HomeCat
Design your backyard office
Details
- External ID
- 49601328
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- HomeCat
- Website domain
- myhomecat.com
- Launched
- Sept. 7, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 40
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.8269537480063796
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 11, 2026, 7:31 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 11, 2026, 7:31 p.m.
Description
Hey HN! Ilya and Nikita here. We’re building HomeCat, a tool that lets you design a backyard office space - https://myhomecat.comWe started out by helping people design sheds, and quickly realized that many people actually want to build a backyard office. There wasn't really an easy way to do this, so we thought we'd take on the challenge.Right now, you can design a backyard shed and our tool will make it code compliant. It's maybe 90% of the way there, since you also have zoning/HOA and other edge cases. But it does figure out most of the details for you. Right now, it's pretty simple: enter your address, what you want to build (i.e. 8x8 backyard office), and it'll create a few concepts for you. If you like one, you can customize it with the chat.Here's an example of a design that's compliant in SF: https://myhomecat.com/scene/classic-cottage-137134efWe would love for you to try our tool if you are planning your backyard office. As a bonus to the HN community, we can professionally design one for you for free if you comment what you're looking for.Happy labor day!
Enrichment
- Theme
- 3D modeling and visual design tools
- Vertical
- Real estate
- Function
- Vertical SaaS
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- —
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- backyard office design tool
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial The web UI and configurator interface can be vibe-coded, but real architectural backyard shed/office design requires 3D parametric CAD modeling, structural engineering validation, and local zoning/building code compliance checks.
What it would actually take: A production version requires Three.js/WebGPU on the frontend backed by a parametric geometry kernel (like OpenCASCADE via WebAssembly) to calculate dimensions, joist spacing, and materials cut lists. It also needs rule engines integrating municipal zoning ordinances and standard building codes (IRC/IBC). Building this demands CAD software engineers and construction/structural engineering domain knowledge.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Sketchup, Ikea (furniture catalog)
Concerns raised: Pricing not visible without login, Geographic coverage limited/unclear which regions supported, Code compliance automation difficult for complex rules, Renderer perspective/orthographic rendering issues, Address recognition limited to certain countries
Feature requests: Complex interior design with multi-catalog furniture, Orthographic/perspective rendering fix, List supported countries/regions on website, Expand to Western Australia and New Zealand
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 22 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #3 of 23 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 283 days after the earliest competitor.
- Plan² · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Site Plans Online USA · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- Australian Oak Desk · ph · 2026-09-09 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- MyPawPlan.app · ph · 2026-09-16 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- Site office cabins · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- Housecat.com · hn · 2026-07-22 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- Garden Planner · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- My 'pet' project, a Tinder-esque experience for rescuing dogs and cats · hn · 2026-03-27 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.33
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.