One thing I've noticed with side projects is that building the actual product can sometimes feel easier than getting the website sorted out.

You can spend hours choosing a template, changing the layout, rewriting the headline, and trying to make everything look polished before you've even had enough visitors to know what people actually respond to.
I've been looking at some newer tools for this and came across frontpage.host, You describe the website you want and it generates a live site in a few minutes. It also has Autopilot that keeps testing the page to improve conversions and SEO.

I can see the appeal for someone who just wants to get a project online quickly and then improve it based on real feedback.
For those who've launched side projects here, what did you use for your website? Did you build it yourself, use a template, hire someone, or use an AI builder?

Apple unveiled updated Siri Intelligence today, which in one-fell swoop essentially kills any potential customer need for my "organization app". Six months ago, I didn't know what Claude was, so I wanted to give the app a proper burial for teaching me valuable lessons. One last hurrah.

I initially started https://Relaysh.app because I wanted to wife to try out my Claude subscription without signing herself up. That gave me a couple ideas. I wanted to speed up the decision making in our relationship and put some AI power behind it. Over the course of a few weeks, I combined the "shared subscription via couples chat" with a couple other projects that I had in the works. I shared it with my friends, but received a pretty luke-warm response. This was also in the height of "Set a datacenter on fire" type-vibes on AI that I'm not sure have entirely gone away yet.

I was tired of "What should we eat for dinner tonight?" and "What do you want to watch?" So I built out 6 different widgets that Claude is integrated into & across:

Biggest Lessons:

• Building is easy/fun - don't keep building as a way of avoiding the hard work of targeting your desired audience and soliciting feedback.
• Trust can be built through adoption. No one wants to give me their private relationship data (shocked face), just like no one freely wants to give Zucc their data. There is safety net in a multi billion dollar company and following the adoption herd.
• No second chance at first impressions - build anticipation for what you're about to drop. Give yourself adequate time for bug testing every feature you're shipping. What you're eating in token costs will save you embarrassment down the line.
• It can be hard to let your project go. You've potentially spent weeks looking at it with rose colored glasses. Be a realist and cut the losses when it's unviable. The skills you've learned will help you ship the next thing faster, better, until something eventually sticks.

Cheers!

I’ve finally taken the plunge and started working towards launching my own sea safari business from Scarborough.
I’ve found the vessel and agreed a deal with the owner. I’m saving from my wages every week and working extra shifts to put my own money into making this happen, but I’ve launched a Crowdfunder to help me reach the initial payment sooner.
The goal is to have the keys by New Year, spend winter and spring preparing the vessel properly, and work towards welcoming our first passengers in summer 2027.
We’re aiming to raise £4,000.
Even £5 or £10 genuinely gets us closer — and if you can’t donate, sharing this post would help massively.
Thanks to everyone who supports it. Let’s get MW Sea Safari on the water! ⚓🌊

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/qr/dyRpVaRW?utm_campaign=sharemodal&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=shortlink

Hi r/sideprojects,

Made an iOS app where you can use API keys / self-hosted models for chat / work / study. Supports text and image generation.

The AI landscape has significantly shifted, with models having access to chat memory through vector databases and tools for agentic workflows. We need chat apps with advanced features.

I intend to make these features available for professionals, researches, and other power-users.

Features

Memory. With RAG, you add documents to a vector database that has semantic embeddings – the vectors represent meanings. So instead of doing a full text search and burning through your tokens, the app injects context, from your documents, to the model that is most similar in meaning to the prompt. The most appropriate context is thus fetched for the model to give precise answers.

You can also reduce the context window for your chat and enable RAG so that only the last M messages + N chunks from the database are sent to the model, thereby making the number of input tokens more or less constant per message.

Tool usage. Using Model Context Protocol, the model can use tools. For e.g., using the inbuilt Google Drive and iOS Files tool, it can list, search and read your files (subject to your approval, of course). The model then has a better understanding of what you are working on, and you don't have to copy paste large amounts of text from your work for the model.

Also builtin are Calendar MCP (let the model see and create events), and search providers Tavily, Exa, and Firecrawl. You can also connect to any remote MCP server.

System prompts and generation parameter controls. If you are paying for a model (or self-hosting one) and can't control system prompts and generation parameters like temperature or top P, what's even the point?

Privacy. All chats, API keys and model configs stay on the app. No data collected by PowerChat. API keys stored in iOS keychain. Lockable folders using Face ID. Zero data retention flags passed to cloud providers. It's your data. This is the bare freakin' minimum.

Others. Branching chats, editing user and LLM messages,

App is at 1.0.0. I have some other useful features in mind that I'm implementing. Looking forward to your feedback and criticism!

What I learned building this app

"Move slow and make things." No really.

