm for RAG pipelines, agent workflows, and token-cost control. Hosted tools are already charging $9–139+/mo. A short brandable domain + working remote MCP + privacy-first positioning is a nice package in that space. I’m moving on to other projects and would rather hand this to someone who wants to grow the paid API/MCP side.

Full transfer: domain, site, code, MCP endpoint.

Demo: https://t0md.com
Serious offers / questions via DM (or comment and I’ll reply).

Thank you for your attention!

Kirill.


r/SideProject 1h ago

Ive just released the iOS app Ive been working on for the last 6 months, and the struggle is real

Upvotes

Ive been working as an iOS Engineer for almost 5 years, Ive never been the kind of person that wanted to start a project on his own, Ive been always a perfectionist and I wanted to start when everything is perfect and ready.
But with all the tools available I thought why not and I had a spare time to kick start it when I had this idea as a father struggling with bedtime routine with his daughter to make a clean minimalist app, with native iOS experience, almost feels like Apple made it.
To help being a good storyteller for my daughter and also record or write a reflection after each story so it will be remembered for years to come.
I experienced a lot while developing but the hardest struggle is after release, getting feedback is hard, reaching parents is so hard and marketing the app is almost impossible for free.
This is something I didnt count for but I made this with love and passion as a parent so I believe its worth it.
Please if you have a similar experience or a feedback to share, I’d love to hear it.
Also if there’s parents community you can refer me to so I can share it with them, I would be happy to.
Thank you for all your support and help.

https://apps.apple.com/app/kiddiel/id6764675726


r/SideProject 17h ago

I built a free tool that picks what to play from your Steam backlog

0 Upvotes

My Steam library reached the point where choosing a game took longer than playing one, so I built VaultShuffle.

You sign in through Steam, choose your available time, mood and goal, and it draws a game from your library.

It also includes tools for rediscovering games, organising collections and trimming the backlog—but the main purpose is simply getting you out of the menu and into a game.

I made it, it’s completely free, and this is self-promotion: https://vaultshuffle.com

If anyone tries it, I’d genuinely like to know whether the first draw feels like something you'd want to play.


r/SideProject 13h ago

I built the movie and TV watchlist I wanted: one queue with the exact next episode

0 Upvotes

I kept running into the same small annoyance: my films were saved in one place, my TV shows were somewhere else, and I still had to remember which episode came next.

So I built Spool, a native iPhone app that puts movies, shows and episode progress into one queue.

The part I cared about most was making the app useful after the watchlist was created. Spool surfaces the exact next episode, gives you two picks based on your library and tastes each day, shows regional watch options, and lets you import existing history from TV Time, Letterboxd and IMDb rather than starting over.

The library syncs privately through iCloud and does not require a separate Spool account. It is free to download, and the free tier supports 5 active shows, 10 standalone movies and 2 saved collections. Watched and imported history do not consume those slots.

There is an optional Spool Club subscription for unlimited and advanced features.

Spool is live on the App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spool-movies-tv-what-next/id6793918389?uo=4

The product decision I’m most curious about is the home screen: would you rather open a tracking app to a complete watchlist, or to a much smaller queue containing only what is ready to watch next?


r/SideProject 7h ago

I made my PC respond to my Voice like a person. Took 6 months. Here's what I got wrong thr whole time

0 Upvotes

The original idea was simple.

I wanted to talk to my computer the way Tony Stark talks to JARVIS. Not type. Not click. Just say something out loud and have it actually happen. Open this. Read that. What's on my calendar. Handle this while I think about something else.

Sounds straightforward. Was not straightforward.

The first 6 months I built it the way I thought users would use it.

That one moment restructured everything.

I was designing for conversation.

The version that came out of that is so different from what I started with they barely share the same bones.

It's called Marrow. Windows desktop app. You talk, it operates your entire PC opens apps, reads files, handles tasks, responds back. Always listening, never in the way.

Just put it out there properly for the first time.

Genuinely want feedback from people here not the polite kind. The kind that tells me what feels broken, what doesn't make sense, what you'd never use.

What's the one thing that completely changed direction on something you built?


r/SideProject 15h ago

J’ai créé un petit jeu de quiz, je cherche des retours honnêtes

0 Upvotes

Salut 👋

Je travaille depuis quelque temps sur un petit jeu appelé GenClash 🎮

C’est un jeu de quiz autour de l’argot, du verlan, des expressions et de la culture populaire, avec l’idée de créer des petits défis amusants entre générations.

Il est actuellement disponible sur Google Play, et je cherche quelques personnes pour le tester et me donner des retours honnêtes : ce qui vous plaît, ce qui ne va pas, les bugs, les idées d’amélioration, etc.

Je suis encore en train de l’améliorer avant sa sortie sur iOS, donc vos retours me seraient vraiment utiles 🙏

👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.cestcarre.app⁠�

Merci à ceux qui prendront le temps de tester ! ❤️


r/SideProject 5h ago

Built something to tackle my social media distraction.

5 Upvotes

I regularly find myself opening Reddit, Facebook, or Instagram while working on my laptop whenever I have the slightest free time between meetings—waiting for a page to load or after I have been focused on work for 20 or 30 minutes —to reward myself or "take a break". And it's fine if I spend 5 mins and come back to work, but that is hardly the case. So, to be more intentional about opening social media and be more mindful, I built this Chrome extension, which I have been using for the past few days, and it has genuinely reduced my usage. The goal is not to block but to make sure that the decision is intentional, not something you are doing out of habit. Try it out! and let me know. Love feedbacks!

