r/buildinpublic

Okay so context: I'm a second-year CS student, and a few weeks ago at a hackathon I got annoyed that every "AI stock bot" I tried was either a glorified ChatGPT wrapper that hallucinated prices, or a dashboard nobody actually opens. So I built Finley instead — no dashboard, no commands, you just... talk to it in Telegram like you'd talk to an analyst friend who never sleeps.

Send it a ticker, a voice note, a PDF of an earnings report, a screenshot of a chart — it pulls live data from Finnhub/yfinance/SEC EDGAR, remembers what you've asked before (actual vector memory, not just chat history), and can proactively DM you a morning briefing or a price alert without you asking.

The part I'm genuinely proud of: it runs on 100% free tiers. Gemini with multi-key rotation across accounts (auto-detects rate limits, rotates keys, retries — never just dies), MongoDB + Qdrant free clusters, zero paid APIs. I wanted to prove you could build something that doesn't feel like a toy without spending a dollar.

I'm posting this half-nervous, honestly — I know finance-bot posts get torn apart here (rightfully, most of them are trash), and I fully expect someone to poke a hole in the alert latency or ask why I didn't just use LangGraph. Go for it, that's kind of why I'm here. Would rather find out now than after more people are relying on it.

It's open source, MIT licensed.

What would you actually want out of something like this before you'd trust it with a real watchlist?

Repo's here: github.com/Skull-boy/Finley

Over the past few months I built GeoSwipe, an iOS app for learning about countries in depth through a more interactive format.

The idea is simple: you discover countries one at a time, swipe left to see another, or swipe right to open a detailed guide when one catches your interest.

Each guide covers basic geography, landscapes, culture, history, language, cities, government, economy, everyday life, and common misconceptions. It also includes audio, flag explanations, regional maps, interactive statistics, and references to the original sources. The content is grounded in reputable sources such as Britannica, the World Bank, and National Geographic.

I also added country comparisons, quizzes, and short geography games, including ranking countries by population, locating countries on the map, and flag and capital quizzes.

I’ve just released it on iOS and included a very short demo here. I’d genuinely appreciate honest feedback from fellow geography nerds.

Ok so, I can’t retire just yet 😅 but getting a business off the ground and attracting customers is the hardest part in my opinion.

There’s still a long way to go but considering it’s only been 4 months since launching ZenMode, I’m pretty happy with the results so far.

I get asked a lot about how I get customers, so thought I’d give more info on how I do distribution, in case you might find it useful.

1. Make sure your website is set up for success

Before sending people to your site, make sure you’re confident it has good CRO potential. Your mission statement and objective needs to be very clear, along with clear incentives for people to try the product out.

2. Offer free trials, but only behind a payment info gate

Now this is just my personal opinion, and I know a lot of people disagree, but the proof is in the numbers. I get fewer free trial signups, but significantly higher conversion rates into paying users from people who provide payment info at the start.

Yes, a few of them are people who simply forget to cancel, but mostly I get people who are more engaged in the free trial and actually using the product.

I actually did an AB experiment where I did offer completely free trials to people (no payment info needed), but the overwhelming result was that people barely even tried out the product and were mostly tire kickers that never came back. I did convert some but not a meaningful number.

3. Create a waitlist before launching

Try to generate interest in your product before it launches - build in public and try to ensure that you’re not scrambling to get customers through the door on day 1 when you launch.

I had 3 customers on day 1 from this, who took higher paid tiers as well.

4. Post and comment everywhere

Social media is free, so there’s no excuse not to leverage it. Post about your product and what you’re building on Reddit, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook etc.

I posted a simple screenshot on LinkedIn recently, of someone using a low quality LinkedIn automation tool message to contact me, and me offering my own much better tool in response, and that post generated 90,000 views and led to several signups and demo calls.

I’ve also had some posts on Reddit go into hundreds of thousands of views, mostly just posting about what/why/how I built my automation tool.

