LLM Observability Platform - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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: ...

February 1, 2026 · 3 min · Young

MealPlanAI - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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” ...

January 30, 2026 · 2 min · Young

SyllabusAI - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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” ...

January 29, 2026 · 2 min · Young

DevFolio - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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” ...

January 28, 2026 · 2 min · Young

DAIS (Data/AI Shell) - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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. ...

January 25, 2026 · 2 min · Young

MCP Forge - Convert OpenAPI to MCP Server in 5 Minutes Startup Idea

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 ...

January 25, 2026 · 3 min · Young

AI News Summarizer - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

The Problem (Pain Level: 5/10) In the age of information overload, reading news and articles takes too much time: Dozens of newsletters arrive daily No time to read long articles Just want to quickly grasp the key points RSS feeds keep piling up Busy professionals want to quickly understand the essentials. Target Market Global Knowledge Workers - Estimated TAM $1B+ Professionals subscribed to many newsletters Analysts monitoring multiple sources RSS reader users Users interested in information curation What is AI News Summarizer? A service that summarizes news, articles, and blog posts into 3 bullet points using AI. ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

Kerns.ai - AI Research Automation Tool Startup Idea

Problem Definition Problems knowledge workers and researchers face: Information Overload: 5.14M+ papers published annually, manual review impossible Search Time Waste: Employees spend 1.8 hours/day (9.3 hours/week) searching for information Knowledge Disconnect: Research results don’t accumulate, starting from scratch each time Context Switching: Moving between sources reduces focus Market Analysis Metric Value Information Search Time 20% of work hours Annual Published Papers 5.14M+ AI Research Tool Adoption Rapidly growing Target Customers: Researchers, analysts, knowledge workers, consultants ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

QRY: A CLI Tool That Writes SQL from Natural Language

The Problem: SQL Writing is Tedious Developers and analysts work with databases daily. But: Hard to remember complex JOIN syntax Confusing subqueries, window functions, and advanced SQL Context switching between checking table structures and writing queries “How did I write that query again?” happens repeatedly The Solution: QRY - Natural Language to SQL CLI QRY is a CLI tool that generates SQL from natural language in your terminal. $ qry "top 10 users with most purchases in the last 7 days" > Connecting to mydb... > Generated SQL: SELECT u.name, u.email, COUNT(o.id) as order_count FROM users u JOIN orders o ON u.id = o.user_id WHERE o.created_at >= NOW() - INTERVAL '7 days' GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.email ORDER BY order_count DESC LIMIT 10; [Execute? (y/n)] Core Features Natural Language → SQL: Claude/GPT-based conversion Schema Awareness: Auto-detect connected DB table structures Execution Option: Run generated queries directly History: Save and reuse previous queries Multi-DB Support: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, etc. Market Analysis NLP Market Status Total NLP market: $42B → $791B projected growth CAGR: 10.92% 72% of businesses plan to adopt NLP technologies Competitive Landscape Solution Type Features BigQuery NL Cloud built-in GCP lock-in Cloud SQL AI Cloud built-in GCP lock-in Bytebase SaaS Team collaboration focus QRY CLI tool Local, lightweight, free Market Gap Cloud providers offer built-in NL-to-SQL, but: ...

January 24, 2026 · 3 min · Young

CTxStudio - Visual Prompt Composer Startup Idea

The Problem (Pain Level: 7/10) “I didn’t know how many tokens my prompt was, and my API call failed” - A daily frustration for LLM developers. Current pain points: Token blindness: Can’t see real-time token count while writing prompts Unpredictable costs: Hard to estimate costs until API call is made Model confusion: GPT-4, Claude, Gemini all have different tokenizers No version control: Difficult to track prompt change history Team collaboration friction: Hard to share prompts and get feedback Target Market Primary Target: LLM app developers, AI engineers, prompt engineers ...

January 21, 2026 · 3 min · Young