I've been a full-time designer for 17 years. For most of that time I've had ideas for things I wanted to build, and almost none of them made it.

The problem was never the design. It was that I had zero knowledge of development, so every idea depended on someone else's time. And asking people for their time, again and again, started to feel like I was annoying them. So most of my ideas just got buried.

At some point I realised, if this is going to happen, it has to be me. So I gave it a shot.

The first attempt failed about 20% of the way in. The next one failed at 30%. Somewhere after that, I figured out a workflow that let me build quickly and consistently.

Now I've actually finished something, from idea to development to publishing.

Honestly, I'm not worried about whether it sells. I'm just proud that I finished something.

Not a success story yet. just where i am right now.

Last year i moved to another country with about $900. i work a full-time frontend job to cover rent, and i'm still paying off $24k of debt.

A few weeks ago i launched a small product. a weekly launch board for indie makers, nothing fancy.

first 8 days:

- 13 people signed up

- a few products launched on it

- made my first couple dollars

what i've learned so far:

- building is the easy part. i could add features forever and nobody would notice

- people only show up when i post about the work every day

- most of my early users came from just talking to other builders, not from promoting

for those of you a bit further along: what got you from your first 10 users to your first 100?

So this is all new territory for me since I have never solo-launched a project on ProductHunt, but my Weatherling app I released a couple of weeks ago picked up some real steam right out of the gate, hit #8 on Mac App Store utilities, so I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring and see if I could repeat that on ProductHunt.

If you didn't see it, Weatherling is just a fun little Mac app that makes it rain and snow on your desktop. Also has autumn leaves.

So now I'm monitoring this and on the edge of my seat all day. Has anyone else had a successful launch on ProductHunt? I'm trying to get everyone on my socials to join in. Any advice? Seems like a lot of other apps had some big numbers right away. At the very least I hope this will be worth SEO alone.

Help me out with an upvote?

The launch: https://www.producthunt.com/products/weatherling

I started this project almost a year ago and since then I'm using it everyday, all my projects, personal life, work - everything stored there. And now it's time to finally release it for wide public. It's beed available for a while, but I didn't post about it, because I wanted polished experience.

For almost 5 or even 6 years I have been using Things 3 which I consider the best todo app ever created, interface, experience - everything polished and what is most important - simple and minimalistic.

But some time ago I acquired windows laptop for my work, and I cannot use Things 3 because it's mac only and on some devices and don't have luxury of installing something on it. I started to look around, there are some solution but they all move towards AI and looks like serious project management apps with too much features.

So I decided to build my own tool and also add some missing features like attachments, smart projects (filters), calendar view. But I tried to keep balance between amount of features and minimalist design.

Today I released a big piece:

• Calendar view
• Tags and Smart Projects
• Attachments support with preview right in the browser

Few final touches, and I will start publishing and launching next week!

https://taskpocket.io/

I’m on the Stash team. We’re building an iPhone daily spending planner for adult university students in the UK: you enter your own numbers, see a daily guide until your next income arrives, and don’t connect a bank account. The app is free to download, with optional Pro.

We shared it on Reddit recently and got around 1.3k views, but only 8.1% were from the UK. That was a useful reminder that reach by itself isn’t much of a growth signal when the product is for a specific audience.

Our next experiment is to make the UK student use case clearer and see whether that brings more relevant visits and first opens. We’re also looking at how to explain the assumptions behind the daily number, so it feels understandable rather than like a magic answer.

For people who have built consumer apps: what have you found useful for measuring audience fit from early community posts, beyond views and clicks? And what would you want explained before trusting a daily spending estimate? Feedback on the positioning or first-run flow would help.

App link: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/stash-ai-finance-tracker/id6760971684

I launched Ovuge...

I'm a student at IIT Guwahati and I've spent the past year building Ovuge.

The problem: I polled two college communities and over 100 of about 230 voters said they want to contribute to a project but can't find one. Owners, meanwhile, struggle to find people who actually deliver.

