Koi.rest
watch some fish and regain your balance
Details
- External ID
- 49837006
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Koi.rest
- Website domain
- koi.rest
- Launched
- Sept. 24, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 226
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9728867623604466
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 28, 2026, 5:01 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 28, 2026, 5:01 p.m.
Description
Hi there. My name is Paul. I’m a developer, an explorer and I’ve got ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed.This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress.While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use.It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now.So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself.Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make.I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough".I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it.So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy.Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head?So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond.The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together.I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.
Enrichment
- Theme
- indie hacker passion projects
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- virtual koi pond for relaxation
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The author explicitly states they created this tranquil virtual koi pond with timer and ambient sounds using AI tools without knowing JavaScript. It is a standard client-side interactive canvas/WebGL app.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Severe lag and low frame rate, Pond overcrowding makes experience stressful, Fish popping abruptly in and out of frame
Feature requests: Android live wallpaper or screensaver support, Option for single-player zen mode with fewer fish, Interactive pond elements (feeding fish, splashing water), Smooth fish entry and exit animations
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 101 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #5 of 102 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 330 days after the earliest competitor.
- koi.rest · ph · 2026-09-29 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- I was burnt out and failing so I built AI that give shit about me · hn · 2026-01-20 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Jigsaw Haiku · hn · 2026-09-04 · 118 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- I built a smart blocker after destroying my dopamine baseline · hn · 2025-11-02 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Odozi · hn · 2026-04-25 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- StumbleUpon Is Back (Kinda) · hn · 2026-06-17 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Katipo is a minimal alternative internet with a Vulkan based browser · hn · 2026-02-16 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- I built a site that turns your Steam gaming hours into a RL skill tree · hn · 2026-04-06 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.39
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.