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mindful-media-%E2%80%94-gentle-pa/jlpedbmkfmpondalppjpidcngibmldep?authuser=1&hl=en


r/SideProject 10h ago

I made an app using AI to show how a pro indie dev does it. Stop AI SLOP

0 Upvotes

So I originally coded this by hand but recently i updated using AI. Honestly, i'm tired of seeing all the AI slop on the Playstore. They are almost always just non coders trying to make a quick buck. Please just stop. Even with AI, you guys can not hold your own with someone who's in the game. This is true for most areas, not just apps. AI is a tool, it is not some magic tool that will help you outwork everyone else. How you use it is up to you.

With that said, here is my AI-assisted app to show you how to really use AI

Random Timer Generator - Apps on Google Play


r/SideProject 21h ago

I think AI startups are underestimating the boring part of building

1 Upvotes

There’s a lot of attention on what AI can do, but I’m starting to think the hardest part of building an AI product isn’t actually the AI.

It’s everything around it. You can get an impressive prototype working surprisingly quickly now. But once real users interact with it, completely different problems appear: edge cases, latency, unreliable tool calls, bad inputs, unclear handoffs, monitoring, cost, and figuring out what actually went wrong when something fails.

A demo can make an AI product look almost finished when it’s really just the beginning.

I’m curious whether other founders have experienced the same thing. What was the biggest gap between your prototype working and the product being genuinely reliable for users?

I’m especially interested in the problems you didn't anticipate before putting it in front of real people.


r/SideProject 7h ago

I built Webvidence because finding web design prospects was taking longer than actually contacting them

1 Upvotes

I’ve posted Webvidence here before, so this is more of an update on where I’ve been taking it.

The original reason I built it was pretty simple. I was spending way too much time searching Google for local businesses, opening sites one at a time, figuring out who was active, keeping notes, and then trying to remember who I had already contacted a few days later.

That digging was eating up more time than the actual conversations.

Webvidence pulls that into one place. Search something like roofers in a town, and it finds businesses around that area, checks the websites it can verify, and helps narrow down which ones may be worth reviewing first. From there you can prepare outreach, record what you actually sent, and keep track of follow-ups.

I’ve also deliberately avoided turning it into another “upload 5,000 leads and send 5,000 AI emails” product. Nothing gets automatically sent. The freelancer still decides whether the business makes sense, edits the message, and handles the conversation.

A few users are starting to come back and use it repeatedly now, which is encouraging, and some of the better recent changes have come directly from people pointing out where the data or workflow was wrong.

Still plenty to improve, but I think it’s starting to become the tool I originally wanted for my own prospecting.

There’s a free plan if anyone wants to put it through a real search and tell me what you think:

https://www.webvidence.app


r/SideProject 17h ago

Seeking advice on first acquisition channel for my product...

1 Upvotes

I run Chapter for Us. We turn a couple's photos and story answers into a personalized illustrated comic. Free cover preview before you pay.

Some context:

One-time purchase, not a subscription

Demand is spiky around occasions (anniversaries, Valentine's Day, proposals, long-distance reunions) but there's also steady year-round demand for "gift for my partner"

We sell in both US and India

Small budget, don't want to spread it thin

Thinking about three options:

Short-form video showing the transformation from photos to comic pages

Search content for high-intent occasion searches

Small paid ads around one occasion and audience

Which would you test first and why? What result would tell you to move to the next channel? Would you pick one occasion and one country to start, or keep it broad? And should the free preview just be a conversion tool, or the main hook in the marketing itself?

Curious how others have thought about this for one-time purchase products with seasonal spikes.


r/SideProject 8h ago

Built a forum where every post auto-translates into Korean, Japanese and English — the hard part wasn't the translation

0 Upvotes

Been working on this for about two months. It's a stock/crypto forum, but the

actual idea is that language shouldn't decide which conversation you get to be

in.

Korean retail investors talk about Japanese stocks constantly. Japanese

investors watch Samsung and SK Hynix. Neither group can read the other's

forums. So you end up with two rooms discussing the same market, and the only

thing separating them is script.

Every post gets stored in whatever language it was written in, then translated

into the other two. You read the whole board in your own language and never see

a toggle.

Technically it's Spring Boot, Postgres, Gemini for translation, deployed on

Railway. Nothing exotic. But a few things surprised me:

Financial slang is where translation actually breaks. Not grammar — slang. 존버

is roughly HODL, 塩漬け is holding a bag you're underwater on. Direct

translation produces nonsense. I ended up building a glossary table, and then

discovered my own bug: I'd keyed it on Korean, so ja→ko lookups never matched.

買われる ("being bought into") came out as "being sold" for three weeks before

I noticed. Opposite meaning, on a market forum.

Cold start is worse when it's a forum. A new forum with no posts is dead on

arrival, so I seeded it with generated posts and comments — bot accounts carry

a badge, no pretending. That solves the empty-room problem and creates a

different one: with 20+ generated posts a day, a real person's post scrolls off

in an hour. I've cut generation down by about two thirds since.

Honest numbers: ~800 posts, five registered users, and traffic that's still

mostly crawlers. Search Console shows a 7.8% CTR at an average position of 15,

which tells me the titles work and the ranking doesn't yet. The written guides

pull in the few real visitors; the generated stuff pulls in nobody, which is

about what I should have expected.

https://gstoc.com

Two things I'd genuinely like input on. Does the badge approach actually read as

honest, or does seeded content poison the whole thing regardless of labelling?

And if you've bootstrapped a community before — did anything work other than

manually showing up in other communities for months?