r/SideProject • • Dec 18 '25

As the year wraps up: what’s the project you’re most proud of building and why?

95 Upvotes

Like the title says, instead of what you built or how much money it made, I’m curious what project you’re most proud of this year and why.

Could be a client site, a personal project, something that never launched, or something that made £0.

Any lessons learned?

Would love to read a few reflections as the year wraps up.


r/SideProject • • Oct 19 '25

Share your ***Not-AI*** projects

653 Upvotes

I miss seeing original ideas that aren’t just another AI wrapper.

If you’re building something in 2025 that’s not AI-related here’s your space to self-promote.

Drop your project here


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I’m a dev. I built a site where you do stuff for bananas. Am I dumb?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

132 Upvotes

So, long story short - I'm a dev and I often need tests and reviews written by humans - AI sucks completely when it comes to breaking stuff and real insights.

You do stuff for other humans to earn bananas (5-second first impressions, step-by-step signup runs, landing page roasts, platform reviews, etc.), and spend bananas to post stuff you need done.

Core ideas:

- Fewer words make better feedback. I'm really tired of AI's verbal diarrhea.

- Humans only: a real person does every job. Use AI as a tool if you like, but the feedback has to be human-readable. Added a slop-o-meter for that.

- You can't buy or sell bananas, and I don't plan on monetizing this. Unless I go bankrupt in the process - will worry then.

I started building a tool for me to use, where I could share with clients' teams, but I liked the idea more and more and after spending waaay to much time poking around ended up with this: apestogetherstrong.si/

Am I dumb, or is this a good idea?

Added explainer, because claude's fun.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

I built a Chrome extension to deal with all the articles I kept saving but never had time to go back and read. Free to use!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

64 Upvotes

So, like most people, I tend to have an open-tab problem, where I keep tabs open with the intention of going back and reading/revisiting them, only to end up with dozens of open tabs.

I’ve now been using SiftHive.io regularly, every day, to synthesize the most important bits from articles, YouTube videos, emails, PDFs, and docs. And let's be honest, I was never going to go back and read most of what I saved. Now I don’t have to.

I can either read the bulletins delivered at a set time (or immediately) or just listen to the summary highlights over breakfast. And if I find one of the articles particularly interesting, I can always go back and revisit it.

For me, this has been the fastest way to save articles on the fly and keep moving without having to leave dozens of tabs open in my browser.

Google Chrome Extension Link (voice will soon be expanded to multiple languages): https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sifthive-articles-newslet/ebbknofpodnfdhbcdbkkgonociofgbkl

Website: sifthive.io

Email: [hello@sifthive.io](mailto:hello@sifthive.io)


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

I built a website for me and my friends to help mark and feed stray animals in our city

Thumbnail
wtmcviupbcmcffamyslb.supabase.co
18 Upvotes

I built a website for me and my friends to help us mark all the stray animals we can find in our city.

The point of it is to allow users, whenever they see a stray animal, to take a picture of it and its GPS location and post it on our map. This would allow other users to see the animal and go feed it.

So far, it only has one stray cat I found and fed. I named him AsteroidDestroyer, and he is the most handsome little baby in the world. I'm hoping people around the world will find more stray animals feed and post them too! (Asteroid Destroyer picture is below)

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. And thank you so much for checking it out :D

the website: https://strayfeedingmap.com/


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

There's probably a map of hidden places in your city that someone spent years on. You just can't find it

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

17 Upvotes

Hi :)

Millions of people make custom maps. Someone pins 1,900 ghost towns across the US. Someone else marks every urbex spot they've been to in Europe (2,200 of them). Someone maps every free toilet in their city, or every secret viewpoint, or every bakery that sells a specific kind of pastry.

And then nobody ever sees them, because Google My Maps and most other map tools have no search. If you don't have the exact link, the map basically doesn't exist.

That annoyed me way more than it should have, so for the last months I've been collecting these links from everywhere I could think of: Wayback Machine, Common Crawl, Reddit, Wikipedia, old URL shortener dumps, Bluesky, X, YouTube descriptions…

Where it's at now:

- 6.25 million map links found, 2.88M good enough to be searchable
- around 100k new ones a day
- you can search maps and also just zoom into your own area and see every pin from every map

mapindex.org

I'm a student from Germany and this is a hobby project. The server is 30€ a month, but I've spent around 200€ on OpenAI credits for the map summaries, which feels slightly insane for a hobby. Still the most fun I've had building anything.

