Announcing GLM Arena! A series of tests (infographics, svgs, sites, ect..) ran on GLM 5.2 and Opus 4.8, with prompts included. On average, GLM 5.2 produced 2x the tokens but was still faster + 3x cheaper with similar quality.

Announcing roomGPT! Redesign your room in seconds with AI! 100% free and open source. roomgpt.io

Announcing Face Photo Restorer! Restore any old blurry face photos with AI – 100% free and open source. restorephotos.io

Beginner React tutorials be like:

Announcing llama-ocr – a free + open source OCR tool! It takes documents (images for now) & outputs markdown, and does really well for complex receipts, PDFs with tables/charts, ect... Powered by Llama 3.2 vision on @togethercompute & available on npm today!

Introducing LlamaCoder! An open source Claude Artifacts app that can generate full React apps and components with Llama 3.1 405B. 100% free and open source. llamacoder.io

Next.js developers be like:

Announcing AI Commits – a CLI tool that generates your commit message for you with AI. Available on npm today! npmjs.com/package/aicommits

My free + open source logo generator is dropping in 24h!

BillSplit – the easiest way to split any restaurant bill – is dropping in 48 hours. Will be 100% free & open source!

Building an AI web app that helps restore old blurry photos! Dropping tomorrow and as usual, it'll be free and open source.

Introducing LogoCreator! An open source logo generator that creates professional logos in seconds using Flux Pro 1.1 on @togethercompute. 100% free and open source. Demo + code:

Announcing Agent Recipes! A site to learn about agent/workflow recipes with code examples that you can easily copy & paste into your own AI apps. I'm gonna make this the go-to resource for devs to learn about agents & how to implement them – more soon.

Interview with a JavaScript Engineer in 2023:

My coding journey so far: ◆ March 2020: Started learning how to code in the pandemic. Spent 60-70h a week learning & building for a few months. ◆ May 2020: Changed my college major from electrical to computer engineering ◆ June 2020: Landed a remote React internship, learned a ton ◆ June 2021: Graduated from college with a few CS classes (mostly EE classes and internships) ◆ July 2021: Landed my first developer advocate job from a Twitter DM and moved to San Francisco to work for a 4 person YC startup ◆ August 2021: Laid off after 7 weeks and stuck with an expensive lease + at risk for needing to leave the US if I didn't find a job soon ◆ September 2021: Interviewed like crazy for a month with ~20 companies, landed 5 offers, and accepted a job at Vercel ◆ August 2022: Promoted to senior developer advocate ◆ September 2023 (this month): Crossed 2 years at Vercel Lots of ups and downs and lots of hard work, but it's been a fun 3 years. I've also been shipping around 10 projects a year over the last few years just to become a better engineer. Have never looked back since learning how to code – it's truly changed my life.

New AI app dropping on Monday! It'll be open source with Next.js app router, auth, storage, and a database. Plus, 100% free.

My AI side projects this year: ◆ roomGPT.io: 2.1 million users ◆ restorePhotos.io: 400k users ◆ twitterbio.io: 200k visitors ◆ aicommits.com: 29k downloads Here's exactly how I approach building AI side projects in 6 steps: 1. Think of an idea that excites me but that is very simple. I should be able to describe it in 5 words to anyone. 2. Take a weekend and block it off entirely to focus on building the app. I'll generally take 15-30 hours to build an initial version. 3. Try to incorporate the latest AI models so the end result is especially impressive (even though it's trivial with code, like 1 API call to an ML model) 4. Launch early then iterate based on feedback from users. The benefit of launching early is that you can pivot or work on a new idea if what you launched isn't working out so you don't sink too much time into a failed project. 5. Make it free + open source so folks can learn from it and are incentivized to share it and follow you. I gained about 20k Twitter followers and 18k GitHub stars from the 4 projects above. 6. Make sure the UI looks good and is straightforward to use. Nobody will use your project if it doesn't look great, so I typically focus a lot on this aspect. I do want to call out that I do have a large twitter audience and that helps a lot. With that said, I've seen folks without any followers have successful side projects by doing the things I talked about, so I still stand by them!

