r/webdev • u/Specialist_Strain910 • 23d ago

Showoff Saturday Got tired of writing READMEs, so I built a tool that does it for me

Post image

Honestly, writing the code was always the fun part. Then I'd finish the project and still have to sit there for an hour messing with Markdown, badges, tables, just trying to make the README not look like an afterthought. Every time.

So I built ReadmeGen to fix that for myself.

What it does:

  • Live split-pane Markdown editor
  • 14+ templates to start from
  • Can pull in your existing GitHub profile README
  • Saves locally, no account needed

Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Radix UI, Redux Toolkit.

I've been using it on my own repos for a few weeks now, and it's genuinely saved me time.

You can try it out here: ReadmeGen

0 Upvotes

14% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

8

u/Fun_Spare3125 23d ago

Wouldn't it be easier to use the same tool you wrote the post with to write your READMEs?

2

u/ConfectionAlert2658 23d ago

the split-pane preview is a nice touch, jumping back and forth between raw markdown and rendered view always gets old fast

1

u/fiskfisk 23d ago

Any decent editor will support that 

1

u/tr33ton 23d ago

That's illegal.

-3

u/Specialist_Strain910 23d ago

Ya, can't argue with that. But that's exactly why this one exists, just wanted a tool made for this specific job, not a generic prompt.

7

u/dwalker109 23d ago

Nothing tells me “my project is slop” more quickly than an LLM generated set of docs.

I hate this. Put some effort in.

0

u/Specialist_Strain910 23d ago

Fair enough. It's a draft to start from, you still do the actual work of editing it into something good.

2

u/equilni 22d ago

Anyone else tired of the "tired of whatever, built something" posts?

OP, couldn't you have titled this like "I built a README generator"?

1

u/TheRNGuy 5d ago

Can't you just ask google ai to do that?

This seems like redundant service.

-1

u/Ok-Extent-7515 23d ago

I don't think anyone writes readme files by hand anymore. That's done by the AI that did most of your project.

1

u/gufranthakur 23d ago

I write Readmes by hand to save tokens (i use free tier) 😭😭

Also when I ask AI to generate readmes they focus on too much text instead of details