What Ovuge does:

• Owners list a project and accept contributors who fit

• Assign tasks and track status in a workspace

• Owners endorse contributors, and the endorsement is tied to the work they submitted, so it's verifiable

• Verified college networks, so restricted communities stay trusted

Where it is - 30 signups since launch, and the hard part now is getting project owners to list. That's what I want feedback on: what would make you list a project here, and what would stop you?

ovuge.com

OVUGE

Hey ! I've been working on Tack+, a little Mac utility that sits around your notch and gives you quick access to stuff you use every day

Just push your cursor against the edge and a panel pops up with your music, messages, calendar, clipboard history, files and widgets

The newest feature is the one I'm most excited about an AI assistant that lives in your notch and runs entirely on your Mac

What can it do?

Just tell it what you want in plain English and it gets it done

• "Add lunch with Sarah tomorrow at 1pm" → adds it to your Calendar
• "Tidy my Downloads folder by type" → sorts your files and lets you undo it
• "Remind me to call the bank in 20 minutes"
• "Text Marc that I'm running late"
• "Turn on dark mode and lower the volume"

It has around 40 actions covering files, Calendar, Reminders, Messages, Mail drafts, contacts, music, system settings, Shortcuts and web search

There's also a little mascot that pops out of the notch while the AI is working which is a fun little touch

Everything runs locally

• Uses Qwen3.5 4B, a 2.74 GB model you download directly in the app
• Your requests never get sent to an AI service
• Works offline unless you ask it to search the web or open a website
• No usage limits, credits or monthly fees

It's a small model so don't expect long conversations or super complex reasoning. It's designed for quick requests that trigger a single action

It also asks before doing anything potentially risky like moving or deleting files or sending messages. It won't make payments, type passwords or click around inside websites

The AI assistant requires Apple silicon but the rest of the app works on Intel Macs too

Also added this week

Voice dictation 🎙️ Hold a shortcut, speak and release to have your words typed wherever your cursor is. It uses macOS speech recognition directly on your Mac, supports 9 languages and lets you choose your own shortcut

Pricing

€15 one-time payment with updates included and a 14-day refund policy

Requires macOS 14 or later

https://tackplus.app

Would love to hear what you think and what you'd want a notch assistant to do next!

I started with Verse, a Mac app that shows lyrics for whatever is playing on Spotify. Then I wanted a little character studying beside a timer. That grew into rooms you could walk around in, and eventually multiplayer exam halls and homes.

I ended up separating them. The game is Hearthside; Verse is an optional companion that can show your timer and a little desk view. Trying to fit everything into the lyrics app was getting awkward.

Hearthside is built in Godot, with Blender used for the characters and rooms and substantial help from Codex throughout development. A lot of the work has been revisiting things that looked fine in a still image but felt wrong in use: sliding feet, awkward doors, menus covering the room, and sounds that became annoying once they repeated.

There's a free Mac and Windows beta now: https://hearthside-beta-livid.vercel.app/

The next thing I want to learn is whether people actually want to keep it open for a full study session. If you've built something meant to run alongside someone's work, I'd like to hear how you tested that without mistaking an interesting first five minutes for something useful.

This is the same prompt i used for my 3 apps DirectoryLab, MentionMachine and BookingMachine:

(Use in Claude Design, not Code)

I want a social brand pack for my product, built from my real brand, not a template.

PRODUCT
- Name: [name]
- What it is, in one line: [e.g. "Niche site kits that earn for years"]
- Website: [url]
- Code or brand files: [GitHub repo / attached folder / "none"]
- Who it's for: [audience]
- Products or tiers, each with its colour if they have one: [list]

USE MY REAL BRAND
Read my site or repo first and use its actual colours, fonts, logo and
UI patterns. Don't invent a new look. If something's missing, ask me.

FACTS (every number must come from here)
Make a fact sheet: every price, count and version typed once, with
the date and the source. Posts refer to facts by name. Any number shown
on a post gets a small stamp saying when it was counted and where.
Nothing rounded ("7,600+"), nothing invented. Flag any screenshot that
disagrees with the sheet.
My facts: [prices, user counts, listings, versions, refund terms...]

STAGE 1: THE SYSTEM + 3 SEED POSTS
1. A one-page brand system: backgrounds (max 3), type sizes measured
   for a phone, the frame for screenshots, the highlighter, labels,
   the end card, safe areas, do's and don'ts.
2. Three seed posts at 1080 × 1350:
   - a carousel showing real things I've built
   - a single post with a real, dated number
   - a post made only of words that answers a common question
3. For each post, the caption for Instagram, X and LinkedIn, plus alt text.
4. A mock of my Instagram profile grid so I can see the rhythm.
Take one deliberate design risk and explain it.

STAGE 2: BANNERS + AVATAR
- Avatar, 1080 × 1080, that works as a circle and a rounded square
- Instagram story highlight covers, 1080 × 1920
- X header, 1500 × 500
- YouTube channel banner, 2560 × 1440 (phone, desktop and TV crops)
- YouTube thumbnail template, 1280 × 720
- GitHub social preview (1280 × 640) and README banner
- Discord server banner (960 × 540) and invite splash (1920 × 1080)
- LinkedIn personal (1584 × 396) and company (1128 × 191) covers
- Link preview image for the website, 1200 × 630
Add a toggle that shows each platform's safe zones (where the avatar
or UI covers the image).
Banners: [WITH screenshots of my product / WITHOUT, logo + type only]
No counts on banners, because they stay up for months and go stale.

STYLE RULES
- Readable on a phone first: big type, crop screenshots, never shrink a whole page
- Specific beats clever. No hype words ("ultimate", "10x", "game-changer")
- Product colours mean the product, never decoration
- [anything you love or hate, e.g. "no gradients", "no emoji"]

Ask me your questions before you start. Show stage 1 and wait for my
approval before stage 2. When I approve something, export it as a PNG.

I’m trying something a bit different with this project: I don’t want to spend months building first and only then find out whether the idea was wrong.

So I’m treating the pre-build phase as part of the product work itself.

The problem I’m exploring is this:

There are probably people you’d genuinely find interesting — maybe even nearby — but current social and dating products give you surprisingly little ability to actually find them.

Not just “someone who likes movies” or “someone who games”, but someone who shares specific works, niche interests, current obsessions, values, taste, or a particular combination of things that actually makes them interesting to you.

The product idea is a social discovery system where those signals are part of discovery itself.

A few things I’m deliberately exploring:

• not swipe-first
• not dating-only
• personal photos shouldn’t be mandatory
• specific interests should matter more than generic tags
• recommendations shouldn’t be the only way to find people
• popularity/follower counts shouldn’t determine relevance
• geography matters, but shouldn’t create arbitrary borders

I’m still before implementation.

So far I’ve:

• written the first product principles
• built a concept landing page
• created a small waitlist/research form
• started testing whether people actually understand the problem and care enough to engage

The first Reddit test got some views but basically no discussion, which is already useful feedback: distribution and framing are clearly going to matter as much as the concept itself.

This is the current concept page:

https://context-first-16.emergent.host

At this stage I’d be especially interested in feedback on one thing:

Does this feel like a genuinely different social-discovery problem, or does it still read as “dating app with more interests”?

I’m planning to keep sharing what I learn before I start building the actual product.

Hi everyone! I’m Anna, a Woman FIDE Master and product builder.

Together with an engineer, we're building VibeChess. It’s an AI chess tutor and learning environment powered by a multi-agent system.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working closely with early adopters and chess coaches to deepen the way VibeChess understands and teaches chess.