My open source Claude Artifacts app using Llama 3.1 405B is dropping in 24 hours! Free & fully open source.

Announcing Together Chat! Use DeepSeek R1 & other top open source models to do web search, coding, image generation, & image analysis. Available today for free!

New guide: How to do OCR! I go over how to use vision models to do: ◆ Regular OCR (image/doc -> Markdown) ◆ Structured OCR (image/doc -> JSON) ◆ Best practices for OCR w/ vision models

Announcing blinkshot.io! An open source real-time AI image generator. Type a prompt and images will generate as you type. 100% free and open source.

Building an agent that can generate an entire interactive course from a PDF/textbook 🤯 The way it works: I have pre-built components (Q&A, drag & match, flowchart, info bubble, ect...) that can be invoked through tool calls. Here's the full workflow: 1. The agent will first parse the material passed in (can either remain in context if small or be embedded if big) 2. Agent will then decide on a good structure for the lesson (will be given a few good examples for reference) 3. Through tool calling, it will be able to select the right components now that it has a lesson structure. It will also pass in the relevant params to the components (like generated questions or content for a flowchart). 4. The finished lesson gets handed off to a Lesson Reviewer agent for a final check against source material 5. Lesson gets created & is able to be sent to others This app will be built with open source LLMs from @togethercompute and will be free & open source! I think this will turn out to be one of my most interesting apps. Let me know if y'all want to see a guide on how I built it as well!

Built a CLI tool that auto-generates a commit message with AI based on your code changes. Coming tomorrow to a terminal near you!

Announcing napkins.dev! An open source wireframe to app tool powered by Llama 3.2 vision. Upload a screenshot of a simple site/design & get code. 100% free and open source.

My AI side projects this year: ◆ llamacoder​.io: 1.5M users ◆ blinkshot​.io: 1.4M users ◆ llamatutor​.io: 146k users ◆ llamaOCR​.com: 91k users Here's my full process for building AI apps: 1. Ideation – Get inspired on X, Reddit, Product Hunt, newsletters, YC sites. Keep a list of good ideas & pick one that I'm most excited about. 2. Naming – Come up with a good name for the project – can use tools like domainsGPT to do this. 3. Design – Think through how the app will work and how many screens it will have. Can be a rough sketch, Figma, or tools like v0/bolt/lovable. 4. Building – Make the simplest possible working version – ideally 1 API endpoint working end to end 4. Auth/limits – See if I wanna add auth, rate limit by IP address, add bring your own key, ect depending on the app 5. Prep for launch – Write a nice README, get an OG image for the app, get a nice domain, add analytics 6. Launch – Draft LinkedIn/X posts, make the code open source, & announce it. Keep an eye out for any bugs to fix on socials. Overall, my philosophy is to try to keep these projects as simple as possible, with a single API call, and focus on building a really nice UI that impresses users. That + making it free & open source are a big part of why I think my apps do well. Also, by keeping these apps as simple as possible, you spend less time on them and if they flop, you can just move on to the next one. Only double down after you see traction.

Working on a new side project! You'll be able to upload a picture of your room and generate your dream room in different themes. Launching later this week and as usual, it'll be 100% free and open source!

Working on something new based on Anthropic's great agent article!

Next.js developers be like:

Dropping next week! Free + open source logo generator

Announcing self​.so! Create a personal site in 30 seconds from your resume/linkedIn. 100% free and open source.

I'm so excited to announce that I got promoted at work today to Senior Developer Advocate! 🎉

Introducing Whisper – an open source voice note taking app! Record voice notes and transcribe them into lists, blogs, & more with AI. 100% free & open source.

Learn how to build AI web apps as a frontend developer! In this video, I explain how I built restorephotos.io and give you the starter code to build your own AI apps:

My agent recipes site is launching tomorrow!

My side project hit 200,000 unique users in 40 days! Still can't believe that a project I made on a whim over a weekend has made it this far.

