u/CanSubstantial8282

I build things. I don't post about them. That's been my default for years and unsurprisingly my side project has roughly zero visibility.

I finally decided to fix it, but I wasn't going to fix it by becoming a content creator. I fixed it the only way I know how — I made it a pipeline.

The flow:

1. A markdown roadmap file has all the topics I want to cover
2. I prompt Claude with the next topic → it writes a blog post using my HTML template
3. I prompt Claude again with the blog post → it outputs a structured JSON script (spoken text, on-screen text, highlight keywords)
4. A Python script takes that JSON, runs it through edge-tts for voiceover, then feeds the audio + timings into Remotion to render the MP4
5. The blog post goes to my site. The video goes to TikTok.

The whole render step is one command. The AI steps take maybe 10 minutes of back and forth.

Is the content perfect? No. Is it consistent and shippable? Yes. For a solo engineer with no marketing budget that's the bar.

Hey everyone,

I'm a parent of two kids and I've been fighting the same battle most parents do: screen time. My kids would do basically anything to earn more time on their devices, but I had no good way to channel that motivation into something useful.

The built-in tools — Screen Time on iOS and Digital Wellbeing on Android — are fine for a single person managing their own device, but they fall apart fast for families. They don't talk to each other, so if your kids use a mix of Android and iOS devices (or hand-me-downs that get shared between siblings), you're managing everything separately with no single picture of what's going on. And neither platform really has a great answer for shared devices at all.

So I've been quietly building a small app on the side called ScreenRewards. The idea is simple — kids earn screen-time minutes by completing chores. Parents approve the chores, and the app enforces the limits natively on the device. It works across both iOS and Android, so it doesn't matter what your kids are using. No more negotiating, no more "just five more minutes," no more juggling two separate parental control systems.

I'm not sure if I've built something people actually want, or if I've just solved my own niche problem. That's honestly why I'm posting here.

A few things I'd love your feedback on:

• Is this a real pain point for you, or do you have a system that already works?
• Do you find Apple's or Google's built-in tools enough, or have you run into the same limitations I did?
• Would you trust an app to enforce screen-time limits, or does that feel too heavy-handed?
• What features would make or break this for you?
• Is the chore-reward framing something your kids would actually respond to, or would they just game it?

I'm not trying to sell anything — the app isn't even launched yet. I've just put up a landing page with a waitlist while I figure out if this is worth finishing: https://www.screenrewards.app

Any brutal honesty is welcome. I'd rather know now if this is a bad idea than after I've spent another six months on it.

Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone,

I'm a parent of two kids and I've been fighting the same battle most parents do: screen time. My kids would do basically anything to earn more time on their devices, but I had no good way to channel that motivation into something useful.

The built-in tools — Screen Time on iOS and Digital Wellbeing on Android — are fine for a single person managing their own device, but they fall apart fast for families. They don't talk to each other, so if your kids use a mix of Android and iOS devices (or hand-me-downs that get shared between siblings), you're managing everything separately with no single picture of what's going on. And neither platform really has a great answer for shared devices at all.

So I've been quietly building a small app on the side called ScreenRewards. The idea is simple — kids earn screen-time minutes by completing chores. Parents approve the chores, and the app enforces the limits natively on the device. It works across both iOS and Android, so it doesn't matter what your kids are using. No more negotiating, no more "just five more minutes," no more juggling two separate parental control systems.

I'm not sure if I've built something people actually want, or if I've just solved my own niche problem. That's honestly why I'm posting here.

A few things I'd love your feedback on:

• Is this a real pain point for you, or do you have a system that already works?
• Do you find Apple's or Google's built-in tools enough, or have you run into the same limitations I did?
• Would you trust an app to enforce screen-time limits, or does that feel too heavy-handed?
• What features would make or break this for you?
• Is the chore-reward framing something your kids would actually respond to, or would they just game it?

I'm not trying to sell anything — the app isn't even launched yet. I've just put up a landing page with a waitlist while I figure out if this is worth finishing: https://www.screenrewards.app

Any brutal honesty is welcome. I'd rather know now if this is a bad idea than after I've spent another six months on it.

Thanks for reading.

The irony isn't lost on me.

My side project needed visibility. The obvious answer was to post consistently. I instead spent a weekend building a system that generates and renders short-form videos from a structured content plan.

The rational justification: 30 minutes a week is 26 hours a year, and the system compounds. The honest reason: I find the pipeline problem more interesting than sitting in CapCut.

How it works — Claude generates a blog post and a video script from a roadmap file. A Python orchestrator runs the script through edge-tts (free TTS with timing events) and then through Remotion (React-based video renderer). One command per video from that point.

The part I didn't expect: the timing data from edge-tts is accurate enough that the on-screen text sync looks intentional, not automated. That was the thing I assumed would feel janky and it's actually fine.

If you're a solo builder who knows you should be doing content but keeps finding reasons not to — building the infrastructure first is at least a legitimate procrastination strategy.

I build things. I don't post about them. That's been my default for years and unsurprisingly my side project has roughly zero visibility.

I finally decided to fix it, but I wasn't going to fix it by becoming a content creator. I fixed it the only way I know how — I made it a pipeline.

The flow:

1. A markdown roadmap file has all the topics I want to cover

2. I prompt Claude with the next topic → it writes a blog post using my HTML template

3. I prompt Claude again with the blog post → it outputs a structured JSON script (spoken text, on-screen text, highlight keywords)

4. A Python script takes that JSON, runs it through edge-tts for voiceover, then feeds the audio + timings into Remotion to render the MP4

5. The blog post goes to my site. The video goes to TikTok.

The whole render step is one command. The AI steps take maybe 10 minutes of back and forth.

Is the content perfect? No. Is it consistent and shippable? Yes. For a solo engineer with no marketing budget that's the bar.