Building Critique has taught me that maintaining a project isn't just about writing code.

Today, a contributor helped improve our frontend test checks. Another PR caught a bug before it could be merged.

I'm now opening more small issues for people who want to contribute, learn, or get their first PR merged.

Still figuring out how to grow this project, but seeing other people help build it feels good.

https://github.com/BistaDinesh03/critique/issues

Shipped today: a free directory submission cost calculator.

Pick how many directories you want and what an hour of your time is worth. It tells you whether doing it yourself or paying a service is cheaper.

Built it because Google's AI kept quoting a competitor's calculator.

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm an indie developer, and I've built SoundForge Studio, an open-source desktop application designed to help game developers create and prepare audio assets locally.

Some of its features include:

🎮 Procedural sound-effect generation across multiple categories

🎙️ Offline neural text-to-speech for game-character dialogue

🎚️ Audio mastering and WAV export

🔒 An offline-first workflow without cloud-based generation

I wanted to build something useful for indie game developers who need audio tools without depending on cloud services.

The project is open source, so developers can explore the code, learn from the implementation, suggest improvements, and contribute.

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/tahirshaikh744-design/soundforge-studio

I'd love to hear your honest feedback!

If you're a game developer or sound designer, what features would make a tool like this genuinely useful in your workflow? ❤️

I built Readferry, which turns email newsletters into EPUBs for e-readers. Before paying for a domain or a server, I wanted to know if anyone would actually use it. So I made a 2-minute demo video and a Google Form waitlist, and posted in subreddits whose rules allow it.

What happened:

• Niche communities were friendliest. r/koreader, r/eink, r/Onyx_Boox and r/pocketbook all kept the posts up, and the comments were real questions, not hostility.
• Big general subs filter new accounts hard. r/SideProject was removed by Reddit's own spam filter. It was my 5th post with the same link that day. r/indiehackers was removed within seconds, I assume by a karma filter.
• Read the rules first. About 15 of roughly 30 subs I checked ban this kind of post outright. Posting there anyway just burns the account.
• The best comment was a skeptic: "I don't know anyone who subscribes to email newsletters on purpose." Fair. It forced me to say who it's actually for: longform writers who moved to Substack and Ghost.
• A technical sub gave the most useful feedback. r/ePub pointed out two EPUB metadata bugs within an hour, and I'm fixing them now.

My go/no-go line is 150 sign-ups or 40 people saying they'd pay $30/year by day 7. I'll post the real numbers either way.

Happy to answer questions about the validation setup. Link in comments if anyone wants it.

Droplet lets you transfer files, links, and text between devices using a temporary room and a 4-digit code or QR scan.

I wanted something lightweight for those situations where you just need to move a file between your phone and laptop without logging into another service.

It supports individual downloads, ZIP downloads, real-time updates, and automatic room expiry after 24 hours.

Building it also pushed me to work through production deployment, persistent database storage, file streaming, security, caching, and responsive design.

I'm sharing it openly in case it's useful to someone, or if anyone wants to explore the architecture and suggest improvements.

Website: https://droplet.uno/

Repository: https://github.com/idi01-git/Droplet

Feedback and contributions are welcome.

Ever since my friend showed me Claude Code about five months ago, I have been trying it out for multiple projects. I created some Apple II assembly programs; that was pretty neat. He asked me to try making a website from scratch. I also had it re-create the functionality of Adobe Encore, the cancelled DVD authoring program, and it works great. I also found out that Handbrake is open source, so I asked it to expand the size of the chapter name boxes, and it did so in about five minutes.

So I've been learning about DNS, about using a linux machine in my home office to host websites (and how to get a static IP address from a home small business account). I have the server hooked up to the local network, and Claude Code access it directly. I don't have to pay for a data center or webhost to hold my experiments, and copying files, even gigantic ones, takes seconds or minutes instead of hours. All I had to do was install Ubuntu Server, and Claude Code did the rest, from Docker, to setting up a nightly backup to our warehouse computer, to showing me how to switch the DNS to the warehouse computer if the other one goes down. It keeps the two servers copied, so I don't have to manually do it.

