Side Project Ideas

The Problem: Vector DB Costs and Complexity When building LLM applications, “memory” is essential. It’s used for conversation history, context maintenance, and knowledge retrieval. Currently, most developers rely on Vector Databases: Pinecone (cloud) Chroma (local) pgvector (PostgreSQL extension) Milvus, Qdrant, etc. But this approach has issues: Cost: Cloud Vector DB expenses scale quickly Complexity: Requires embedding generation, indexing, and search pipeline Latency: Additional network RTT Infrastructure: Server management overhead The Solution: Client-Side O(1) Memory Remember Me is an LLM memory library that runs client-side without Vector DBs. ...

Problem Definition As AI agents reach production, new quality challenges emerge: Agent Hallucinations: Unlike LLM hallucinations, errors compound in multi-step processes No Runtime Verification: Lack of validation before responses reach users Quality Issues: 89% of organizations adopt observability, 32% cite quality as the main barrier According to the CAIA benchmark, even leading models achieve only 67.4% accuracy in high-stakes environments. Market Analysis Metric Value Organizations with Agent Observability 89% Quality Issues Rate 32% (main barrier) Evaluation Impact 60% reduction in production failures Target Customers: Companies deploying AI agents in production ...

The Problem Developers and marketers want to beautify screenshots for blogs, docs, and social media, but: CleanShot X: Great but $29 one-time or $8/mo subscription ScreenshotOne: API-based, for bulk processing Shottr: Free but limited beautification features Online tools: Mostly subscription or watermarked “I built a screenshot beautifier because I hate subscriptions” — HackerNews Show HN (2026.01.21) Market Analysis Aspect Details Target Market Developers, marketers, content creators TAM Design tools market $5B+ Competition Status RED (competitive) Competitive Landscape Competitor Pricing Weakness CleanShot X $29 or $8/mo Feature-heavy, complex Xnapper $29 Mac only Pika Free web Limited features, slow Differentiation: Simplicity + one-time purchase + cross-platform ...

Problem (Pain Score: 7/10) Manually writing changelogs every time you modify an API schema is tedious and error-prone. Real Examples: Added/removed fields but forgot to document in changelog Missed breaking changes causing client apps to break Hard to track version differences, making rollback decisions difficult Wasted time figuring out differences between API versions Frequency: Every API change (1-2x per week) In microservices environments with multiple services, manual changelog management is practically impossible. Changelogs become incomplete, and API consumers must figure out changes themselves. ...

Problem (Pain Score: 8/10) Documentation Drift—when code changes but related documentation doesn’t get updated—is a chronic problem every development team faces. Real Examples: API endpoint changed but README still shows old examples Function signature modified but JSDoc/docstring remains outdated New team members follow stale docs and implement incorrectly Frequency: Almost daily Developers find doc updates tedious, and code reviews often miss documentation consistency. Over time, trust in documentation erodes until nobody references it anymore. ...

Problem (Pain Score: 6/10) Git hooks (pre-commit, pre-push, etc.) are powerful, but managing them across projects is fragmented and difficult. Real Examples: Setting up hooks from scratch for every new project Inconsistencies from different hook configurations across team members Difficulty reusing useful hooks in other projects Manual updates required across all projects when hooks change Frequency: Every new project + team member onboarding Tools like pre-commit exist, but version-controlling and sharing hooks across multiple projects remains manual work. ...

Problem (Pain Score: 7/10) When asking AI coding assistants for debugging help, LLMs only see static code—they can’t access actual runtime state. Real Examples: “I don’t know why this variable is null” → LLM can only guess Repeatedly copy-pasting stack traces for complex bugs LLM suggestions don’t work at runtime Limitations of logic analysis without actual variable values Frequency: Every debugging session (daily) AI coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor have become powerful, but complex bug resolution has limits without runtime context. ...

The Problem (Pain Level: 7/10) Indie developers and small SaaS teams struggle with security vulnerability management: Existing security scanners are too expensive or complex Enterprise tools take hours to days to set up Interpreting results is difficult without security expertise Features are overkill for small projects As a result, many indie SaaS products run with basic security vulnerabilities unaddressed. Target Market Global Indie Developers/Micro-SaaS - Estimated TAM $500M+ Solo developers, small startups Indie Hackers, Reddit r/SideProject community Developers hosting projects on GitHub Full-stack developers who aren’t security specialists What is Micro-SaaS Security Scanner? A simple security tool that lets you complete your first security scan within 10 minutes after connecting your GitHub repo. ...

Problem (Pain Score: 7/10) Building a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipeline requires combining multiple tools from document conversion to vector DB loading—a tedious process. Real Examples: Separate tool for converting PDFs to markdown Implementing chunking logic from scratch Writing embedding API call code Designing pgvector schema and writing load scripts Maintaining glue code connecting each step Frequency: Every RAG project start (frequently) For indie hackers or small teams adding RAG-based AI features, days are spent just setting up the pipeline before actual development begins. ...

Problem Developers perform repetitive tasks daily for API testing. Postman is the industry standard, but its free tier has become increasingly restrictive: Only 3 APIs can be created on the free plan Collection Runner limited to 25 runs/month 1,000 API calls/month limit Mock server limited to 1,000 calls/month These limitations are driving many developers and small teams to seek alternatives. Market Item Details Target Market Global (GL) Segment Developer Tools, API Tools, CLI Primary Target Indie developers, startup dev teams, freelancers TAM API development tools market (multi-billion dollar) The API testing tools market continues to grow, with increasing demand for lightweight, fast CLI-based tools. ...