indie hacker passion projects
Recent window: last 5.2 months
(2026-04-24 → 2026-09-28), compared with the prior
5.2 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
- 135
- Prior count
- 100
- Total count
- 251
- Momentum
- 35.00
- Attention
- 0.52
- Crowding
- 0.71
- Concentration
- 0.82
- Opportunity
- 0.33
Opportunity components
- Attention
- 0.52
- Low crowding
- 0.29
- Momentum (normalized)
- 0.34
- Low concentration
- 0.18
Source split
- github
- 7 (0.05)
- hn
- 106 (0.79)
- ph
- 21 (0.16)
- yc
- 1 (0.01)
Dominant source: hn · Divergence: 0.78
Members
|
Name
|
Source
|
Upvotes ▲
|
Launched
|
| I Built a Museum Exhibit |
HN |
39 |
2026-05-02 |
| Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism |
HN |
41 |
2026-08-06 |
| I couldn't afford interview prep, so I built a free alternative |
HN |
41 |
2026-09-10 |
| Ekselio |
HN |
42 |
2026-09-25 |
| Dumbass Business Ideas |
HN |
42 |
2025-11-14 |
| Open-source certificate from GitHub activity |
HN |
43 |
2026-01-18 |
| 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 |
| A working reference implementation of context engineering |
HN |
46 |
2026-04-17 |
| A Daily Bible Game |
HN |
49 |
2026-01-08 |
| Corporate Mind Games |
HN |
50 |
2026-08-31 |
| I'm building an open-source Amazon |
HN |
50 |
2025-12-12 |
| Decided to play god this morning, so I built an agent civilisation |
HN |
51 |
2026-02-28 |
| I created a tool to design and create foamcore inserts for boardgames |
HN |
53 |
2025-12-28 |
| I built 80 mini-games using Fable before it was shut down |
HN |
54 |
2026-06-13 |
| killmyidea |
GITHUB |
55 |
2026-09-17 |
| Build your own theme park |
HN |
58 |
2026-08-26 |
| Choose your own adventure style Presentation |
HN |
60 |
2025-11-21 |
| I turned a sketch into a 3D-print pegboard for my kid with an AI agent |
HN |
65 |
2026-03-30 |
| StackScope |
HN |
67 |
2026-06-12 |
| Fatal Core Dump |
HN |
68 |
2026-03-14 |
| My Windows XP portfolio with working Game Boy and iPod |
HN |
71 |
2026-06-20 |
| 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 |
| I left Figma to build a diffusion-based UI design tool |
HN |
80 |
2026-07-21 |
| GeneGuessr |
HN |
88 |
2025-12-23 |
| I built a text-based business simulator to replace video courses |
HN |
90 |
2026-01-16 |
| Backlog |
HN |
112 |
2025-12-22 |
| Jigsaw Haiku |
HN |
118 |
2026-09-04 |
| GhostBox |
HN |
126 |
2026-05-01 |
| Microlandia, a brutally honest city builder |
HN |
144 |
2025-12-03 |
| An index of indie web/blog indexes |
HN |
154 |
2026-05-10 |
| I made open source, zero power PCB hackathon badges |
HN |
158 |
2026-04-04 |
| I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin |
HN |
160 |
2026-01-03 |
| Sparkles - Lovable for existing projects |
YC |
164 |
2026-02-04 |
| Opening lines of famous literary works |
HN |
183 |
2026-07-14 |
| Incorruptible by Eric Ries |
PH |
192 |
2026-06-10 |
| Stacked Game of Life |
HN |
195 |
2026-02-28 |
| My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs |
HN |
199 |
2025-12-29 |
| Startups.RIP |
PH |
204 |
2026-04-09 |
| It took 4 years to sell my startup. I wrote a book about it |
HN |
208 |
2026-02-04 |
| Koi.rest |
HN |
226 |
2026-09-24 |
| I wrote a technical history book on Lisp |
HN |
252 |
2026-02-17 |
| Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt |
HN |
265 |
2026-01-01 |
| San Fran Sim |
PH |
310 |
2026-07-11 |
| I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back |
HN |
314 |
2026-01-19 |
| I'm a 15 Year Old Wannabe Engineer, This Is a Cycloidal Gearbox I Built |
HN |
338 |
2026-08-02 |
| Lathe |
HN |
402 |
2026-06-07 |
| Are You in the Weights? |
HN |
471 |
2026-06-18 |
| I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stock market sim from 1986 |
HN |
721 |
2026-02-10 |