5. If you have competitors, make “alternative to” inner pages

If done in the right way, this type of inner page can be useful for SEO. It won’t be picked up automatically but usually if you work in a competitive industry, this will sometimes attract customers who had a bad experience elsewhere.

6. I actually use my own LinkedIn automation tool (dogfooding) to do LinkedIn outreach

So it’s always important to practice what you preach - I use ZenMode to actually promote ZenMode.

It’s a great way to get buy-in for booking demos, as when someone replies, I simply tell them I used my tool to get a response from them, so it works.

Anyway hope you enjoyed reading the above, and good luck on your journey if you’re building anything, or growing your business 🙌

6 months ago I left a decade of fintech engineering in London to build Lyra solo ,a Mac writing assistant that fixes your writing as you type, in every app.

The problem I built it for: everyone I worked with had the same ritual. Type a message, re-read it four times, paste it into some tool, fix it, paste it back, tweak the tone, send. Multiply by 50 messages a day. And the tools that "help" all have the same flaws — they live in a separate window, they interrupt you with underlines while you're mid-thought, and they sand everyone down to the same polished-robot voice, whether you're messaging your boss or your best mate.

So Lyra works differently: you just type. Pause, and a small pill shows a better version — press Tab, done. No panel, no copy-paste, no clicks. It works in Gmail, Outlook, Slack, WhatsApp, your browser, wherever you write. And it learns how you write to each specific person, so your message to a client and your message to a friend don't come out sounding like the same press release.

Launched quietly in July. Show HN flagged my post. Reddit: silence. X: silence. Then one person paid ,a guy in France. I was thrilled for about an hour, which is how long it took him to uninstall: Lyra was freezing his Mac every minute.

Here's what that month taught me. I assumed the worst (memory leak), built instrumentation, ran controlled tests on identical hardware and my confident assumption was wrong. The real cause was a design decision I'd shipped without questioning. Fixed it, the freezing died, and he told me he'd reinstall ,he'd called Lyra "a really great product" while uninstalling it, which is the strangest compliment I've ever received.

Since then: fixed the biggest issues my ~30 early users hit, rebuilt the rough edges, made a proper demo. Relaunching today.

Mac only. 14-day full trial, free tier after, $9.99/mo for Pro.

Happy to answer anything , the debugging saga, why the first launch flopped, what one uninstall taught me that 30 signups didn't, or the unglamorous reality of marketing as a solo dev.

Try Lyra here Get Lyra

After months of building this thing, the first-ever StreakWars game is finally starting.

The rules are borderline stupid:
📸 Everyone joins the same War
⏰ You have to post proof before the clock runs out
💀 Miss once = you’re fucking out
🏆 Last person still alive wins the pot

That’s it.

No XP. No levels. No 45-minute gaming sessions.
We built it because we’re adults with jobs, meetings, kids and approximately 11 minutes of free time…
…but somehow we’ll still spend 45 minutes talking shit in a group chat.

So we thought:

What if the group chat WAS the game?
Something you check for 30 seconds a day, talk an unreasonable amount of shit about, and slowly watch your friends get eliminated because Kevin forgot to take a fucking selfie on Tuesday.
And now we’re actually testing it.

WAR #001 starts soon.

Which is mildly terrifying because this will be the first real StreakWars game ever played.

The rules will probably evolve.
Something will probably break.
Someone is absolutely going to get eliminated in an embarrassingly stupid way.

And one psychopath is going to outlast everybody.

So before we start, Reddit gets to decide something:
What would YOU be most likely to survive?
A) Daily selfie
B) Outfit check
C) Photo of your lunch
D) Couples selfie
E) Something considerably more unhinged — comment it 👇

Also:
How many days do you genuinely think you’d last?
I’m saying 6 before half of Reddit forgets. 😂
If you find StreakWars right now, you’re ridiculously early.

No giant community. No polished corporate launch.
Just War #001 and a bunch of strangers about to find out who has their shit together.

