indie hacker passion projects
Recent window: last 5.1 months
(2026-04-24 → 2026-09-27), compared with the prior
5.1 months.
media · 251 members ·
Data as of 2026-09-30
These products range from custom hardware conversions and reverse-engineered retro software to niche indie games, developer tools, and technical books. Built primarily by solo engineers and makers, they are made for curious developers, hobbyists, and fellow tech enthusiasts. Unlike commercially oriented B2B or consumer SaaS clusters, these launches are defined by idiosyncratic, deep-dive craftsmanship and long-term personal experiments.
Metrics
- Stage
- crowded
- Recent count
- 133
- Prior count
- 99
- Total count
- 251
- Momentum
- 34.34
- Attention
- 0.52
- Crowding
- 0.72
- Concentration
- 0.82
- Opportunity
- 0.33
Opportunity components
- Attention
- 0.52
- Low crowding
- 0.28
- Momentum (normalized)
- 0.34
- Low concentration
- 0.18
Source split
- github
- 6 (0.05)
- hn
- 105 (0.79)
- ph
- 21 (0.16)
- yc
- 1 (0.01)
Dominant source: hn · Divergence: 0.78
Members
|
Name
|
Source
|
Upvotes ▼
|
Launched
|
| I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s |
HN |
2935 |
2026-07-19 |
| I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stock market sim from 1986 |
HN |
721 |
2026-02-10 |
| Are You in the Weights? |
HN |
471 |
2026-06-18 |
| Lathe |
HN |
402 |
2026-06-07 |
| I'm a 15 Year Old Wannabe Engineer, This Is a Cycloidal Gearbox I Built |
HN |
338 |
2026-08-02 |
| I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back |
HN |
314 |
2026-01-19 |
| San Fran Sim |
PH |
310 |
2026-07-11 |
| Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt |
HN |
265 |
2026-01-01 |
| I wrote a technical history book on Lisp |
HN |
252 |
2026-02-17 |
| Koi.rest |
HN |
226 |
2026-09-24 |
| It took 4 years to sell my startup. I wrote a book about it |
HN |
208 |
2026-02-04 |
| Startups.RIP |
PH |
204 |
2026-04-09 |
| My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs |
HN |
199 |
2025-12-29 |
| Stacked Game of Life |
HN |
195 |
2026-02-28 |
| Incorruptible by Eric Ries |
PH |
192 |
2026-06-10 |
| Opening lines of famous literary works |
HN |
183 |
2026-07-14 |
| Sparkles - Lovable for existing projects |
YC |
164 |
2026-02-04 |
| I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin |
HN |
160 |
2026-01-03 |
| I made open source, zero power PCB hackathon badges |
HN |
158 |
2026-04-04 |
| An index of indie web/blog indexes |
HN |
154 |
2026-05-10 |
| Microlandia, a brutally honest city builder |
HN |
144 |
2025-12-03 |
| GhostBox |
HN |
126 |
2026-05-01 |
| Jigsaw Haiku |
HN |
118 |
2026-09-04 |
| Backlog |
HN |
112 |
2025-12-22 |
| I built a text-based business simulator to replace video courses |
HN |
90 |
2026-01-16 |
| GeneGuessr |
HN |
88 |
2025-12-23 |
| I left Figma to build a diffusion-based UI design tool |
HN |
80 |
2026-07-21 |
| tale.fyi, we deserve a home for fiction |
HN |
74 |
2026-07-28 |
| A simulator for engineers transitioning from IC to management |
HN |
74 |
2026-01-05 |
| My Windows XP portfolio with working Game Boy and iPod |
HN |
71 |
2026-06-20 |
| Fatal Core Dump |
HN |
68 |
2026-03-14 |
| StackScope |
HN |
67 |
2026-06-12 |
| I turned a sketch into a 3D-print pegboard for my kid with an AI agent |
HN |
65 |
2026-03-30 |
| Choose your own adventure style Presentation |
HN |
60 |
2025-11-21 |
| Build your own theme park |
HN |
58 |
2026-08-26 |
| killmyidea |
GITHUB |
55 |
2026-09-17 |
| I built 80 mini-games using Fable before it was shut down |
HN |
54 |
2026-06-13 |
| I created a tool to design and create foamcore inserts for boardgames |
HN |
53 |
2025-12-28 |
| Decided to play god this morning, so I built an agent civilisation |
HN |
51 |
2026-02-28 |
| I'm building an open-source Amazon |
HN |
50 |
2025-12-12 |
| Corporate Mind Games |
HN |
50 |
2026-08-31 |
| A Daily Bible Game |
HN |
49 |
2026-01-08 |
| A working reference implementation of context engineering |
HN |
46 |
2026-04-17 |
| A game where you invest into startups from history |
HN |
43 |
2025-11-15 |
| The Roman Industrial Revolution that could have been (Vol 2) |
HN |
43 |
2026-03-06 |
| Open-source certificate from GitHub activity |
HN |
43 |
2026-01-18 |
| Ekselio |
HN |
42 |
2026-09-25 |
| Dumbass Business Ideas |
HN |
42 |
2025-11-14 |
| I couldn't afford interview prep, so I built a free alternative |
HN |
41 |
2026-09-10 |
| Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism |
HN |
41 |
2026-08-06 |