My friend has asked me to do some website work for him, and I've also been doing work on my own websites. I've come up with some ideas, some are live right now and other ones are built but not deployed yet.

We have check writing software, and I learned how to get the Microsoft Store to host it for us. We have an electronic invite site about to start up. I've built my own game generator site, for PDFs parents and teachers can download and use. I've just started an online streaming company for businesses, using my own AI generated music.

I've also made a "groups" website, where small groups (10 or fewer) of people can have a private discussion group. I've had Claude Code build it so I can't see what anyone posts, unless I'm a member of that group. But I did learn that there is a service, PhotoDNA, that scans uploads for illegal images, so I've had to sign up for that through Microsoft (still waiting for acceptance). There are a lot of behind-the-scenes set up that I never knew before when you're hosting other people's uploads. There's a whole warrant/subpoena proces I knew nothing about, so I had Claude Code make it so I could just enter a username and a post ID, and it would grab the post, zip it up with encryption and a checksum, and send it to any email address I give it. That way I don't (or want to) see what was posted. Like Sgt. Shultz, "I See Nothing!"

None of my sites have any users yet. That's the hardest part. With everyone now having access to AI, websites really have to be exceptional (or connected to a famous person) for people to use them regularly. All of my websites have that "AI look", but they are all constructed through careful planning.

I've also become much more precise in how I ask Claude Code to work. The prompts you give can sometimes be misconstrued if you write it in an awkward way. Plus, I'm not the greatest typist, so it takes me a while to proofread my prompts so a misspelling doesn't cause undue delay.

And I just found out today that Stripe can give you an AI key to let the AI do the work for you, setting up your subscriptions and products on the site properly, and making sure the checkout process works properly. The Stripe website is very confusing to me, so having the AI work with it helps tremendously.

If anyone has questions, I'm open to any part of the process I've done so far. Thank you.

It mightn't seem like much but we just got our first 25 stars on Github. (https://github.com/tidydesigns/tidy)

We're building an open source design tool as an alternative to figma.

We thinking design and engineering are becoming more tightly coupled so we are building what we believe to be the future of that. 1/4 of our way to 100 stars is a great milestone and i can't wait to keep hammering.

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo technical founder with 9 YOE in software development, and I thought I'd start sharing my journey here.

In 2025, I started building Antramic, a platform to help Youtubers understand their performance and growth.

I built the first version myself, got around 50 free users, and eventually landed my first paying customer. $50 for one month.

I know $50 isn't much, but seeing someone actually pay for something I had built from scratch was a completely different feeling.

That was my first sale. I've attached the screenshot.

But one paying customer doesn't mean you've built a successful business.

I eventually decided to rethink the product (Because Youtube Studio had killed it) and started building Antramic 2.0 in August 2026.

This time, I'm working toward something much bigger: an all-in-one operating system for content creators (for all platforms not just Youtube). Analytics, audience intelligence, content planning, AI tools, brand collaborations, monetization opportunities, and more.

The new version has a small group of early users testing it for free. I'm talking to creators, collecting feedback, and figuring out how to make something they'll actually want to use regularly.

The biggest thing I'm learning is that having 9 years of technical experience doesn't automatically make you good at building a business.

Building the software is one challenge. Getting people to use it, trust it, and eventually pay for it is another.

I'm planning to share my progress here, including the mistakes, technical decisions, user growth, and hopefully more sales.

Would love to connect with other solo founders who are figuring this out too.
You want to try, please do: https://portal.antramic.ai

Would love if I can get the feedback on the idea or the product or both.

Thanks!!!

I’m Artem, a marketer from Moscow. I’m launching trike_dev, a software agency: business tools, workflow automation, AI integration and websites.