I built a @tailwindcss color picker chrome extension! It calculates the closest Tailwind color in any website you open it in so you can quickly prototype. Get it today, 100% free → dub.sh/tailwind

My AI side projects this year: ◆ llamacoder.io: 338k users ◆ usenotesgpt.com: 75k users ◆ blinkshot.io: 70k users ◆ llamatutor.com: 67k users Here's exactly how I approach building AI side projects in 7 steps: 1. Think of an idea that excites you but that is very simple. You should be able to describe it in 5 words to anyone. 2. Make sure the UI looks good and is straightforward to use. Nobody will use your project if it doesn't look great, so I focus a lot of time on this aspect. 3. Keep the app extremely simple. All my apps above have 1 single API call to an AI model – that's it. 4. Try to incorporate the latest AI models so the end result is especially impressive (even though it's trivial with code, like 1 API call to an AI model). 5. Launch early then iterate based on feedback from users. The benefit of launching early is that you can pivot or work on a new idea if what you launched isn't working out so you don't sink too much time into a failed project. 6. Make it free + open source so folks can learn from it and are incentivized to share it and follow you. I gained about thousands of Twitter followers and 6k GitHub stars from the 4 projects above. 7. Keep shipping. A lot of my AI apps don't do well and I usually don't have a good sense of when they will do well vs not. Scope down the work and keep shipping. I do want to call out that I do have a large twitter audience and that helps a lot. With that said, I've seen folks without any followers have successful side projects by doing the things I talked about, so I still stand by them!

I built a @tailwindcss color picker chrome extension! It will calculate the closest Tailwind color in any website you open it in so you can quickly prototype.

I built a menu visualizer app that can take a restaurant menu pic and generate nice images for each dish! 100% free and open source. Dropping in 24 hours.

Got a blood test recently and wanted to better understand my results… so I’m building an app for it. Free. Open source. Coming soon.

Building an app to help people track their finances! It'll take in any receipts you have, extract the total $, and categorize it for you (dining, groceries, utilities, ect). Launching soon. Will be 100% free & open source.

I built an AI news summarizer for TechCrunch articles! 1. Go to any TechCrunch article 2. Add "summary" after "techcrunch" in the URL 3. Get your summary 100% free and open source: techcrunchsummary.com

My side project hit 100,000 users in 3 weeks! This is officially the most popular thing I've ever created – and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Introducing LlamaTutor! An AI personal tutor who can explain any subject at any education level using up-to-date sources. 100% free and open source. llamatutor.com

Introducing Twitter Bio Generator! Copy your current twitter bio & get improved variations using AI. 100% free & open source → twitterbio.com

Working on a free & open source next.js starter kit! The goal is to enable devs to build full-stack AI apps & Saas apps as fast as possible

Announcing loras[.]dev! An open source AI image generator that can create beautiful images from specific styles (Flux LoRAs). 100% free and open source – and available today!

I built an app that can take your resume/linkedIn and create a personal website for you in 1 min! 100% free and open source. Dropping in 24 hours.

Announcing notesGPT! Record voice notes and get a transcript, summary, and action items. 100% free and open source. usenotesgpt.com

Learn how I approach my side projects! In 4 mins, I discuss: ◆ How I come up with side project ideas ◆ How I approach my side projects ◆ Advice for being a great builder Shoutout to @honeypotio for interviewing me!

My PDF summarizer app is launching this week! 100% free and open source.

My PDF summarizer app is coming soon! 100% free and open source.

Learn how to build GPT-3 AI apps with @OpenAI and @Vercel edge functions. In this video, I explain how I built twitterbio.com and how you can build your own GPT-3 powered apps:

When dev influencers make programming tutorials:

Working on a new app!

Announcing EasyEdit – the easiest way to edit images. 100% free and open source.

Announcing napkins​.dev 2.0! An open source wireframe to app tool powered by Llama 4. Upload a screenshot of a simple site/design & get code. 100% free and open source.

