What to Build

You do not need a brilliant idea to start. This page gives you three ways to find a project worth building, software or hardware, and a few rules of thumb so your first one is small enough to actually finish.

The biggest blocker is almost never skill. It is picking. Any of the three paths below gets you unstuck, so read until one of them clicks, then start.

Want a clear path? Follow a guide

If you want to go from zero to a finished project with someone showing you each step, start with one of ours. Each guide walks you through a real build end to end, software and hardware both, so you finish with something you can ship.

You still make it yours. The guide teaches the skills, then you apply them to your own version. A straight copy gets rejected, so add your own twist.

Have an idea already? Build anything you want

You do not need permission from us to build something. If an idea has been bouncing around your head (a game, a tool, a website, a bot, a gadget, a weird experiment), that is a perfectly valid project. Pick something small enough that you can see the end of it, start it, and iterate as you go.

A few rules of thumb:

• Start with something you can finish. A focused project you complete beats a huge one you abandon, and finishing one teaches you what shipping actually takes. You can always go bigger next time, or keep building on this one once the core works.
• Solve something real. Even if it is just for yourself. A project you actually use stays fun to work on longer than a project you do not.
• One feature at a time. Get the boring core working first, then stack features on top. Do not try to architect the whole thing upfront.

Need inspiration? Look at what others are making

Watching other people build is one of the fastest ways to find an idea you want to remix. A few YouTube channels worth a subscribe:

• Fireship does fast-paced overviews of modern web tools and "build X in 100 seconds" videos. Great for finding tech you want to try.
• The Coding Train walks through creative coding projects (generative art, games, simulations) with a very beginner-friendly vibe.
• Ben Awad streams full-stack builds end to end, which is a nice way to see how real apps are structured.
• Web Dev Simplified breaks concepts down clearly and often builds small projects you can follow along with.

A few searches that surface beginner-friendly ideas:

• "your language/framework project ideas for beginners"
• "build a thing you use every day from scratch"
• "skill you want to learn tutorial"

A note on using AI

AI is a tool, not the project. Use it to learn faster, debug, or scaffold the boring parts, and you are doing great. But if the whole project is a text box wrapped around someone else's API, you have not really built anything, and reviewers can tell.

The bar is simple: build something real that does something. Reach for AI the way you would reach for any other tool, then make sure the interesting part is yours.

What if I cannot decide?

That is the normal place to be stuck, and it is the easiest one to fix. Indecision costs more than a wrong pick. Any of the three paths above will teach you more than another hour of scrolling, and nothing here is permanent. You can always start a second project later.

If you are still circling after a while, drop a line in #macondo-help on the Hack Club Slack and someone will help you pick.

See also

• What's a Good Project? , what reviewers look for and how to make an idea yours
• How Levels Work , how your project's level sets gold, funding, and fruit
• What is shipping? , how to submit your project for review