May the least forgetful idiot win. 🫡

I'm a fencer and a developer. For the last few months I've been building Poule Referee, a free app for whoever is holding the phone at the piste. It scores touches, cards and priority, and it runs the bout clock and the passivity timer. Results go straight to the competition, so the poule sheet updates for everyone watching.

The app is finished and submitted to both stores. The iPhone version is in review with Apple, so iOS users will get it as well. The Android side is stuck behind a Google rule, and that is where I need help.

What Google requires

A new personal developer account has to run a closed test with 12 testers for 14 consecutive days before the app can go to production. Twelve people with the app installed is the requirement, not a target. I have 3, that's my friends coaches near me. :)

What it would cost you

1. Send me a private message with the Gmail address you use on your Android phone.
2. I add you to the tester list and send you a join link.
3. Open the link on the phone, tap Become a tester, and install from the Play Store.
4. Leave it installed for 14 days. You don't have to open it daily.

The test only works on Android.

What you can try on your own

Timer only mode needs no code and no network. It gives you a full bout clock with periods, the rest between them, sudden death and the priority draw. It is useful for training even if you never referee with it.

For the rest, go to poule.esgrima.pt and set up your own poule or tournament. The platform issues the six-digit code, you type it into the app, and you can referee from there: the sheet, the bouts, the standings and submitting results. Six made-up names and a phone on the table are enough to see how it works.

Cost and data

The app is free, has no ads, asks for no account and collects nothing about you.

Feedback is welcome. What I need most are the 12 installs, and if the app turns out to be useful to you, keep it.

By the way if you like the app and website, you can send me feedback at: https://poule.esgrima.pt/feedback and if you want buy me a coffe here is the link: https://buymeacoffee.com/jonathan.fontes

Is totally fine if you can't help me, also moderators if I'm violating any rule, hide de post.

I've been using Claude Code quite a bit and realized I was constantly looking back at my screen to see whether it had:

• finished the task
• stopped and needed my input
• was still working

So I built BrainSnack, a VS Code/Cursor extension that handles this for me.

While Claude is working, it opens a small panel with something short to read — AI news, technical articles, interview questions, output-based questions, etc.

And when Claude finishes or needs my input, it plays a sound so I know I can come back.

The interesting part is that it doesn't monitor the screen or scrape terminal output.

It's free and open source.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback from other developers.

I also shared the build/story on LinkedIn. If you'd like to see it there (and help a small indie project get a little more reach), here's the post:

👉 Linkedin post link

Download links -
VS Code - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=shikhargupta.brainsnack
Cursor - https://open-vsx.org/extension/shikhargupta/brainsnack

Thanks! Would love to hear what you think.

AI is quickly becoming essential for staying competitive. As we move into a new era of business transformation, growth-minded small businesses are shifting from AI experimentation to strategic investment.

This momentum is backed by the 2026 Intuit QuickBooks AI Impact Report, which highlighted some pretty telling stats:

• Growth-focused leaders are more than twice as likely to pay for dedicated AI software compared to those just maintaining stability.
• Retention is massive: 86% of businesses that paid for AI tools in 2024 kept using them in 2025.

This shift toward AI-based software is exactly what we focused on when building Teclaz.

We wanted to empower business owners to make the most of their data without the burden and expense of traditional analytics systems. Instead of forcing users to navigate complex, static dashboards, Teclaz handles the heavy lifting in the background by:

• Transforming raw website traffic into real-time business opportunities.
• Identifying anonymous company visitors.
• Analyzing funnel health.

You don't need a dedicated tech team or a data science degree to get value out of your traffic.

We’d love to hear how your small teams are currently leveraging AI to scale this year. What tools have actually stuck around in your workflow?

If you want to try it out, you can start for free at Teclaz.com.

