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Startup ideas
72 opportunities read from public launches. Open one for the problem, who might pay, and the film it came from. For the longer 2026 edit, start with startup ideas for 2026.
AI
19
- Browser extension layer for AI agents
Let an agent use the extensions a person already trusts, instead of a bare browser.
API · Medium · Browser Use Extensions
- Memory that survives the next coding session
Sell a memory layer that learns how one developer works, then carries that into the next agent run.
Open source · Hard · Dreaming
- Ad drafts from a product photo
A studio that studies a brand and current ad formats, then drafts static ads from one product image.
Freemium · Medium · Higgsfield Ads Studio
- Live characters for support and play
A character that talks, moves, and can be handed an object, for demos, games, or a front desk.
Usage-based · Hard · A1 Playground
- Image edits that do not drift
An edit API for teams that need several changes in a row without the picture wandering off.
API · Hard · Ideogram 4.5
- A marketer for one creator account
An agent that plans and drafts creator marketing for a single brand, with a human still posting.
Subscription · Medium · SideShift
- Phone calls an agent can place
Give coding agents and internal tools a way to book, cancel, and follow up by phone.
Usage-based · Medium · call4.me
- A creative crew you can text
A small set of agents that keep working on creative jobs and answer by text, call, or email.
Subscription · Hard · Dots
- Always-on agents for a repeating job
Package one repeating job as an agent that stays on, instead of a chat you restart.
Subscription · Hard · dots
- Review every agent run, not a sample
A model and a workflow that flags errors in agent traces so a team can review all of them.
API · Hard · flow-1
- A self-hosted assistant for personal apps
An assistant a person can host, pointed at the apps they already use, including computer use.
Open source · Medium · OpenMuse
- Company extensions inside an AI browser
Let a company deploy the browser extensions its AI desktop app should already have.
Subscription · Medium · ChatGPT desktop
- Robot control from video, as a research product
A path from video models to robot control, sold first as weights and a narrow demo, not a factory.
Open source · Hard · Praxis-1
- An ad engine a company runs on itself first
Video ads generated from a brand’s own campaigns, opened to a few outside companies.
Subscription · Hard · Runway Ads
- Scheduled work across the apps a team already uses
Automations that run on a schedule or a trigger, with memory, and that can touch Slack, mail, and the issue tracker.
Subscription · Medium · Perplexity Computer
- One AI employee shared by a team
An assistant that belongs to the company, not to one person’s private chat.
Subscription · Medium · Mio
- Voice agents that can listen while they talk
An API for voice agents a developer can point at their own model and their own tools.
API · Hard · GPT-Live-1
- Answers and dashboards from data a company already has
A data agent for people who will not write SQL, pointed only at sources the company approves.
Subscription · Medium · Data agent
- Local models for the private step of a bigger job
Keep the files on the machine, and let a coordinator call a local model only for those steps.
Subscription · Hard · Perplexity Computer
- A live visual inside the coding thread
Let an agent answer with a working visual, not only text, when the task is about an interface.
Subscription · Medium · T3 Code
- Human-looking cursors for computer-use agents
A small open library of mouse motion so an agent cursor does not look like a teleport.
Open source · Easy · Cua Driver
- A desktop for making games with the model you already pay for
A local app that turns a Claude or ChatGPT subscription, or a local model, into a game-making bench.
Open source · Medium · Genex
- Steer an agent without cancelling its current work
A way to add a message to an agent’s next turn while a subagent keeps going.
API · Medium · Cursor SDK
- Pick an open model per coding task, and watch the spend
A CLI that routes coding-agent work to open models and shows what each task cost.
Usage-based · Medium · Together Link
- Search inside an agent’s past work
Find a tool call or a decision in an old agent session and jump back into that conversation.
Subscription · Medium · Orca Agent Search
- Fork a coding session from the moment it went wrong
Record prompts, tool calls, and edits, then branch that moment into a fresh worktree.
Open source · Medium · Time Machine
- Desktop apps in Go, webview or native
A small framework for people who want a desktop app in Go without adopting a larger UI stack.
Open source · Medium · MyGo
- Audio components you can paste into an app
Open-source audio UI, in the same spirit as a component library, for apps that record or play sound.
Open source · Easy · audiocn
- Run cloud coding agents from a phone
A mobile app for checking and steering a team of cloud agents when you are away from the desk.
Subscription · Medium · Conductor Mobile
- A full computer for an agent, not just a shell
Rent a virtual machine with a desktop and a browser when the agent has to use real software.
Usage-based · Hard · boat
- Coding agents in the menu bar
Show which coding session is working, which is stuck, and let a person reply without opening the app.
Open source · Easy · look alive
- Post-train an open model without leaving its original format
A framework for teams that want to tune an open model and still publish it as a normal model repo.
Open source · Hard · Halo
- One SDK for posting across several networks
Post, read comments, and pull analytics for several social networks through one library, with skills an agent can call.
Open source · Medium · Social SDK
- Native mobile apps for Angular teams
Let an Angular team ship iOS and Android with the components and signals they already know.
Open source · Hard · Angular Native
- Comments stuck to the component, not the ticket
Leave feedback on a live site so it stays attached to the component and the page.
Freemium · Medium · komo
- A browser inside the coding agent’s terminal
Open a real browser from the agent session so the agent can see the page it just changed.
Open source · Easy · terminal-browser
- A visible team of agents in a world you can walk into
Use a shared world, not a log file, when several agents need a person to come over and decide.