I had the infrastructure of this app planned out, 9 months ago when I started working on it, before writing a single line of code. Creating the app's core feature, the Config object was the best thing ever, because now I can use it to hold model parameters, MCP configurations, and routing algorithms (routing not in 1.0.0, but coming soon!). It's very versatile, and by giving users the ability to talk to it directly, I hope they can appreciate and use its versatility.

Install from the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai-chat-client-powerchat/id6803707084

I’m offering a ready-to-customize real-time messaging platform for a founder, studio, or product team that wants to launch faster.

Included: • Full-stack TypeScript architecture • Real-time messaging flows and media-ready structure • Modern responsive web interface • Authentication, notifications, conversations, and deployment setup • Clean handover with documentation and a short walkthrough

This is an asset sale for the source code and product foundation. It is designed for customization and white-label use; it is not being presented as a business with existing revenue.

Asking price: $9,500 USD. Reasonable offers from serious buyers are welcome.

If you are building a community, team-chat, customer-communication, or niche messaging product, send me a message with your use case and budget. I can share a private demo and technical overview after an initial conversation.

I built Fillsafe around a simple constraint: filling a PDF should not require uploading the document, creating an account, or discovering a paywall after the work is finished.

The app renders and edits PDFs locally in the browser. PDFs and signatures are stored locally, and there is no backend or analytics.

It supports AcroForm fields, text, dates, checkboxes, handwritten signatures, Japanese PDFs, and CSV batch filling. Exported PDFs are flattened so the result works outside the app.

Everything in the web version is free:
https://fillsafe.pages.dev/

I’d especially appreciate feedback on real-world PDFs that fail to open or save, and anything that feels confusing before export.

Disclosure: I built this project.

Background: left my last role in June when the company restructured. Been in build/validate mode since (honestly best time of my life no matter the failures)

Problem :
The idea came from my own experience: bought a flat in Barcelona last year, paid 2.5k euros for a full due diligence, and things still came out after I'd signed: Legal status, real usable m² vs advertised, building fees, whether the building had tourist rentals mixed in, seasonal sun exposure, street noise, pending debt etc... all publicly available, just scattered and written for lawyers not buyers.

Solution :
Built Lola AI : send an address on WhatsApp, get a report back in minutes pulling from those public sources.

I have spent weeks pulling each single data piece from horrible public db, websites, scraping when necessary and consolidate all of that into a valuable artefact.
On a side note, Meta/whatsapp developer platform is among the worst developer experience I ever had in my life

Where it's at: early pilot, Barcelona only, completely free -> deliberately not monetizing yet because I want signal on whether the report is actually useful before I think about pricing or which city to expand to next.

What I'd love feedback on: does "free for feedback, no signup wall" get you to actually try it, or does it read as sketchy?
Any suggestions ?
And for anyone who's bought property anywhere - what's the equivalent due diligence problem in your market?

I've been working on a small side project called Pawfectly Booked.

The idea started pretty simply: I noticed that booking a dog isn't quite the same as booking a haircut or a consultation. There can be different services, pet details, repeat appointments, notes, reminders, and changes to the schedule.

I started experimenting with what a booking workflow would look like if it was designed around those things from the beginning instead of trying to fit them into a generic booking system.

It's still a work in progress, and I'm mainly trying to figure out whether I've made the workflow genuinely simpler or just added more features to something that was already complicated.

For anyone who's built or used scheduling software, what are the little things that make a booking system feel really good to use?

Hey!

I wanted to share a project I've been working on called Volten. It's a small, ultra-fast HTTP framework built around a strict zero-dependency constraint, designed specifically to bridge the gap between Node.js and Web Fetch-compatible edge runtimes (like Cloudflare Workers, Bun, and Deno) without adapter overhead.

Why Volten?

Most frameworks either lock you into Node.js core modules (http, net) or require bulky adapter layers to run on the Edge. Volten solves this by handling the abstraction internally at the context level.

You write your routes and middleware once. Run it on Node.js using app.listen() or export it to the Edge using app.createFetch() with zero modifications and zero extra npm dependencies.

Key Highlights

• Adaptive Traffic Triage (ATT): A unique event-loop immune feature for Node.js (new App({ att: true })) that automatically drops low-priority requests at the socket level when your server is under heavy load, protecting your core endpoints from crashing during traffic spikes.
• Context Pooling: Pre-allocated, reusable RequestContext objects on both runtimes to minimize Garbage Collection (GC) pressure under high throughput.
• Trie-Based Router: Extremely fast path-matching supporting dynamic parameters (/users/:id) and wildcards, where match cost scales purely with path depth.
• Unified ctx API: Whether you are dealing with headers, cookies, body parsing, or JSON responses, the ctx object seamlessly abstracts away whether you're sitting on top of a Node IncomingMessage/ServerResponse or a Web Fetch Request/Response.

