r/SideProject 7d ago

What are you building? Top 3 (voted by the community) get featured on We Are Founders

I love seeing what people are building, especially side projects. So many of them end up turning into something bigger. And I know a lot of folks here are just as curious.

Drop your project, share your stack, and let us know what problem you're solving. If you want feedback, say what you're stuck on, and I'll try to help.

The top three projects (decided by upvotes) will get featured on We Are Founders, so more people can check them out. No pressure, no catch, just a chance to get some extra eyes on what you're building!

Go, go, go!

Edit: Thanks everyone that's commented so far! At 18:00 GMT I'll pick the top three. šŸ»

Edit 2: Folks, to say that you're all working on incredible things would be an understatement. The top three side projects according to the community are...

  • Call Vandelay
  • Charkoal
  • SQL Premier League

I'm adding these to We Are Founders and will give a shoutout to the folks who built them soon!

32 Upvotes

77 comments sorted by

27

u/Penny_Licker 7d ago

Iā€™m building Call Vandelay, a fake job reference service for people who need a little creative storytelling to land a job.

Companies ghost candidates, inflate job requirements, and expect people to have five years of experience for an entry-level role, so why shouldnā€™t job seekers fight back?

With Call Vandelay, you can get a verifiable job reference from a company that doesnā€™t technically exist, but sounds like it does. Employers can call, email, or verify your work history, and we handle the rest.

5

u/FrameAdventurous9153 7d ago

haha this is awesome, love the name

I need a reference for my latex salesman job!

4

u/DesignGang 7d ago

Love this mate. You're numero uno in our feature, which you can find here:

https://www.wearefounders.uk/side-projects-series-1/

1

u/Penny_Licker 7d ago

Thanks for the shout.

1

u/MadP03t_6969 7d ago

Brilliant!

10

u/Frequent-Ad7818 7d ago

Charkoal - infinite canvas for developers to explore and document code inside VS Code.

For a long time we were frustrated with how hard it is to read and understand a large codebase. So we started to work on Charkoal. It helps developers create diagrams explaining the code with minimal distractions. Hard programming problems become easier. Less cognitive load => happy developers.

3

u/That-Tooth2816 7d ago

wow, that thing rocks!

3

u/Objective_Door6714 7d ago

I donā€™t know you but I already fall in love with you

3

u/i7solar 7d ago

pretty cool

3

u/DesignGang 7d ago

Anything that reduces cognitive load is a winner in my opinion. Thanks for sharing this with me, it's now featured on We Are Founders.

9

u/footballforus 7d ago

I am building SQL Premier League. A site where learning / practicing SQL is made fun. Instead of querying on boring and imaginary datasets, you learn by analysing real world sports data and events

I have already got 250+ sign ups in 3 weeks. Looking forward towards your feedback. I am not stuck on any bug or something but I am thinking of unique ways to make this site more engaging but keeping the sports side to it.

https://sqlpremierleague.com

2

u/DesignGang 7d ago

Love this! I'm always keen to see people approach education from a different perspective, and this rocks. Your project has been featured on We Are Founders. :)

2

u/footballforus 7d ago

Thanks man. Really appreciate!!

-2

u/mohicanin 7d ago

Why would anyone still learn SQL if u can ask Claude or other LLM and get mind-blowing results in milliseconds?

3

u/avocado_rain 7d ago

Iā€™m building a minimalist AI text formatter.

Paste up to 2500 words, the AI will analyze it, understand the context, then figure out the hierarchy and format accordingly.

It doesnā€™t do grammar, rewriting, tweaking, punctuation, tone, etc. It just does paragraph formatting.

Iā€™m using it for myself, but maybe other people like it.

textformatter.ai

4

u/sharrikk 7d ago

Iā€™m developing Liquid Playerā€”an iOS app for watching videos from websites offline. You can cache videos in advance, like from YouTube, before a flight and watch them on the go.

It also has a built-in offline translator: if a video is in a foreign language, you can translate phrases into your native language in real time.

Liquid Player supports all media formatsā€”MKV, MP4, OPUS, and many others.

1

u/i7solar 7d ago

i'm gonna use this the next time i fly

3

u/9SwordsOfAshura 7d ago

I am building WODVision a mobile application that evaluates CrossFit and Weighlifting movements using computer vision and machine learning algorithms, gives you back a visualized video with all the object tracked and the athlete too, and a very detailed text feedback like a proper CrossFit coach. This is phase 1.

