Behind the project
Hey there, I'm the creator of indielab.dev.
I'm a software engineer and an indie hacker. Like many builders, I spend a lot of time spinning up side projects, deploying MVPs, and trying to keep my monthly infrastructure bills as close to $0 as possible.
Why I built indielab.dev
This site exists to solve two major annoyances I ran into almost daily:
1. Cluttered, sketchy utility sites
Every time I needed to quickly convert a HEIC photo from my phone, grab audio from a screen recording, or format some JSON, I'd end up on sites loaded with annoying pop-up ads, cookie banners, and weird redirects. Even worse, I never felt safe pasting private code snippets or JWTs into random decoders because I didn't know where that data was being sent.
Every tool on this site runs 100% locally in your browser. No file uploads, no databases, and no tracking. It's just fast, private, and does the job.
2. The complexity of launching simply
When validating a new product idea, you don't need a $100/month enterprise database or a complex cluster setup. You need to launch fast and run cheap.
I share what I actually use: setups that leverage the free tiers of platforms like Cloudflare, Supabase, and Fly.io, and practical walkthroughs on open-source packages. These articles are basically my personal dev notes shared with the community.
What's next?
This site is very much a work in progress. Over the coming months, I'll be adding more offline utilities and writing up hands-on reviews of open-source templates and tools that help solo developers ship faster.
If you find these tools useful, have a recommendation, or just want to chat about indie making, feel free to drop me a line at contact@indielab.dev.
Happy building!