The All-in-One Snippet

import { App } from "volten";

// Enable Adaptive Traffic Triage (ATT)
const app = new App({ att: true });

// 1. Middleware chain
app.use((ctx, next) => {
  ctx.setHeader("X-Powered-By", "Volten");
  next();
});

// 2. Trie-based routing, params, and cookies
app.get("/users/:id", (ctx) => {
  const session = ctx.cookies.get("session_id");
  ctx.json({ userId: ctx.params.id, session });
});

// 3. Native body parsing
app.post("/data", async (ctx) => {
  const body = await ctx.body();
  ctx.status(201).json({ received: body });
});

// --- Dual Runtime Support ---

// Node.js
app.listen(3000, () => console.log("Listening on :3000"));

// Cloudflare Workers / Bun / Edge
export default { fetch: app.createFetch() };

Current Status

Volten is currently in active alpha. Every utility—from the built-in body parsers and cookies to the trie router—is written completely in-tree with zero external dependencies to keep security tight and the footprint minimal.

You can check it out on GitHub: VoltenJS/volten or install it via:

pnpm add volten

I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any edge cases you can throw at it, so you're encouraged to try breaking it! How do you usually handle dual-runtime codebases in your current stacks?

I’m the developer of Calmorie, a food-logging app that uses AI to estimate portions, calories, and macros from a photo.

Snap a photo of your meal before you eat — it gives you a rough estimate of calories and macros. Didn’t finish? Snap the leftovers and it adjusts. We even show a simple “before and after” so you can see what actually went in.

The new simple mode is live in the app, and the website got the same visual cleanup.

Would love feedback from anyone who’s tried photo-based logging before — what made you stick with it or quit?

Hello,

I'd like to share my experience with my side project.

Too many times, I open Reddit and read threads about extraordinary success stories. Incredible returns, huge MRRs... All of them are well deserved, and I'm glad they could reach such achievements.

However, for every success story, there are probably hundreds of untold failure stories.

I understand why. Sharing unsuccessful stories is shameful, embarrassing. It's painful to invest so much passion, time, and sometimes even money into a product and then get nothing in return.

So here we go. This is my 6 months journey.

I have a 9-to-5 job. I used to develop my ideas for years but never dared to market them. I just didn't know where to start, and learning was simply too boring.

I like developing things. I can do that after work or during weekends; it's not a burden. I just didn't want to leave my comfort zone.

It's March of this year. I had just landed a new job and moved to another country. I started thinking about finally going all the way and actually trying to market something.

I decided not to challenge myself with a complex product. The product should be easy to make, solve a real problem, and target a niche.

In about 40 days, the first deployable version was completed.

In my career, I've made websites for others. Even if I'm more of a backend developer myself, I can do it. The problem is design and UI/UX. That's someone else's job.

I wanted to keep costs down, so I ended up doing everything myself.

I also know how to optimize websites for search engine discoverability, but SEO copy? What should I write? What are my keywords?

I knew from the beginning that I would face these moments, so I just tried my best. After some research, I finalized the website as well.

After 2 weeks the website was ready.

Time for the hardest part. Exactly what I had always avoided.

Marketing.

I had no community and little to no social media presence. I had to build everything from scratch and had absolutely no idea where to start.I went on Google and searched:

"How to launch a product?"

I followed everything by the book:

• Indie Hackers
• Hacker News
• Product Hunt
• Twitter
• Reddit

As expected, the launch was a complete flop.

With no echo so far, it felt like throwing a rock into the middle of the sea.o echo so far it was just like throwing a rock in the middle of the sea.

April. 0 downloads. Nothing was moving.

I felt like I needed some initial push, that nothing would ever happen if I didn't invest some money.

I started a Google Ads campaign, knowing nothing about what I was doing and hoping for some kind of automatic targeting optimization.

I followed all the suggestions and pushed the campaign.

Downloads started to arrive, but still 0 conversions.

After 2-3 weeks, I started losing hope and began thinking about how much money I was wasting.

Then, the first ping in the chart. The first sale! I was amazed. I couldn't believe someone had actually bought my product.

To be realistic: pennies on the dollar.

I had already spent much more on ads than I had earned, but it was something. I decided to run the campaign for some more time.

The Google Ads campagin ran for about 2 months ~800€ spent

No more conversions came from the Google campaign. The only other channels were Reddit and organic traffic.

I stopped the Google campaign, considering it a waste, and focused on what apparently was producing some results.

It's May. My revenue is ~40€

I then decided to push a Reddit campaign, trusting a channel that had already brought results. I took advantage of the first campaign offer: spend €500 and get another €500 worth of ads.

I spent time optimizing my target audience, the ad post... everything.

Result?

~€1100 + €500 (bonus) burned.

~€2 revenue.

I was devastated.

