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

BlueMouse - Socratic Firewall for AI Coding Startup Idea

Problem Definition As AI coding tools (Copilot, Cursor, etc.) become mainstream, developers face new challenges: No Quality Gate: AI-generated code goes straight to production with placeholder comments, TODOs, and broken imports Lack of Design Thinking: “Vibe Coding” phenomenon - developers accept AI output without critical thinking Security Vulnerabilities: AI-generated code gets committed without security review According to the 2026 Stack Overflow survey, 84% of developers use AI tools, and 41% of new code is AI-assisted. ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

CoCursor - IDE AI Collaboration Tracker Startup Idea

Problem Definition As AI coding assistants become routine, new problems emerge: No Session Tracking: AI collaboration sessions aren’t recorded, preventing learning Report Writing Burden: Work reports take an average of 30 minutes to write Knowledge Loss: AI conversations are one-time use, not reusable Team Skill Gap: Differences in AI utilization create productivity gaps Market Analysis Metric Value AI IDE Market Size (2032 projected) $37B Cursor Users Millions+ Developers Using AI Tools 84% Target Customers: Development teams using AI coding tools ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

MacShip - Mac App Licensing & Distribution SDK Startup Idea

The Problem Developers distributing Mac apps outside the Mac App Store (MAS) face significant challenges: Licensing System: Serial key generation, validation, activation limits Auto Updates: Sparkle framework setup and update server management Payment Integration: Stripe, Paddle, or other gateway connections Code Signing & Notarization: Apple Notarization workflow automation Building all this from scratch takes 4-8 weeks of development time, plus ongoing maintenance burden. Market Analysis Aspect Details Target Market Global macOS indie developers TAM macOS developer tools market $2B+ Competition Status EMG (Emerging) Competitive Landscape Competitor Pricing Weakness Paddle 5%+$0.50 fee Generic payment platform, lacks Mac-specific features FastSpring 5.9%+ fee Complex setup, not developer-friendly DevMate Discontinued Service shutdown Gumroad 10% fee No licensing/update features Differentiation Opportunity: An all-in-one SDK specialized for Mac apps—integrate licensing, updates, and payments with just a few lines of code. ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

MCPJam Inspector - MCP Server Testing Tool Startup Idea

Problem Definition As Model Context Protocol (MCP) emerges as the standard for AI agent connections, developers face new challenges: Testing Difficulty: No standard way to test MCP server tools, resources, and prompts Debugging Complexity: Need to support multiple transport protocols (STDIO, SSE, HTTP) Official Tool Gaps: Anthropic’s official inspector has limited features and slow development In 2026, the MCP market is exploding with 97M+ monthly SDK downloads. Market Analysis Metric Value MCP Market Size (2025) $1.8B Monthly SDK Downloads 97M+ Major Adopters Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, SAP Target Customers: Developers building MCP servers, AI agent builders ...

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

Remember Me: LLM Client-Side Memory That's 40x Cheaper Than Vector DBs

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. ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

Rippletide Eval CLI - AI Agent Hallucination Detection Startup Idea

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 ...

January 24, 2026 · 2 min · Young

Micro-SaaS Security Scanner - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

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. ...

January 23, 2026 · 2 min · Young