I build things in public not because it is trendy but because it forces honesty. Here are two projects I am currently building, with the messy parts included.
UAE View: Billboard Intelligence
UAE View is a Leaflet-based map that plots 264 billboards from seven different data sources across the UAE. The purpose is to help marketing agencies plan OOH (out-of-home) ad placements by showing existing billboard locations, traffic density, and coverage gaps.
The hard part was not the map — it was the data. Seven sources, each with different formats, different update frequencies, and different levels of accuracy. Some billboards are on OpenStreetMap. Others are scraped from provider websites. A few come from government datasets. Merging them without duplicates required fuzzy matching on coordinates and names, plus manual review for edge cases.
Solo Leveling: Gamified Personal Dashboard
Solo Leveling is a daily quest system for life. It tracks habits, finances, health metrics, and career goals as an RPG-style dashboard. Daily quests auto-reset at midnight, missed quests are logged, and streaks reset on a miss. The point is accountability without a coach.
The honest part: it started because I was in a bad place. Depression, debt, bad health habits. Building a system to track improvement was more motivating than just trying to "do better." The system runs on port 5050, uses PM2 for process management, and updates daily.
What they share
Both projects are built with the same stack: Docker for deployment, Node.js for the backend, and a simple frontend. Both are imperfect — the billboard data has gaps, the dashboard has UI bugs. Shipping imperfect things is better than shipping nothing.
Open source as accountability
Making code public means other people can see your mistakes. That is the point. It also means other people can contribute, report bugs, and suggest improvements. AI Browser Agent and Veilio are both open source on GitLab, and both have benefited from external feedback.