IwantIbuild
Find who wants what you built, and who built what you want
6 followers
Find who wants what you built, and who built what you want
6 followers
IwantIbuild searches 1,100+ real products imported from GitHub and Hacker News — not just user posts. Search "I want X" and get: • A % match score per result — find adjacent tools, not just exact matches • A gap verdict: Already built / Close but not exact / Gap — be first • Results from real GitHub repos, HN Show HN posts, and the community Post your build and instantly see how many people are already looking for something like it. No sign-up needed to search.
This is a really nice idea - I like the concept of checking whether something already exists before building it.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Where does IWantIBuild search for existing/built products? Would be interesting to understand whether the search is limited to certain sources, or whether this is more about finding exact matches rather than adjacent existing products. I tried “I want a self-hosted analytics dashboard” and it said nobody built it yet, but there is at least self-hosted Umami analytics with various dashboards.
2. Would it be possible to add existing tools, so it suggests from local DB as well?
Thank you!
@alieksia Thank you so much! I've met so many builders who wants to solve problems but struggles to find and connect with problemholders.
Today the platform is set up so that anyone can post their wants or builds. We're currently not enriching the platform with external data from sources such as PH, HN, reddit etc. Would you like to be able to search across all public ideas and existing products? The goal is to find adjacent matches as well. You query probably didn't match because nobody has added it as I built.
Yes that would be possible. Do you have your ideas or things you built stored in a local DB?
No, thank you!
@kristoffer_berg
Thanks for explaining - that makes sense.
Yes, I think being able to search across public ideas and existing products would be very useful. For me, the most valuable part would be finding adjacent matches, not only exact matches, because many ideas already exist in a slightly different form or for a slightly different audience.
I don’t personally have my own ideas/builds stored in a local DB, I mostly have notes on my computer. What I meant was more like having a product/tool database on your side, so when someone searches “I want X”, the platform could suggest both:
existing “I built” posts from users
known tools/products from public sources or a curated database
That could help builders avoid rebuilding something that already exists, but also help them find gaps where existing solutions are incomplete.
@alieksia This is great, thank you!
I've started implementing exactly the feature you described by
Populating with external data (HN, github, Reddit etc). So I will end up with a pretty large indexed DB
Measure how close existing ideas are to wants. So if there's no hit then it's probably greenfield.
I just have to test the similarity measure then I will notify you when the update is in.
@alieksia The update is live! The platform now has 1,100+ real products indexed from GitHub repos and Hacker News Show HN posts.
When you search you now get:
A % match score per result, so adjacent tools surface — not just exact hits
- A gap verdict: "Already built" / "Close but not exact" / "Gap — be first"
Try "I want a self-hosted analytics dashboard" again — Umami and similar projects should show up with their match scores now. Would love to hear if the results feel more useful!