24h update after launching roomGPT.io yesterday: ◆ 42,000 rooms generated ◆ 31,000 unique visitors ◆ 850 GitHub stars ◆ Frontpage of HN My best performing side project so far! More details in the thread about cost & visitors.

Time management from a dying professor. When Randy Pausch, a renowned Computer Science professor, got cancer, he decided to give one last lecture on time management before he died. These are my top 10 takeaways from his brilliant lecture. 👇

Two months ago, I launched my side project roomGPT. Today, it hit 3 million unique visitors and 1 million registered users! Time to invest more in this project – I'm working on roomGPT 2.0 and it's staying 100% open source. Coming soon.

Working on an open source claude artifacts app that can generate full React apps with Llama 3.1 405B! Coming soon.

I just made a YouTube channel and dropped my first video! Lots of web dev & AI tutorials coming soon. Would mean a lot if you all subscribed! piped.video/Zt_6UXvoKHM

Building an app that can generate an entire interactive course from any materials 🤯 It's pretty insane what you can do with AI now.

My favorite tech stack for building web apps in 2022: ◆ Framework: @nextjs ◆ Language: @typescript ◆ DB: Postgres (@railway) ◆ ORM: @prisma ◆ Hosting: @vercel ◆ Styling: @tailwindcss ◆ UI library: @tailwindui ◆ Analytics: @PlausibleHQ

Announcing PDFToChat! Chat with your PDFs (blogs, textbooks, papers) with AI! 100% free and open source. pdftochat.com

60 second tutorial on Chrome extensions! ✨ ICYMI, learn how to build a Chrome extension with only 15 lines of code!

It still blows my mind how much we can do using just JavaScript 🤯 ◆ Full-stack web apps (Next.js) ◆ Backends and APIs (Express) ◆ Mobile apps (React Native) ◆ ML Models (Tensorflow.js) ◆ Desktop apps (Electron) ◆ Scripting (Node.js / zx)

Introducing QrGPT – generate beautiful QR Codes with AI in 1 click. Built with @kevinhou22. 100% free and open source → qrgpt.io

Announcing SmartPDFs! Summarize any PDF into beautiful sections. 100% free and open source. smartpdfs​.ai

Gave a talk on how build AI apps in a weekend that go viral and scale to millions last year. AMA! Thanks for having me @aiDotEngineer!

Built a voice note taking app! You can take notes with your voice, then transform them into emails, lists, blogs, & more. 100% free and open source. Launching in 24 hours.

Super excited to announce I got promoted at work today to Director of Developer Relations! 🎉

My year so far: ◆ 10 AI projects launched (all open source) ◆ 8 million unique visitors across all projects ◆ 20k GitHub stars & 25k @X followers gained It's been a good year so far but just getting started!

My favorite 2025 tech stack for building AI apps: ◆ Framework: @nextjs ◆ Database: @neondatabase + @prisma ◆ AI API: @togethercompute ◆ Search API: @serperapi ◆ Language: @typescript ◆ Hosting: @vercel ◆ Styling: @tailwindcss ◆ UI library: @shadcn ◆ Auth: @clerk ◆ Analytics: @PlausibleHQ ◆ Observability: @helicone_ai

📣 Announcing whatisdevrel.com, a resource for developer advocacy! Read to learn about: ◆ How to get a job in DevRel ◆ The three types of DevRel ◆ DevRel advice and resources

My plan for the next 2 years is to master the PERN stack (Postgres, Express, React, Node). With it, I can build: - Full-stack web apps (any idea I have) - Desktop apps with electron - Mobile apps with react native

I built a Chrome extension to deploy any GitHub repo to Vercel in one click. Watch me deploy a Svelte app in 20 seconds 🤯

I built Restore Photos in a single weekend 4 months ago and today, it hit 1 million unique visitors! It's also still averaging 260k monthly visits with most of the traffic coming from Google. Here's exactly how I built it:

Spoke at my biggest ever conference today! The talk was on how to build AI projects on weekends that can scale to millions of users. Gonna post the full talk when it's out!