It's rough in places. Ranking is the hardest part: right now I lean on view counts, and that buries great niche maps with 40 views.

Drop your city or a weirdly specific topic and I'll dig up the strangest map I can find for it 👇


r/SideProject • • 18h ago

X-blizzard artist. I built a 3D Color Picker for photoshop

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

121 Upvotes

Orc painting, colors in Chroma Space a 3D color picker .


r/SideProject • • 1d ago

Weekend project: Full Mario 64 in Mixed Reality!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2.6k Upvotes

Full Mario 64 in Mixed Reality! Running in real 3D natively at 90FPS and also running on my desk! 😋
Opus 5.5 + PICO CLI + Unity CLI combo made it quite straightforward.

Such a bliss to play an oldie at 90 FPS in 3D.

Disclaimer: I own an original physical copy of Mario 64. This project is not associated with Nintendo or PICO.


r/SideProject • • 4h ago

EvoForge: a desktop AI agent with your own models. Where should the approval boundary be?

6 Upvotes

Disclosure: I’m sharing EvoForge on behalf of the product team.

It’s a Windows/macOS desktop agent that can work across files, a browser, desktop apps and a terminal. Users connect their own model API key or a compatible local model service. The aim is to carry a task across those tools without making the user move every intermediate result by hand.

One design choice is to keep the agent core free and charge for optional specialist modules. Basic covers coding, research and documents; the creative module adds a writing desk, an image-editing canvas and a video timeline. Model API usage is separate, so “free Basic” does not mean free cloud inference.

The part I’d like feedback on is permission friction. When an agent can edit a local file and also send an email or publish something, those actions need different boundaries. What would you let it do without interrupting you, and what should always pause for approval? A concrete example from your own workflow would be useful.

Current limits: desktop only, no Linux build, and you need to configure a model. Optional Creator, Game Development and Embodied AI modules are paid.

Product and download details: https://evoforge.cc


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

We spent months building a French Tarot game. Donne du Jour is finally out.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

5 Upvotes

I’m the founder of Quietmill, and we’ve spent the past few months building Donne du Jour. It’s finally out, and I’m excited to share it here.

We chose French Tarot because it’s a game you can keep getting better at: bidding, deciding when to spend a trump, reading a hand and seeing whether your plan worked. It uses a 78-card deck, which can be a lot to take in at first.

We wanted to make that first step easier without losing what makes the game interesting. So Donne du Jour brings together short lessons, practice against computer opponents, hints that explain a suggested play, and a way to review the hand afterwards. You can play three-, four- and five-player games.

There’s also a free Daily Deal. Everyone gets the same hand, so you can compare how you played it and come back for a new challenge tomorrow. No sign-in is needed to play it.

It’s available in English and French on iPhone, iPad, Android and in your browser.

The Daily Deal is free. Additional practice and learning features are available through optional subscriptions: Pro is $4.99/month or $49.99/year; Pro+ is $9.99/month or $99.99/year in the US. Regional prices vary.

It means a lot to finally put this into people’s hands. If you give it a go, I’d love to hear how your first hand goes—and whether the explanations help.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6795204338

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quietmill.donnedujour

Play in your browser: https://ddj.quietmill.app/

Contact: [support@quietmill.app](mailto:support@quietmill.app)

Quietmill: https://quietmill.app/

Privacy: https://quietmill.app/help/donne-du-jour/privacy/

Terms: https://quietmill.app/help/donne-du-jour/terms/


r/SideProject • • 18h ago

Anyone else building a boring, non-AI project right now?

78 Upvotes

Every time I scroll this sub, it feels like everyone is shipping AI wrappers in a weekend.
Meanwhile, I’m over here building a niche site the slow, old-school way. No big Stripe screenshots to flex yet, just late nights and Notion docs. If you're working on something outside the SaaS/AI bubble, what are you building? Would love to see what the rest of us are up to!


r/SideProject • • 53m ago

I built free browser games where phones pushed together become one big game board

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

Hi!