Open source · Medium · AgentCraft
- A coding agent that runs a small model in the browser
A coding assistant that runs locally in the browser on a small model, for people who will not send the repo out.
Open source · Hard · Pi
- One thread for a project, not a new chat per task
A coordinator that keeps one project thread and hands pieces to other agents.
Subscription · Medium · Cursor Projects
- A rich-text editor you can install in one command
Ship a styled editor that matches the rest of a component library, instead of theming a blank one for a week.
Open source · Easy · editorcn
- Turn daily work into a game a team plays together
A layer on top of real work that makes progress visible and shared, without pretending the work is fake.
Freemium · Medium · Promethee
- History for a place, not just a map pin
Show past states of a property, a parcel, or a piece of infrastructure when someone is deciding what to do with it.
Subscription · Medium · Asset History
- A calmer room for the conversation a team already has
A focused place for group conversation inside the tool a company already uses for projects.
Subscription · Medium · Bonfire
- One note a day, and silence on the days you skip
A notes app that keeps a single daily note and drops empty days, for people who will not maintain a second brain.
Freemium · Easy · NoteRepo
- Capture a note without opening the whole vault
Quick capture, editing a file outside the library, and a look at a note when the app is closed.
Freemium · Medium · Obsidian
- Compress images and video without uploading them
A browser tool that shrinks and converts media on the machine, for people who will not send client files to a server.
Freemium · Easy · MiniFolio
- Team skills that every assistant can use
Write a skill once in the workspace the team already shares, then use it in more than one assistant.
Subscription · Easy · Notion Skills
- Live scores on a watch that is not a phone
Scores for the leagues people actually follow, on a simple watch, without opening a phone.
Hardware · Medium · Pebble Sports
- A day recorder that stays on the watch
Record the day from a watch, then revisit it as a transcript, a timeline, and a chat.
Subscription · Hard · Auday
- A small native browser with the tabs you actually want
A Mac browser focused on bookmarks, tab previews, and vertical tabs, built native instead of as another Chromium shell.
Open source · Hard · Athas Browser
- A free Mac browser you can strip down
A small open-source browser with extension support and a way to hide the parts of a page you do not want.
Open source · Hard · search
Design
11
- An agent that checks a page’s SEO before you publish
A review pass for metadata, social previews, and alt text inside the tool that already builds the page.
Subscription · Easy · Framer Agent
- A visual language the coding agent has to follow
Define the look of a product once, then make coding agents use it so the UI stops looking generic.
Subscription · Medium · Graphical
- Rebuild a screen from pieces of real apps
Browse shipped app screens, rearrange parts, restyle them, and open the result in Xcode.
Freemium · Medium · SwiftPieces
- CAD from a description, checked for how it will be made
Generate a model and check it for printing, sheet metal, CNC, or moulding before anyone opens a CAD app.
Usage-based · Hard · Text-to-CAD
- A shared canvas inside the chat people already have
Put a realtime whiteboard where a team already works, instead of asking them to open another app.
Freemium · Medium · tldraw
- A distinctive component kit, not another default theme
A component set with motion and color from a seed, for people who are tired of the same look.
Open source · Easy · shadcn-m3e
- Interfaces made of live video, not screenshots
A research app for portals, visual thinking, and worlds you interact with through video.
Subscription · Hard · Project Continuum
- Edit the running app, then send the change to the agent
A free skill that lets a person change a local app visually and hands that change to a coding agent.
Open source · Easy · visual-edit
- A design mode that refuses a generic interface
A desktop app for coding agents whose design mode aims at a specific look, not a default theme.
Open source · Medium · TasteCode
- Check new work against a brand an agent can query
An API that extracts a brand, searches a curated index, and says whether new work matches.
API · Medium · Brand API
- A reference library the coding agent can search
A server of real website references that Claude, Codex, or another agent can query while it designs.
Subscription · Easy · Inspo
- A personal computer built around an assistant
Hardware for people who want a machine that is an assistant first, with ordering as simple as a product page.
Hardware · Hard · Core
- Camera storage and history a installer can budget
Tools for planning storage, recording remote cameras onto an NVR you already own, and scrubbing a video wall.
Hardware · Medium · UniFi Protect
- A personal computer designed as a studio
A point of view, and eventually a machine, for a personal computer that is a studio rather than an office desk.
Hardware · Hard · Imbue Studio
- A launch film from one brief
Generate a short launch film with motion, sound, and a voiceover for teams that do not have an editor.
Usage-based · Medium · Motionfly
- A timeline an agent and a person share
A video editor where you describe a cut, the agent builds it, and you both edit the same timeline.
Subscription · Hard · HyperFrames Studio
- Speed ramps that do not break the shot
Optical flow and frame blending so an agent, or an editor, can slow a shot or hold a frame.
API · Hard · Tesseract
- Make videos with the coding agent you already use
A free Mac app for video, built so Claude, Codex, or another agent can drive it.
Open source · Medium · Remocn Studio
- Ask a coding agent to direct the launch film
A skill that turns a short prompt into direction for a launch film, using the coding agent as the director.
Open source · Medium · Cinetic
- Voice, music, image, and video in one project
One project for the pieces of a video — voice, music, image, captions — instead of four exports.
Subscription · Medium · Studio 4.0
- A shared bench for short drama production
Script, assets, storyboard, and a video preview in one project more than one person can open.
Subscription · Hard · Dramagic