will you build it?

Real problems. Honest verdicts.

What made you angry today that shouldn’t have?

Tell us about an everyday problem. For some of them we look into whether it’s already solved, and whether one person with AI could realistically build a fix, and we publish an honest verdict either way.

How it works, plainly. A person reads every problem sent here. An AI research process drafts the analysis; a human checks it before it goes up. Nothing is published automatically, and being analysed is not a promise that anyone will build anything.

Three steps

  1. You send a problem

    A few sentences about something that keeps getting in your way. Name and email are optional.

  2. A person reads it

    Every submission is read. Some are picked for an analysis; not every problem gets one.

  3. You may get an analysis

    An AI-assisted process researches it and a human checks the result. If it’s published, it’s anonymised: no name, no contact details, not your original text.

  • Read by a person
  • Researched with AI
  • Checked before publishing

Share a problem

For example: “I can never find where I saved that file.”

What you were trying to do, what got in the way, how often it happens. Please leave out names, addresses and other personal details.

Tools you already tried, who else runs into it, why it matters.

If a fix turns out to be possible, who would you like to build it?

A signal, not a claim: it doesn’t reserve the idea, and it isn’t a promise from anyone.

Never published.

Only used to reach you about this problem. Never published.

No emails yet. We’ll start when there’s enough worth sending. You’ll confirm your address first.

Nothing is published automatically. Your submission is deleted after 90 days.

Recent analyses

All analyses
  • A solution already exists

    Phone calls are still hard for people who are deaf or hard of hearing

    Ordinary phone calls remain a barrier for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, since a standard voice call offers no text alternative. A vendor blog post from a captioned-telephone company, InnoCaption, lists its own service as a solution: a real-time captioning app for phone calls that, as an FCC-certified service, is described as available at no cost to eligible users in the United States. This is useful context, but it comes directly from the company selling the service, describing its own regulatory status and offering, not from an independent account of people using it.

    Found in public sources · Published

  • A solution already exists

    Can I drop paid apps and subscriptions for free alternatives without losing anything?

    Three separate technology writers, at three different outlets, each describe personally replacing a set of paid apps and subscriptions with free or open-source alternatives, and being largely satisfied with the result. One writer switched away from a long-running Microsoft 365 subscription to the free OnlyOffice suite and says they stopped missing the paid product. A second writer replaced several paid Android apps (a password manager, a note-taking app, and cloud storage) with open-source equivalents such as Bitwarden, Joplin, and Nextcloud, cutting roughly $50 a month in spending to close to $0, while noting some rough edges like a less polished interface and missing AI-assistant integrations. A third writer, on a different Windows-focused outlet, describes years of using LibreOffice, Krita, and other open-source tools instead of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and other paid Windows software, citing account and sync limitations and privacy concerns as reasons for the switch. Taken together, these are three independent personal narratives pointing the same direction, though none of them is a survey of ordinary users.

    Found in public sources · Published

  • Needs more evidence

    Is this paid subscription actually paying for itself?

    A widely reshared Reddit thread, republished by BuzzFeed and later by a Yahoo News aggregation, asked people which paid membership or subscription genuinely earns its keep. Commenters named things like a warehouse-club membership that pays for itself in fuel and grocery savings, and a board-game platform subscription that replaces the cost and hassle of physical games. The pattern people describe is a mental habit of doing rough cost-benefit math before deciding a recurring charge is worth it. That is a real and relatable behavior, but the evidence here is thin: it is one self-selected online thread, recycled across two publishers, with no independent survey behind it.

    Found in public sources · Published

Where this is heading

A public board that follows a problem from “someone described it” to “someone built it”, or “it stalled, and here’s why”. Today it’s a preview with made-up cards, all clearly labelled.

See the board preview