I lost my uncle to violence in Nigeria a few years back. Before he died he sent me a voice note of encouragement, and I still have it, but it’s frozen. It can’t answer anything I ask it now.
EchoVault is my attempt to fix that. You do guided check-in sessions with an AI biographer that draws your actual stories out of you, and over time it builds an Echo that talks the way you talk and knows what you’d say. Most things in this space build an avatar from a few minutes of uploaded footage. This works the other way around, so the Echo can answer questions you never explicitly answered because it’s learned how you actually think.
Every response is grounded in something you really said, which means it won’t invent memories you never had.
Text is free forever with unlimited check-ins and no card. $12/mo adds your real cloned voice. There’s a $99.99 one-time setup for a lifelike video avatar that includes 3 months of live video, then $18/mo after that. The video tier is a live face to face conversation, not a rendered clip.
You name custodians up front. If a full year passes with no activity on your account, your Echo transfers to them automatically. No paperwork for a grieving family to figure out.
I shipped text, voice, and real-time video together in June 2025, which as far as I know made this the first digital legacy product where all three worked at once.
iPhone, iOS 15.1+: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echovault-digital-legacy/id6762042028
Built solo, nights only. Happy to answer anything. Will appreciate any feedback too, thanks

I feel like many people still ignore the importance of defining their target audience, or maybe they just don’t know exactly how to do it.

I prepared (5 min. work) this free tool where you answer a few simple questions and receive a summary of your target audience as a PDF by email.

Is this something that people will find helpful? Also, any ideas on how to make this more valuable?

Thanks a lot.

Jan

I was thinking — if an email app already has access to the emails where your Amazon orders, UPI payments, bills, subscriptions, and receipts arrive, why not use that information to help you understand your spending too?

That’s what I’m trying with OrganizeEmail.

OrganizeEmail is an Android email app that helps organize your inbox with AI — categories, summaries, unsubscribe, smarter notifications, etc.

Now I’ve added Expense Summary: it looks at relevant emails already on your device and gives you a simple view of your spending, monthly trends, and categories.

No bank account connection. No separate expense app.

Just making better use of the data that’s already sitting in your inbox.

Would you actually use something like this, or would you prefer keeping email and finances completely separate?

#Android #Email #PersonalFinance #BuildInPublic

I’m new to building. I work a regular day job, then spend my evenings vibe coding with AI agents.

For the past month, I’ve been building mysticos.ai, mostly on my own.

Part of the reason was personal. Life had started to feel repetitive and, honestly, a little boring. This project gave me something I genuinely wanted to keep thinking about and improving. That has probably mattered more to me than any of the numbers below.

The product compares readings from 10 astrology and divination systems. Instead of blending them into one vague answer, it shows where the traditions agree and where they contradict each other.

After one month:

• 761 generated pages across 11 locales
• Deterministic chart calculations in a separate service; the LLM interprets the results but never generates the underlying numbers
• Coding agents wrote roughly 95% of the code. I described what I wanted, reviewed the output, tested it and made the product decisions

A few things that broke:

1. A login bug only appeared when someone clicked Submit very quickly. It was a hydration race that caused the browser to reload the page and wipe the form.
2. Missing translations silently fell back to English. I shipped partially translated German and Turkish pages without noticing.
3. A refactor removed three of four Vedic charts while every test and build still passed. I caught it only by manually comparing screenshots.
4. A calendar date appeared one month early for some US users, and a Chinese romanization collision turned one “wu” into “woo” in the English UI.

The main lesson: AI agents make it easy to produce code quickly, but they don’t know whether the product is actually correct unless you build the checks yourself.

I’d really appreciate it if anyone here wanted to take a look. In particular:

• Does the “different traditions can disagree” idea sound interesting or confusing?
• What part of the product feels unclear or difficult to trust?

I read the subreddit rules before posting and tried to focus on the process, what broke and what I learned—not just drop a link. Hopefully this fits :)

Hello Open Source community,

we’ve been building scibly an AI-native learning platform. The idea is pretty simple. You give it existing material and knowledge like your docs, blog posts, PDFs, ... and it creates an interactive course from it. You can edit everything afterwards and share the result anonymously or to your invited users.

Scibly is AGPLv3.

Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcpLUNBRhQw

GitHub: https://github.com/scibly-dev/scibly

We appreciate all your feedback