I'm going to build and open source an AI app every month for the rest of the year. First one is launching September 1st! It'll be complete with auth, a database, and state of the art AI models. More info coming soon 👀

Announcing PicMenu – a free & open source menu visualizer! It takes a restaurant menu picture and generates nice images for each dish, and works great for lots of non-english menus too. Powered by Llama 3.2 vision + Flux on @togethercompute & available today!

Free & open source AI app dropping on Monday. ◆ @nextjs app router with tailwind ◆ @MixtralAI w/ JSON mode for the LLM ◆ @convex for database, storage & functions ◆ @togethercompute for inference & embeddings ◆ @reach_vb's Whisper for transcripts ◆ @clerk for auth

Thinking of open sourcing my personal next.js starter kit (complete with storage, auth, UI skeletons, SEO optimization, ect). I've slowly built this starter kit over time by shipping 20+ apps the last two years, and it's now my go to when I start a new project. Should I do it?

New post: How to build an interactive AI tutor from scratch! I go over how I built LlamaTutor (90k users), an OSS AI tutor, with Next.js + Together AI:

Just got married!

I took the last month off from coding to focus on work and Ramadan. Now that Ramadan is over, I'm gonna start building again. More open source AI Apps and tutorials coming soon! Also, Eid Mubarak to all my muslim friends!

The best career advice I've ever gotten from senior engineers is: 1. Have a "breakable toy" (real app) to try and test new tech instead of just reading about it 2. Build projects and blog about things you learn 3. Have a strong bias for action and consistently improve things

Launched 9 AI apps this year with 500k+ users combined. The best part? They're all free + open source 😁

Building a Twitter bio generator! Copy your current twitter bio & it will generate a few improved variations using AI. Launching in 2 days and as usual, it'll be free and open source.

New post: How to build an AI search engine from scratch! I go over how I built TurboSeek (19k users), an OSS Perplexity clone, with Next.js + Together AI:

Turned 24 today! 🎉 23 was great: ◆ Shipped 15 side projects ◆ Spoke at 6 conferences ◆ Posted 6 twitter videos ◆ Ran 3 in-person meetups ◆ Joined the talented @vercel team ◆ Met amazing devs in SF, NY, Miami, & Austin Just getting started.

y'all are not ready for this quiz app

Announcing TurboSeek – an AI search engine that's 100% free and open source! turboseek.io

Just graduated with a B.S in computer engineering! 🎉

Turned 23 today! 🎉 22 was great: - Sold my startup - Started my blog - Freelanced for other startups - Spoke at my first podcasts/conf - Became part of dev communities - Met some amazing people online Setting some big goals for this next year, I’m just getting started.

150,000 people created accounts on roomGPT since I required accounts auth 4 days ago 🤯 Here's how I added auth and got the word out about roomGPT:

My goals for 2023: ◆ Spend 15h/week coding side projects ◆ Go to the gym 4x/week and lose 20 pounds ◆ Publish 2 videos and 1 blog post per month ◆ Develop a consistent sleep schedule ◆ Learn to cook something other than eggs ◆ Spend time with family/friends every week

2024 Wrapped: ◆ Got married ◆ Got a new job in the AI space ◆ Shipped 13 apps (1M+ users overall) ◆ Created ~10 tutorials (blogs + vids) ◆ Moved to New York ◆ Became a manager Thankful for a lot this year – can't wait for 2025!

Turned 25 today! 🎉 24 was great – it was the year I learned AI and got over 2 million users combined for my AI side projects. Also got to meet some great devs, founders, & VCs in SF and NYC. Super excited for this next year, I have big plans!

I built a Chrome extension to deploy any GitHub repo to Vercel in one click. Watch me deploy a Svelte app in 20 seconds! Download the extension here: dub.sh/vercel-deploy

I added pricing to roomGPT, making it the first side project I've ever charged for. Also hit a cool milestone: 1.5 million unique visitors! Here's why I added pricing and exactly how I did it: