Side Project Ideas

The Problem (Pain Level: 8/10) “Why is my AWS bill so high this month?” - A universal pain shared by every developer and startup using AWS. Current pain points: Dashboard fatigue: Constantly switching between AWS Console, CloudWatch, and Cost Explorer Cost black box: Hard to intuitively understand which resources consume how much Scattered health checks: Checking EC2, RDS, Lambda status individually Alert overload: Complex CloudWatch alarm setup with too much noise No CLI option: No quick way to get the full picture from the terminal Target Market Primary Target: AWS developers, DevOps engineers, startup CTOs ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 9/10) “Why is our OpenAI bill so high this month?” - A common question haunting every team that has deployed LLMs to production. Current pain points: Cost black box: Hard to track where API costs are coming from Performance opacity: No metrics for response time, token usage, error rates Quality management: No way to monitor and evaluate LLM response quality Debugging hell: Difficult to identify performance degradation after prompt changes Security concerns: Can’t track if sensitive data is being sent to LLMs Real example: ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 8/10) “What did I do this week?” - This question haunts every developer when it’s time to write status reports. Current pain points: Time waste: Manually checking Jira, GitHub, Slack, Linear, Notion to compile updates Missing items: Busy weeks mean important work gets left out of reports Inconsistent formats: Each team member uses different reporting styles Context switching: Jumping between multiple tools to gather information Weekly repetition: 2-4 hours of manual work every single week Real example: ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 8/10) “What’s for dinner?” - This daily question becomes a significant mental load for families. Current problems: Decision fatigue: Exhaustion from daily meal decisions Nutritional imbalance: Defaulting to quick and easy options Food waste: Shopping without a plan leads to unused ingredients Time consumption: Searching recipes, making shopping lists Discovered on Reddit: “I built an AI to handle the ‘what’s for dinner?’ mental load for families” ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 7/10) Every semester, students receive syllabi from multiple courses as PDFs or documents. Current problems: Unstructured documents: Each professor uses different formats Manual entry required: Inputting assignments and exam dates to calendars one by one Missed deadlines: Easy to miss important due dates Difficult overview: Hard to see schedules across all courses at once Discovered on Reddit: “Built an AI tool that turns messy syllabi into organized dashboards - syllabi.dev” ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 6/10) As a developer, it’s difficult to effectively showcase your open source contributions. Current problems: GitHub profile limitations: Only shows commit counts, hard to explain meaningful contributions Manual curation required: Portfolio updates take significant time No verification: Recruiters struggle to assess actual contribution quality Template limitations: Existing portfolio templates are static and require manual input Discovered on Reddit: “I built an AI-powered Open Source Portfolio to help you verify your contributions” ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 8/10) “I’ll start exercising tomorrow”, “I’ll definitely go to bed early tonight” - Do you make these promises every day and break them just as often? Problems with existing habit tracking apps: Simple checklists: Just check and done, no real accountability Self-deception allowed: You can check even if you didn’t actually do it Lack of motivation: No consequences when streaks break Vulnerable to single failures: “Already failed, might as well give up” mentality A developer on Reddit r/SideProject shared: “I built an iOS app for myself because I kept lying to myself.” ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 6/10) Personal data is scattered across numerous data brokers and services, making deletion difficult: Hard to know where your information exists Each site has different deletion request procedures Exercising GDPR/CCPA rights is complex Manual deletion takes dozens of hours Data gets re-collected after deletion A persistent pain for privacy-conscious users. Target Market Global Privacy-Conscious Users - Estimated TAM $500M Privacy-sensitive individual users Residents of Europe (GDPR), California (CCPA) People wanting to reduce their digital footprint Tech users interested in cybersecurity What is Privacy Data Deletion Tool? A tool that automates personal data deletion requests to data brokers and services. ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 4/10) Developers experience friction when navigating large directories and files in the terminal: Basic ls command is useless with thousands of files Finding the right file requires combining find and grep File content preview is cumbersome Understanding dataset structure is difficult A niche pain point, but a real problem for power users. Target Market Global CLI Power Users - Estimated TAM $200M Developers who work terminal-first Data scientists, ML engineers DevOps/SRE engineers Linux/Mac power users What is DAIS (Data/AI Shell)? A CLI tool that adds AI-powered file analysis and intelligent navigation to the existing ls command. ...

Problem (Pain Level: 8/10) “I want to use my API with Claude or Cursor, but I need to build an MCP server from scratch?” - A new barrier every API developer faces in the AI agent era. Current pain points: Manual Work: Even with OpenAPI specs, you must develop MCP servers separately Learning Curve: Time spent learning MCP protocol and SDK usage Deployment Complexity: Hosting and registry registration require separate steps Maintenance Burden: Manual sync when APIs change Fragmented Ecosystem: Tools like Specli (local CLI) and Mpak (package management) are disconnected Target Market Primary Target: API-owning companies, SaaS startups, AI agent developers ...