The idea: put 2 to 4 phones or tablets next to each other on a table and they act as one board. In the video it's air hockey on 2 tablets (the game supports up to 4), and the puck really slides from one screen onto the next.

It's a free web game, no sign-up, installable on the home screen as an app. Open it on every device and press play: on the same Wi-Fi they find each other, otherwise you scan a QR code or type a four-letter code. iPhones and Androids mix fine. Under the hood the devices talk to each other directly over WebRTC, so the game doesn't run through a server.

We have 10 games so far:

  • Air Hockey (the video)
  • Hot Potato: your fuse only burns while the potato is on your screen
  • Snake: up to 12 snakes on one field
  • Whack-a-Mole: a mole you bop pops up on the other player's side
  • Tilt Run: tilt the devices to solve one maze across all of them
  • Chess for 2 or 3: three players get a hexagon board across three devices
  • Checkers for 2 to 4
  • Sea Battle: up to six fleets with different modes
  • Islands: the dots-on-grid-paper game (2 players)
  • Spillover: draw shapes and drop them on the other player's side

All but Spillover have bots, so you can try it alone too.

Visit BIGBOARD.GAMES if you'd like to take a look or play.

Which game would you want us to add next? Happy to answer questions and integrate any suggestions.


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

"Pointless" bonus backrooms-inspired level I put into my game, because why not?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

18 Upvotes

I’m the solo dev behind Dark Roll 2, a marble platformer heavily inspired by soulslike genre. Apparently, that wasn’t enough scope creep, because something in my brain went: "Backrooms". So I added a Backrooms-inspired bonus level. No objective. No exit. Just a place to wander around.

There are weird photos scattered throughout, sourced from years of random crap on my phone and contributions from friends. Finally,a use for all those pictures I refused to delete.

There’s also a ball pit, a creepy mannequin room, and more. You can’t finish the level, but you can roll over a cushion with remarkable fidelity.

Was this a gut feeling? A creative impulse? The tiny unpaid level designer living in my skull? Hard to say. He doesn’t attend meetings. If this sounds like your sort of nonsense, the level is avalable for free in the demo.

Would you explore something like this, or should someone revoke my access to Unity?


r/SideProject • • 11h ago

I made a reading app that lets you talk to your book, and see movie-like scenes from it

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

19 Upvotes

I’ve been building Manara, a reader for iPhone and iPad, and it went live on the App Store last week. Here’s what it does:

Imagine: tap a passage and it draws the scene. It builds the picture from what the book has said so far about the people and places, and keeps a running cast of each character’s described features, so faces stay the same across the book instead of changing every image. (The pictures are AI-generated.)

Ask: select any passage and ask about it: “who is this again”, “what just happened”, “why is she so angry”. The answer opens in a drawer next to the page, and you can keep the conversation going.

Define and translate: tap a word or phrase and get what it means in that sentence, in simpler words than the word itself. Translations show side by side, which is handy if you read in a second language.

Story so far: come back after a few weeks and it gives you the through-line, who matters and what’s still unresolved.

The reader itself: paged with a real page curl, or scrolling; your own fonts and spacing; pure black for OLED; a scrubber that shows blurred previews of the pages as you drag. Reading works offline (the AI bits need a connection).

A notebook per book: highlights, questions, saved scenes, plus a little spaced review for words you looked up.

Bring your own EPUBs and PDFs, or start with the public-domain classics it comes with. Side note: it only ever uses the pages you’ve already read, so nothing gets spoiled.

Stack, for the curious: native SwiftUI, Readium for EPUB parsing with my own typesetter on top, Supabase with Deno edge functions, and models through OpenRouter, routed only to providers that don’t keep or train on what’s sent.

What would actually make you try a new reading app? Honest takes welcome.