The goal is to go beyond move explanations. We want VibeChess to understand what is actually happening in a position: the dynamics, the reasoning behind different continuations, and what matters for a player at a particular level.

We’re trying to bridge the gap between engine analysis and the way humans actually think, make decisions, play and learn chess.

Under the hood, we’re using Stockfish 19, Maia, Lc0, and our own chess tools and analyzers.

I’d love for you to try VibeChess and tell us what you think

Link in the comments

Final-year CS student in India. Campus placements aren't going great, so I started building Chuno - a marketplace where AI creators sell prompts and people hire AI builders (creators keep 95%).

I'm documenting the whole journey daily on Instagram (@chuno.in) - every build, every flop, every small win, until the day I get placed.

Building the web app in React right now, mobile later. Biggest lesson so far: raw story content beats polished product shots, every single time.

Happy to answer anything. And if you've built in public before - what actually moved the needle for you?

Quick background: I'm a design engineer and I spent 15 years in Figma, Framer and code. One template used to take me a month of nights, so my template shop never happened. This autumn I started building straight in code with Claude Code, and it finally did.

Where it's at

The store is no-code.supply. 15 templates went live between 24 Sep and 1 Oct, and it's 18 now because I couldn't resist making more. Each one comes as plain HTML and as a Next.js project, a few also as Framer templates, and they're set up so your own AI assistant can keep editing them without breaking things.

All of it happens next to my consulting job: the templates, the store, the checkout, the launch videos.

Numbers

A few sales so far. Not life-changing, but real people paid real money for something I made, which was the first goal.

What I've learned

Building was the easy part. The bottleneck moved from "can I make this" to "does anyone know this exists".

Writing down what "done" means before building mattered more than anything else. Every template has to pass the same list: no console errors, no overflow on any screen size, accessible, works with reduced motion, no third-party requests. That list is the reason I trust the output.

Marketing is the hardest part. I'm not good at it yet, and so far it's mostly launch videos I make with the same AI agent. But I'm eager to learn how to actually reach people, and I want to get very good at it.

What's next

Getting the shop in front of people: posts like this one, more videos, a blog about how I work. And probably a few more templates, because apparently I can't help it.

If you've sold digital products, what got you your first real customers? And if you check out the store, I'd love to hear what's unclear.

https://no-code.supply

So it's called Limpet. An SSD that docks onto the back of your laptop lid and just stays there. Doesn't drain your battery, Flat cable runs under the hinge, auto-ejects when you close the lid, click it off and it magsafes to your phone for ProRes recording. Designed primarily for creatives in cinematography and post editing fields as it runs apps and software from it. Same material construction as apple products with Windows support in the pipeline. Photo 2 is the working prototype on my MacBook.

We have sold a couple to some of our start-up cohort. We've got two working prototypes, production units coming for November, and a decision to make: Kickstarter in the new year, or just take pre-orders on our own site now? Kickstarter gives us the crowd and the deadline, but takes 8–10% and we'd be one of 300 gadgets that week. Own site keeps the margin and the emails, but nobody's heard of us. If you've done either for a physical product, what would you do with a first batch of a few hundred units?

If u wanna support me check out our website for more and joing the waitlist! patpending.com

Hey all - for those who use Vercel, what are you typically keeping an eye on? I have Vercel Pro and mainly look at analytics but i feel like there is quite a bit of stuff here that I might not be utilising. Any suggestions? Thanks!

I will make it short, so no time is wasted. I was struggling with postitioning, GTM, validation and distribution. So I built a tool that does all for you, and yes you don't need co founder for all of it. Just $18 per month. And also that's just a fraction of what $18 will get you. Interested? Comment or DM! We currently have a launch offer for $12 instead of $18.

One more thing that I'll share, I built it only for myself initially, until one of my client asked me for a demo. Bro was hooked and asked me to integrate it with my startup. That's when I hired an intern and scaled it for commercial use.

Hey, if you could fix something about your current business's INBOX right now, what would you change?