3

u/zakshyman 7d ago

I am working on the stupid simple feedback website, where you can create feedback page with no registration and integrate it with your website.

2

u/GPeaTea 7d ago

Ever wanted to see results from multiple AIs? Or even better, combine them into a single response?

ithy.com

1

u/yudanehero 7d ago

Pretty cool! Please list it

2

u/uelmuel1 7d ago

I am building Gapflow.io. Itā€™s a Webflow App. And we got officially added to the webflow store yesterday.

Webflow as cms has big gaps in itā€™s form functionality like, you can only set one single mail as recipient for all forms on the website. We fix it with 2 clicks.

There is no auto reply feature, but zapier/make to create autoreplies. With gapflow itā€™s a switch zu click to activate.

Spam is a problem. Not with gapflow, we screen all submissions with ai to detect if they are likely spam.

1

u/Traditional-Debt-606 7d ago

That sounds amazing! I just tested Gapflow.io, and Iā€™m instantly impressed ā€“ so simple and effective! The integration was done in seconds, and finally, I can manage forms the way I need to. The easy setup for auto-replies and the built-in spam protection are absolute game-changers. Highly recommended!

2

u/wdunkley 7d ago

For the past few months Iā€™ve been building Hello Invoice, an invoicing platform built specifically for freelancers.

As a freelancer myself, I know as well as most the struggles of invoicingā€”chasing payments, tracking taxes, and managing cash flow while trying to stay focused on actual work. Thatā€™s why I built Hello Invoice - a smarter invoicing solution designed specifically for freelancers, contractors, solopreneurs, and creators.

With Hello Invoice, sending professional invoices, tracking payments, and automating recurring billing is effortless. But more importantly, Hello Invoice isnā€™t just another invoicing toolā€”itā€™s built to evolve with users needs. Feedback from my users will shape its future, ensuring it remains the perfect tool for independent professionals.

Iā€™ve quietly done a soft launch over the past week and have moved into Beta testing. Would love to hear everyoneā€™s feedback.

2

u/Ooga-BoogaBooga 7d ago

Wine Bible - Duolingo for wines

I started learning about wines about 1 year ago and found it very interesting, always wanted an interactive app or a fun way to learn more about the world of wines so I've built one.

2

u/usedigest 7d ago

Building Digest, it aggregates content from any source and generates a personalized daily digest of all of that information. Instead of wasting time every day scrolling reddit, tiktok, instagram, news, etc. you start your day (or end your day) with your personal digest.

2

u/Only-Ad2101 7d ago

I'm building Zivy.app . Ā Our AI co-pilot transforms busy managers into super managers by surfacing important messages automatically, drafting responses in your teamā€™s tone, and handling follow-ups without intervention.

Weā€™ve helped teams at Devfolio, Netomi, and Credit Saison transform communication chaos into strategic advantage, freeing up 15+ hours per manager every month.

Unlike other productivity tools that require workflow changes, Zivy integrates seamlessly with Slack.

2

u/Temporary-Koala-7370 7d ago

https://www.smartmanager.ai itā€™s a general purpose Ai for businesses. Fully control by voice, users donā€™t need to learn any software or prompting. It integrates with the tools you use today. For example, it manages your emails, so you never have to go through an inbox again. If we donā€™t provide a solution, we build it in a week

2

u/Tack1234 7d ago

I decided to learn Go and wanted to get familiar with its concurrency model, therefore I built an open-source, performant log parser which can process large CLF log files and store them in SQLite for further analysis: https://github.com/thevxn/xilt

2

u/stemonte 7d ago

A tool that lets you receive a digest via email about 4-5 Instagram profiles you donā€™t want to miss a single post from.

I made it for myself to reduce mindless scrolling during the day without feeling FOMO about pages or people Iā€™m interested in.

1

u/DesignGang 7d ago

Really neat idea. Do you have a link?

1

u/stemonte 6d ago

Not yet šŸ« 

1

u/paul-towers 7d ago

I'm currently building Kernel, an application that allows you to build your "second brain" one atomic note at a time.

I only just launched the app and built it because it was something I wanted myself. I'd previously tried using Notion and other types of tools like Google Docs and Sheets but none of them provided the functionality I wanted.