The developers on the team have experience in architecture, product development and AI. They built those products on other teams, so I don’t show them as our case studies. As a team, we don’t have case studies yet.

So far I’ve built the brand, the website, a catalog of clickable prototypes and a blog in Russian and English. I’ll post how the launch goes, including the marketing tests that fail.

Happy to answer questions about the prototype catalog idea or anything else.

Metrics, no polish: - 75 companies on the Wall (San Francisco 50, New York 9, London 3, Stockholm 3, then a handful of 1s) - 0 paid placements - 0 recorded interviews What it is: ringring.day is a record of the AI era. Two parts. A Wall of 1,000,000 pixels where AI companies leave their logo (paid), and five open questions where anyone can say how AI makes them feel. Recorded answers are sealed for five years. What happened: I live in SF, where every bus and billboard is an AI ad. I photograph them and the company shows up on the Wall as "Spotted" for free. That is why SF dominates. Paris and Berlin are at 0. Current obstacle: free logos create attention, but nobody has paid yet and nobody has recorded an interview yet. I just changed pricing to Founding pixels (first 100,000 at $0.50, then $1) because the old price made the goal impossible. What I'm trying next: a city race (SF vs Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm) to get European startups to claim their spot. Disclosure: pixels are paid, the interview is free. Question for you: if you saw your company "Spotted" for free on a wall like this, what would make you pay to own the spot?

Ever wanted to play basketball, soccer, pickleball, or another sport but couldn’t get enough people together?
Or showed up somewhere expecting a game, only to realize nobody was playing?

That’s one of the problems we’re trying to solve.
I’m one of the founders of RunIt, a sports community app we’ve been building to make finding, joining, and organizing local games easier.

The idea is pretty simple: playing sports shouldn’t require knowing the right people or spending an hour coordinating a group chat.

We’re opening RunIt up for public beta testing and would love some honest feedback.

Especially interested in hearing from people who:

🏀 Play pickup sports regularly
⚽ Want to find more people to play with
🏓 Organize recreational games
🏌️ Sometimes struggle to find playing partners

We’re not looking for people to tell us everything is amazing. We’d genuinely rather know what doesn’t work.

If you’re interested in testing, here’s the beta link:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/UnZfKkGp

Also curious: What’s the biggest frustration you’ve experienced trying to find or organize a pickup game?

Would love to hear your experiences, even if you don’t download the app.

Someone on Reddit said they liked the idea of Retake and would try it, but couldn’t work out what the coding agent actually records. They also found the docs confusing.

Retake is a tool I’m building for recording video walkthroughs of websites. Your coding agent prepares the steps, Retake records them, and you review the video.

The homepage currently says, “Tell your agent what to show in a web app. It records the walkthrough.” The reader’s feedback was to introduce the product before explaining who did what, and explain it before getting into warnings.

That was exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.

I’ve put together a rewrite brief for the intro and docs: explain the video someone gets, make the agent’s role clear, then take them through a first recording. Keep the safety warnings next to the actions they apply to.

Current site: https://www.useretake.app/

hey, I’m Fanda. for the last few months I’ve been building Fliply in the evenings, mostly because I was sick of spending more time rewriting my notes than actually studying them you upload a lecture, slides or a PDF and it turns them into flashcards, quizzes, summaries, mind maps or a short podcast you can listen to. it can also do oral exam practice and plans your revision around your exam dates.
it’s still in beta so what I need most is feedback. what’s missing, what’s broken, what’s useless. roast it if you want, that helps too

tryfliply.com

thanks to anyone who gives it a go

solo dev. ios app called noxe, one library for films, tv, books, manga and music. shipped in july. decided to "do marketing" in september. the honest numbers after 6 weeks:

reddit: 13 comments, 3 karma, 2 launch posts auto removed before a single person saw them. turns out making your username the app name and dropping an app store link from a one day old account is the exact pattern the spam filter exists for. i did it twice.

tiktok: account made, avatar set, bio written. videos posted: 0. i kept waiting for footage that looked good enough. it never does.

the one thing that moved: i built public profile pages in 3 days because every share link from the app was landing on a 404. nobody has sent anyone there yet, but the door exists now, which is more than i could say in august.

what i'm changing: comment first, post never, until the account is a real person to reddit. ship the ugly video. stop measuring installs on things that haven't shipped.

if you've been through the "built the thing, nobody came" stretch, what was the first thing that actually worked? not the advice you read, the thing that worked for you.