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6805014691?pt=129339550&ct=reddit-sideproject&mt=8


r/SideProject • • 12m ago

I made a wii-sports inspired ping pong game that lets you play with your phone!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

Game Title: Rally

Playable Link: https://playrally.cc/

Platform: Web

Description: I built Rally, a browser-based table tennis game where your phone becomes the paddle. You open Rally on a laptop or desktop, scan a QR code with your phone, and swing it like a real paddle to control your shots. It supports solo play, local 1v1 and doubles, online matches, ranked matchmaking, drills, spin, timing, leaderboards, cosmetics, and instant replays. The goal was to make motion-controlled gaming accessible without needing a console or dedicated hardware. It runs directly in the browser, so setup is basically instant. Would love feedback on the gameplay, controls, and anything that feels confusing or clunky!


r/SideProject • • 18m ago

I'm building Syst to help people understand why their habits don't stick — looking for 20 early users

• Upvotes

​

I've been building Syst, an app focused on personal reflection, understanding recurring patterns, and building systems that work in real life.

One thing I've noticed is that when people struggle to maintain a habit, they often blame themselves for lacking discipline. But sometimes the plan itself is unrealistic, the timing is wrong, or there's something deeper getting in the way.

I want Syst to help people explore those reasons instead of just giving them another streak counter.

It looks for patterns over time and asks follow-up questions to help users understand what's happening and find a better approach.

I'm getting ready for launch and want to work closely with my first 20 founding testers. They'll get 21 days of free access and the opportunity to influence the direction of the app.

If you're interested in trying Syst and helping me improve it, join our WhatsApp group:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/FL14WrYPhFh4r44ygDZaXA?s=cl&p=a&mlu=4&ilr=4

I'll share TestFlight access and next steps in the group. I'd really appreciate the help! 🤎


r/SideProject • • 34m ago

Zephium: A fast, open-source, fully-featured browser and work environment (canvas), reimagined for you and your agents.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

After 5 months and 1,500+ hours of development, I'm finally launching Zephium (previously built Terax: 9.5K stars).

OSS, built in Rust. 40 MB. Not a Chromium/Firefox fork. Native adblocking, major Chrome extension support, a custom agentic browsing engine, and a lot more. It's not just another wrapper built in a few days.

Deeply integrated powerful productivity tools like Tasks, Notes, Time & Focus (with site blocking), etc.

And... Work mode: a shared environment where you and AI agents can browse, research, build, and get real work done together. Live browser sessions, parallel sub-agents, tools, files, components, and interactive results, all in one canvas.

AI is optional (disable in one click). No telemetry. BYOK support and local models.

Launch video (55K+ views in 3-4 day): https://youtu.be/QbSarcWspvw
GitHub: https://github.com/zephium-browser/Zephium
Website: https://zephium.app


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I made an interactive AI city that shows how life changes from 1956 to 2050

3 Upvotes

I built an interactive city that shows how AI could change daily life, from 1956 to 2050

👉 https://ai-world-2050.pages.dev

It covers one room and one city across the eras, and the 2030s split into three possible futures. Every forecast cites its source, and the news updates every day.

Try it and check the numbers. If something looks off, tell me.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Launching Pre-orders my hardware product in India Soon! Wish me luck !

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

It's been a long journey 2 Pivots and finally I'm at a stage where I can launch my hardware gadget It's called Dokidek. It's build for gamers and streamers. It stays under your main monitor and You can control your whole setup with this.

I've loved games and gaming setups since I was a kid. 6 months ago I left my job to take a break but during the break I picked up one of my oldest projects(2 years old) and decided to finish it. Started posting videos about it and got around 2M+ Combined views and 1300+ people on waitlist on the project and now just about to open preorders. I never would've thought I would reach here but It feels great at the same time the amount of pressure is insane. The device is called DOKIDEK and it's built for streamers and gamers to put all your secondary programs on the device like widgets so it's basically the God of Stream Decks.

My vision is to build an open widget ecosystem on top of this. If you want to check it out on IG : dokidek_

Yk what's the crazy part about it. ALL OF THIS IS DONE BY JUST ONE PERSON, It's just me from base up.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Ballsy - a daily sports quiz built on 50,000 real results

3 Upvotes

I wanted a daily game for people who actually watch sports matches, not just the highlights. Every day you get 10 real results from the Premier League, Champions League, NBA or NFL, and you name a player from each one. Scorer = 3 points, played = 1.

A few things I learned building it:

- Getting clean lineups for 24 seasons of football was the hard part, not the game

- One club showing up three times in a round made it too easy, so now each club appears once

- Share cards matter more than any feature...