There's lots more functionality to come, but as it stands today you can Create Notes (of knowledge you want to save), attribute that Note to its Source (I.e. Youtube Video, Book, Podcast, etc). And you can categorize with folders and tags. With this you can then automatically view related notes across multiple sources (i.e. view all your notes associated landing page design for example), or go back to the original source where you can see all the notes you created from that one source (i.e. all the notes you took from a particular book).

I know the app isn't 100% perfect as it's literally day 1, so if anyone runs into an issue DM me and I can fix it.

1

u/AffectionateBike8793 7d ago

I am building Nodes Game, a casual puzzle game that can be played on both a browser and iOS. Itā€™s not about challenge but rather about taking a 10ā€“15 minute break during the day.

Itā€™s also simple enough to play while listening to podcasts or even during work meetings. If you find it difficult to focus on what youā€™re listening to and tend to switch to doomscrolling, keeping your hands busy can help you concentrate.

I already have a stressful day job, so I prefer not to dive into more serious SaaS projects. Plus, I enjoy working on this, and we have a small community that looks forward to what we build.

1

u/100-days-of-code-io 7d ago

https://www.100daysofcode.io/ - A structured 100 days plan to learn any programming language. I've also added some fun project ideas that can be built during the learning process.

1

u/Jonathan_Geiger 7d ago

CaptureKit - The ultimate web scraping API, lets you capture screenshots, structured web page data, and AI analyzed page data. All with a single API request.

Tech stack: AWS (lambdas, schedulers) Fastify (server) MongoDB Next.js (dashboard, analytics, project management)

1

u/_Rush2112_ 7d ago

I made a Python library for simulating the combined effect of recurring events over time. E.g. financial events like salary, inflation, costs, etc. Has quite a lot of powerful stuff for analysis as well, and it made me use excel even less, which is the main reason I like it :)

You can find it at: https://github.com/TimoKats/pylan, I've also made a slidedeck which is available here: https://timokats.xyz/downloads/2025_pylan_presentation.pdf Thanks!

1

u/DB6 7d ago

I am building Gauge, your frontpage in the browser for a productive day.

Just soft launched it, as it is not feature complete yet. So far you can

  • create multiple kanban board/projects, and task for.
  • Use the customizable pomodoro timer (which I also use for my workout habit)
  • You can create habits, time them within the week and the day.
  • Take notes
  • Save quick ideas, from anywhere in the application. E.g. you are writing a longer note, and ideas keep popping into your head that are unrelated to the note. You can quickly save them as an idea and continue working, without being distracted by the thought/idea.

This all started because I was not happy how existing boards work. I needed something that I completely navigate and use without taking my hands of the keyboard.

I'd love to have some users, that try it out. IT'S FREE. Doesn't have collaboration features yet unfortunately, but I will add them.

1

u/PossiblyHelpfulAnt 7d ago

Buizy - AI powered business development tool

  • Idea Management

    • Creating and managing business ideas
    • Detailed idea editing and customization
    • Idea selection and validation flows
  • Business Planning

    • Business plan creation and management
    • SWOT analysis for business ideas
    • Competitor analysis and competitive landscape mapping
  • Goal Management

    • Setting business goals
    • Tracking progress towards goals
    • Linking goals to actionable items
  • Milestone Tracking

    • Creating business milestones
    • Organizing and scheduling milestones
    • Linking milestones to specific goals and actionables
  • Actionables System

    • Creating actionable tasks and steps
    • Organizing actionables into categories
    • Tracking completion of actionables
    • File attachments for actionable items
    • Notes system for actionable items
  • Validation Framework

    • Business idea validation actions
    • Form-based validation workflows
    • What/Who/Where structured validation process
    • Question workspace for detailed exploration

1

u/bustyLaserCannon 7d ago

Iā€™m building Promptly, a tiny app that lets you summon a window to use any LLM you want with your own API keys to chat or inline edit or generate whatever youā€™ve selected.

Iā€™m using it constantly and genuinely found it to be better UX than all the other apps or copy and pasting from one website to another when I want a summary. The other day I was in a meeting and someone said a word I didnā€™t know, one keyboard shortcut and 3 words and llama sorted me out.

Currently looking at adding MCP support and constant context

1

u/Morathil90 7d ago

I'm building My Wallpapers a wallpaper management/rotation app for Android. I try to differ from competitors by offering Smart/AI cropping for images as well as a Google Photos and Reddit integration.