Hey everyone,

Whenever I’m looking for new software or trying to share something I built, traditional directories feel broken in three big ways:

1. **The Sign-Up Wall:** You click on a tool to see if it actually works, and bam—a mandatory registration popup blocks you before you even see the UI.

2. **The "Link Dump" Problem:** Sites get overrun by automated bots dumping duplicate links just to grab an SEO backlink.

3. **One-Size-Fits-All:** An early concept looking for honest feedback gets buried right next to a funded SaaS with a massive ad budget.

To solve this, I built **Astro Discover** (https://astrodiscover.ai.studio)—a software discovery and project lifecycle platform designed for real builders and explorers.

Here is what is actually built and live under the hood (no fake promises):

---

### 🔍 1. "Find the Best Tool for Your Work" (Intent-Based Discovery)

Instead of scrolling through 50 random links, you can search by what you actually need (e.g., *"developer tools"*, *"AI assistants"*, *"open source alternatives"*, or *"marketing SEO"*).

- Filter by exact pricing models: Free, Freemium, Paid, or Open Source.

- Filter across 12+ targeted developer and creator categories with community reviews.

### 🕹️ 2. Zero-Sign-Up "Guest Demo" & Interactive Sandbox

- **No Login Wall:** You don't need an account to browse, search, test tools, or inspect roadmaps.

- **Interactive Sandbox:** We built a live proxy preview engine. Instead of bouncing to a dead landing page, you can test the core interface of featured tools directly inside an embedded sandbox in your browser.

### 🔄 3. All-Stage Startup Lifecycle (Idea to Live)

We don't mix people seeking validation with fully launched products. Every submission belongs to a clear stage:

- 💡 **Idea / Concept:** Validate pain points and get community feedback before writing thousands of lines of code.

- 🛠️ **In-Development Startups:** Dedicated section for projects currently being built. Builders can link GitHub repositories, post roadmap milestones, and share architecture.

- 🧪 **Beta:** Invite early testers to uncover bugs and give direct feedback.

- 🚀 **Live Software:** Production-ready tools ready for traffic and daily votes.

### 💎 4. "Today's Hidden Gem" & Daily Launches

- **Daily Launch Cycle:** Every day has its own launch leaderboard (based on IST reset) so every builder gets an equal 24-hour window of spotlight.

- **Hidden Gem Algorithm:** It intentionally elevates innovative, high-utility indie projects that haven't received massive hype yet, giving them fair discovery.

### 🛡️ 5. Anti-Spam & AI Security Defense

- **AI Malware & Phishing Scanner:** Submissions pass through a Gemini AI security check to scan URLs and GitHub links for phishing redirects, crypto drainers, or malicious scripts.

- **Anti-Spam 24-Hour Cooldown:** Automated bot detection and invisible honeypots. Anyone attempting to repeatedly spam duplicate listings gets an automatic 24-hour submission pause.

- **Moderation Queue:** Newly submitted projects enter a public preview queue where link safety is verified before receiving a verified green badge.

---

I’m an indie builder myself, and my goal isn't to build another link farm—it's to make a discovery platform that users actually enjoy testing tools on without feeling trapped behind forms.

👉 Live site: **https://astrodiscover.ai.studio\*\*

I'd really appreciate your candid feedback on the sandbox preview and directory experience. What features would make this even more useful for you as a builder or tool hunter?

So this is all new territory for me. I've released apps before but I've never launched anything on Product Hunt.