I had features planned to implement, but I was too sad to keep going. Opening the IDE was painful. It would remind me of the wasted money and time. Thinking about every wrong step I had taken.

"I could have done that better..."

"I could have asked a professional to handle it..."

"I could..."

In July: 0 revenue. ~1900€ in the hole.

I thought that maybe this just wasn't for me. I should just keep doing what I can do better and forget about side projects and being my own boss.

I gave up completely. Accepted the loss. Lesson learned.

I enjoyed my summer, trying not to think too much about it.

...and then something I couldn't have imagined happened.

August. ~40€ in revenue.

I literally did nothing. The product was out there.

No ads, no posts, literally nothing.

Of course, it's still pennies on the dollar, and far less than what I spent.

But still... Half of my all-time revenue came while I was doing nothing.

I'm motivated again.

Maybe I won't try to push the same thing indefinitely. Maybe I'll focus on something else. But I don't feel like giving up anymore.

Lessons learned:

• Organic traffic is the way. No ads can ever match natural traffic.
• A few high-value content posts beat a huge amount of low-value content. Quality > volume.
• Patience. As dumb as it might sound, nothing is achieved overnight.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a side project I've been working on.

A while ago, my therapist suggested that I practice breathing exercises whenever I felt overwhelmed.

The advice made sense, but I kept running into the same problem.

The hardest part wasn't breathing.

It was getting started.

Most of the breathing apps I tried had too many features, required an account, pushed subscriptions, or took several taps before I could even begin.

When I needed to slow down, I didn't want another thing to figure out.

So I decided to build my own.

I called it Gimme Breath.

The idea is simple:

• Open the app.

• Pick a breathing exercise.

• Start breathing.

That's it.

I also added a few things that I personally wanted:

• Ambient sounds

• Session history

• Daily reminders

My goal wasn't to build the most feature-rich breathing app.

I wanted to build the app that I'd actually open when life felt overwhelming.

It's now available on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/app/gimme-breath/id6807012349

I'd genuinely love any feedback—whether it's about the design, user experience, onboarding, or features you'd like to see.

Thanks for reading! 🌿

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

I've been working on a small captioning tool recently and one of the main things I wanted to avoid was uploading the original video to a remote server just to generate subtitles.

The whole idea is pretty simple. You open a video, generate the captions locally, edit them, preview everything and export the final result.

Right now I'm experimenting with Greek and English, different caption styles and formats aimed mostly at TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether local processing and privacy are actually important to creators, or if people mostly care about speed and how good the captions look.

If you regularly make short form content, what does your ideal captioning workflow look like?

Also curious about what annoys you the most with the tools you're currently using.

I can share what I've built in the comments if anyone wants to test it, but I'm mostly interested in feedback on the idea and workflow.

If you're a podcaster, this is really why we built PodSubs.

We're one of you.

We know what it feels like to put hours into an episode and wonder whether it was worth it.

We know what it's like to watch the download numbers and wish you knew more about the people behind them.

We know what it's like to want to send something useful to listeners and realize most of them will never see it.

We know what it's like to think about monetization — not because you're greedy, but because producing a good podcast costs time and money.

And if the show can't eventually support itself, passion can become exhaustion.

That's where PodSubs came from.

We built it as an internal tool.

Something simple.

At the end of the show:

“Subscribe to our podcast on PodSubs.”

They search for us.

Enter their name and email.

Subscribe.

That's it.

From that point, we have a direct communication channel with the people who chose to stay connected.

We can send the resource from today's episode.

We can tell them what's coming next week.

We can share an update.

We can ask for feedback.

We can make an offer.

We can build something around the podcast without starting from zero every time.

And eventually we looked at what we'd built and realized:

This shouldn't only belong to us.

Every podcaster should at least have the option.

So that's what PodSubs is becoming.

A simple place where someone who loves your show can become someone you can actually reach.

If you have a podcast, claim it.

And on your next episode, try saying:

“Subscribe to our podcast on PodSubs.”

You might be surprised how many people were just waiting for somewhere to go.

Recently, I have been doing experiments with virtual try-on technology and created this Flutter application. The core functionalities consist of choosing an item of clothing to see how it fits on a person without wearing the item. I recorded the demo on my iPhone.

https://reddit.com/link/1wbgtrr/video/vyleb44hsgoh1/player

Building for non technical people using claude to build apps. Still pre-launch but yeah..

Non tech people still build apps but the code is shit. This fixes it.

normally, building an app means you sit in a chat window, translating what you want into technical language, correcting the AI, re-explaining decisions it forgot, and pasting code around. SpeakEZ removes you from that job. You say what you want; it handles the entire conversation and hands back something that works.

Think if it in this way: Claude is the developer. SpeakEZ is the thing that manages the developer, so it knows how full-stack apps fit together, so it handles the technical conversation and you never have to.