It's free with no ads or sign-up needed: https://ballsy.gg

Feedback on the difficulty is very welcome.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Lets help eachother with some feedback and reviews in app store? Drop your app link and il leave a review 😁

• Upvotes

As caption. Il gladly leave a review and help a brotha or sista out and maybe youll help me out too,

Drop your link! 😊


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Started designing and printing a tiny city for fun. Now I'm selling it!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

A few months ago I bought a 3D printer and started messing around with the idea of building my own little SimCity in real life. I've always loved city builders, and thought it would be fun to have something physical to play around with.

I started designing a few buildings, then some roads, parks, shops, and as you could expect, things got a bit out of hand.

My son loves playing with it, and my co-workers couldn't stop fiddling with it even during meetings, I started wondering if other people might actually want one too.

So I decided to give it a shot. It's called Pixelton, made a bunch more buildings, figured out how to package everything, and spent way too many evenings getting my 3D printers to cooperate.

This week I finally opened my webshop! I've printed the first Starter Kits and expansion packs myself, and they're now available for pre-order. Still a lot to figure out, especially if I want to make more than a handful of these, but it's pretty cool to see something I originally made just for fun turn into a real product.

Anyway, here's what I've been working on: https://pixelton.world

Would love to hear what you think! And for those who've launched physical products before: what were the biggest surprises or challenges when going from making a handful of products to producing them at scale?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

We kept binning food, so I built a fridge app for share houses

• Upvotes

Three of us live here: me, my partner and a housemate. We cook most nights, so the fridge is always full, and that's the problem. You can't see what's in there, things get pushed to the back, and every week we chuck out veg and leftovers we forgot about.

So I built Domova: a shared fridge, meal plan, shopping list and bill splitter for people who live together.

The bit I'm happiest with: you plan the week's meals and the shopping list fills itself, merged for the whole house. What you buy goes into the fridge, and anything close to going off moves to a "use soon" shelf.

It's in beta on TestFlight (iPhone, iOS 18+) and I'd like honest feedback, especially from people who live with others: https://testflight.apple.com/join/GzSxQjnk

If you live with housemates, what would make you open this instead of just using the group chat?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a 9 MB desktop search app with semantic search, screenshot OCR, and AI agent support

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

I've been working on Kensaku, a little desktop app that makes finding files less painful.

You can search by filename, search inside PDFs and documents, find files by meaning, and even search for text inside screenshots using OCR.

Hit Alt + Space, type what you're looking for, and you're done.

I also added MCP and CLI support, so AI agents can search your local files using the same capabilities.

The thing I'm happiest about is how lightweight it is. The installer is around 9 MB, idle RAM usage is roughly 20 MB, and everything runs locally. No cloud, no account.

It's free, MIT-licensed, and still a work in progress. I've got plenty more ideas for it.

Would love to hear what you think, what feels missing, or what you'd want from a tool like this.

Repo: https://github.com/yjid/kensaku

And if you like it, a ⭐ on GitHub would genuinely motivate me to keep pushing it.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

a grading app that runs in the browser

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

• Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm Dom, and for the past while I've been building Luttie, a colour grading app that runs in the browser.

What it does:

You open a photo, RAW file or video clip, pick a look (17 film stocks, cinematic presets, or describe one in a sentence and AI builds three options), then fine-tune with curves, hue curves and scopes. When it looks right, you export it as a .cube LUT or a Lightroom profile, so the same look works in Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut, CapCut and the rest.

The part I'm proudest of:

It reads log and RAW footage from 9 camera brands (Sony, DJI, Blackmagic, iPhone Apple Log and more), which normally means a desktop app and a decent GPU. Here it's a tab, and the grading runs on your own computer, so nothing is uploaded.

On pricing, so nobody feels baited: grading is free, with no account needed, and that includes every grading panel, the film stocks, curves and scopes. A free account adds image exports with a small watermark and a 6-second video preview. LUT export, RAW files, AI Grade and clean full-length video are Pro, either monthly, a short pass, or one Lifetime payment. I'd rather you know that before you click than after.

I'd love honest feedback, especially from anyone who edits photos or video:

- Where did you get stuck or confused in the first minute?

- Does the free/paid line feel fair, or is something on the wrong side of it?

Link in the comments.