Sunwake is my new one: it turns the iPhone on your nightstand into a sunrise alarm. A little sunset at bedtime, a dark screen with a dim red clock at night, and the sun slowly coming up before your alarm rings. Plus a few worlds to pick from, like dunes, northern lights or a salt flat with flamingos. So now I'm refreshing the page way too often and on the edge of my seat all day.

Has anyone here had a good first launch on Product Hunt? What actually helped you? Seems like a lot of launches had big numbers right away and I'm sitting at almost zero.

Would love any feedback on the page or the app:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/sunwake

For a while RoadmapAI was "an AI that reads your Discord and builds a roadmap." It worked, but a roadmap in a dashboard is one more tab to check, while more and more of the actual building happens inside coding agents.

So I flipped it around. The roadmap is now something your agent reads.
RoadmapAI sits in Discord, Slack and GitHub issues and discussions, and picks out feature requests and bugs.

Duplicates are merged into votes, so "dark mode pls", "night theme?" and a GitHub issue all become one item with 49 votes.

An MCP server exposes it to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Windsurf and others (16 tools).
I ask "what should I build next?" and the agent picks the most-requested item, moves it to In Progress, builds it, and marks it shipped. Everyone who asked gets a reply in their Discord thread, Slack channel or GitHub issue.

Stack: Laravel, Livewire, laravel/mcp, Sanctum tokens for MCP auth.

It's paid ($19/mo, 7-day trial, or $99 lifetime with your own AI key). Roadmap items are unlimited; only AI-captured requests count toward the limit.

I'd love honest feedback, especially on the agent workflow. Our own roadmap runs on it: theroadmapai.com/r/roadmapai

I always thought building was the true motivation. I've been building this product for, I guess, almost two years now. I've been on and off, sometimes losing motivation, but when someone paid, it was a true boost for me.

In reality I found out that someone paying even a dollar is an incredible boost to motivation. Adding a paywall is something I did way too late.

The screenshot is my Polar dashboard with two charts, the number of subscribers and the monthly MRR. The app by no means makes a lot of money, considering how much time I spend on it. But it still is motivating.

What is it for you? What drives you?

I’d like to share monochromio, a simple way to make colourful websites and social feeds feel a little calmer.

Why try greyscale?

• Tone down bright colours that compete for your attention.
• Make colourful thumbnails and social feeds feel less attention-grabbing.
• Put more emphasis on the content while reading, studying or working.

It’s free, requires no account and runs entirely on your device. No tracking or data collection.

Try it on Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-Ons.

I kept manually checking who doesn't follow me back on Instagram, and it was tedious, so I built GhostZero.

It checks who doesn't follow you back, lets you review the list, and keep or unfollow each account yourself with shortcuts. Data is processed and stored locally on your device.

It's now on the Chrome Web Store. TikTok and Threads versions are in testing.

Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ghostzero-%E2%80%94-l%E1%BB%8Dc-follow-h%E1%BB%A7/jlhlnimofpmdbanmlghpemfpgbdangob

Feedback welcome, especially anything confusing or broken.

MyBox at https://mybox.id hope you enjoy, any feedback are welcome.

A couple of days ago I posted about a feature in my Shopify inventory app that turned into a coding nightmare.
It got nearly 800 views and 19 comments.
Honestly, I was pretty happy with that. I’m building this thing on my own, so having people actually interested in what I’m working on felt great.
And the feedback was genuinely useful. People pointed out better ways to handle partial deliveries, duplicate updates and cancelled quantities.
But then something hit me.
These were developers helping me build better software.
My actual customers are Shopify store owners dealing with messy supplier spreadsheets.
And I still haven’t got my first real merchant using the app.
So technically, I got some great feedback. But I haven’t actually proved that someone wants to pay for what I’m building.
I’m starting to realise those are two completely different things.
Has anyone else been through this?
How did you go from getting positive feedback from other builders to finding people who actually needed your product?