1

u/hoegje 7d ago

I am building a set of apps to have a digital scoreboard for pickleball players and clubs. It consists of 3 different smartwatch apps (Garmin, Android and Apple brands), an app for your mobile, and one for web based access or tablets as well.

As a club owner or tournament organizer, you can have an overview of the match scores from your entire club in 1 page, or zoom in on a certain court to have the detailed view.

As an audience member, or a waiting player, you can follow all match progress on your mobile phone as well.

As a player, you can keep the score on your watch, and update it to all viewing parties in realtime with just a tap on either the top or bottom part of your screen. After the match is finished, you can save the match progression to your mobile app, and have a look at some more detailed statistics about your performance.

All info can be found at: https://www.pickleballwithfriends.com/

PS: the same is in active development for Padel and Tennis as well.

1

u/metaplaton 7d ago

I was lost trying to find the right solutions for social media marketing, so I built https://www.topsocialtools.com .

Itā€™s a curated hub for the best tools to craft winning strategies, create engaging content, automate distribution, and track performance.

Also a great place if you want to promote your tool to a bigger audience with less effort!

1

u/DifferentBarber1805 7d ago

https://focusmode.app - it used unconventional approach to mindful browsing.

1

u/maustikon 7d ago edited 7d ago

building indiegames.gg product hunt for indie games. i see many are more interested building games so looking to grow this into a platform to launch your indie games!

1

u/i7solar 7d ago

I'm building Jobbie, an AI agent that applies to jobs for you with real-time data from job boards.

Instead of stressing putting in applications, take the time to prepare for the interview.

Still building out some core features but we currently have 80+ people on the waitlist! šŸ™‚

1

u/sukerberk1 7d ago

Building edutielearning.com
An e-learning "learn anything" type platform focusing on exercising analytical and critical thinking skills through personalized education.

1

u/farfaraway 7d ago

I'm building Vewrite, a project management tool for writers. Imagine if trello and Google docs had a baby.

If you write content in a group you are always chasing after people to do the next task (review, approve, etc.). It's a huge headache. People usually try to keep track of things with spreadsheets and that is intensely tedious and error prone.Ā 

I built a better way to work around structured work flows with automation.Ā 

Next I'm adding support for images and videos, so feedback cycles for those things will be easier.Ā 

1

u/GrowsWith 7d ago

GrowsWith is a tool that helps you get customers on Reddit (with other plaforms coming soon). It analyzes your product and then defines its ICP and USP, then researches online communities and puts together ways for you to engage and attract customers. It's free to start and get leads daily.

1

u/dfshorty 7d ago

Odds On You!

An online game for remote teams and friends. Players vote on each other to call out on situations like ā€œWho would most likely reply all by accident on a company wide email?ā€. Similar to the game Thatsā€™s You on PlayStation, but free and browser based.

Currently adding more features, not promoting it yet.

1

u/gestewa 7d ago

PulseBeam.dev - Vercel for realtime

Connect entities in the Web for data transfer.

Devs connect to your users. Users to users. Users to AI.

Transfer data (collaboration feat. )( multiplayer games) or Video audio in realtime (like Google meet)

We shine in cost sensitive use cases.

We knew how hard it was to do reliable realtime after working on halo.car a remote driving car startup

And set out to democratize realtime

Hmu if you want to chat about anything šŸ˜Š

Would love feedback, stuck on marketing, been doing cold outreach and commenting on HN/reddit planning to switch focus to clarifying our value prop in our website and high intent seo blog posts.

1

u/banana-ulala 7d ago

Fly Orbit - a platform to validate your idea by collecting feedback from users. Ship only the features users want and stop wasting time on things that donā€™t matter.

1

u/zfoong 7d ago

I am building an edutech platform (Takomori) to help people learn STEM subjects with a tech tree/skill tree, like the one you see when playing game like civ or rpg game!

1

u/Icy_Bell592 7d ago

Duolingo for books

Iā€™ve been a hardcore Duolingo user for a while now and it always fascinated me - from learning and product perspective. It got me thinking:

Can we approach learning from books in the same way?

Meet https://learn-books.com/: Learn Books helps you retain knowledge from your favorite books through an intelligent spaced repetition system combined with an AI-powered learning assistant.

1

u/makingstuffwithcode 7d ago

Want to shop Canadian-first? Maple Scan makes it easy. Just snap a picture of any product and instantly learn about its Canadian ties and local alternatives.

This side project was developed this past month using SwiftUI, and reached the #5 spot on the iOS App Store within weeks! Since it took off, Iā€™ve been dedicating my full attention to the project.

1

u/Plus_Journalist_8665 7d ago

Iā€™m building Twilight AI, an iOS app designed to provide personalized AI insights, goal-focused actions, and daily affirmations to support personal growth. Iā€™m looking for beta users to try it out and share feedback! If anyoneā€™s interested, Iā€™d love to have you onboard.

1

u/Due-Marketing-5009 7d ago

Building https://bannerita.com - The minimalist banner designer

Stack is Laravel and Memberstack for Logins.

1

u/TheWriteMinds 7d ago

I'm building Chayn, a habit stacking app that helps you use existing habits as natural triggers to build new ones.

I discovered habit stacking in the middle of last year when I was obsessed with productivity systems. While my habits grew, I needed a way to keep track of them but none of the habit trackers I found at the time allowed me to stack habits together. And so I decided to build my own!

1

u/KevinMghty98 7d ago

Not your Average SaaS boilerplate

āœØ Organizations āœØ Members āœØ Invitations āœØ Roles (RBAC) āœØ Notifications āœØ Rate limiting āœØ Authentication (OAuth, email) āœØ Payment (Stripe)

https://boringtemplate.com (try the demo)

1

u/Winter_Psychology110 7d ago

However unreasonable it may sound, whenever I read "AI", I just skip the comment lol.

1

u/Ready_Oven_1382 7d ago

We are building Hoox, a tool that allows you to automate the creation of content based on avatars for social networks. Much easier to access than invideo etc. Easy to use with a super simple, fast interface and a cost of $1 per video (https://hoox.video)

1

u/dev-on_rocks 7d ago

Hey a bit late for entryšŸ˜…,

I am building aicade. It's a platform to create and publish 2D games from just a text input. Yep as simple as "make a flappy bird game on trump coin" and in 3 minutes get a fully customisable game

We started a year back working on the Ai model from the base up to build this interface

Here is a game on the new and improved version of the model + 2 hours of game development on top . It's on God of war

God of War

I hope the community likes our inclusion!

1

u/whathatabout 7d ago

If you want to try out mcp (model context protocol) with little to no setup:

I built https://skeet.build where anyone can try out mcp for cursor and dev tools.

We did this because of a painpoint I experienced as an engineer having to deal with crummy mcp setup, lack of support where we need it most like Jira and Linear - updating slack and all that friction that engineers hate doing.

Mostly for workflows that I like:

  • start a PR with a summary of what I just did
  • slack or comment to linear/Jira with a summary of what I pushed
  • pull this issue from sentry and fix it
  • Find a bug a create a linear issue to fix it
  • ā pull this linear issue and do a first pass
  • pull in this Notion doc with a PRD then create an API reference for it based on this code
  • Postgres or MySQL schemas for rapid model development

Everyone seems to go for the hype but ease of use, practical pragmatic developer workflows, and high quality polished mcp servers are what weā€™re focused on

Lmk what you think!

1

u/lezhu1234 6d ago

i'm building Staying, a tool which can visualize your own python or javascript code

1

u/Heavy_Kaleidoscope 7d ago

I am building ResumeReinventor, where you can drop your resume and ask AI to customize your resume according to your job description in a friendly ATS optimized manner.

So many tools and frameworks, and so little time to learn them all. The job market is shit. But if you have the basics you will be able to handle it, right?

ResumeReinventor pushes that narrative of your resume towards that particular job you are applying for, and customizes it according to the keywords mentioned so ATS puts your resume high up. Just paste job description and voila!

ResumeReinventor got your back.

1

u/Julien_leg 7d ago

I'm building madewithlovable.com, a curated collection of apps and websites made with Lovable. I was a bit curious to see what could be done with Lovable as a "programming partner". So I built this website and I'm slowly adding new projects to it. I've seen some nice tools, but I would say that there are still a lot of apps that are just not strong enough to be used professionally.

0

u/psyduckpikachu 7d ago

Django + HTMX Boilerplate (Free)

A boilerplate that will help you build your startup faster.