Best new design, file sharing, developer and AI agent resources: 16 October

On 16 October, thirty free tools and websites landed in the directory, along with ten open-source projects from GitHub. Here they are, grouped so they're easy to scan: writing and notes, scheduling and typing, colours and illustrations, finding more free software, file sharing and media, developer and privacy tools, and AI agent projects. Features and pricing change, so check each tool's own page before you commit.

Writing, notes and time-saving shortcuts

Espanso is a free, open-source text expander. Type a short trigger and it swaps in longer text, dates or form fields, in any app. Your snippets live in plain YAML files, so they're easy to sync, though you set things up in config files rather than a graphical editor.

Zettlr is a free, open-source Markdown editor for researchers, students and writers. It hooks into Zotero for citations, supports linked Zettelkasten-style notes and exports to PDF and Word through Pandoc. Every file stays as plain text on your computer. Overleaf is a collaborative LaTeX editor in the browser. The free plan covers unlimited projects and thousands of templates, but you only get one collaborator per project and compile time is limited.

Markmap turns Markdown headings and lists into a zoomable, collapsible mind map, either in the browser or inside VS Code. Prompt Optimizer is a free, open-source app that rewrites a rough prompt into a clearer, more structured one and lets you compare results side by side. It needs your own AI API key.

Scheduling and getting faster at typing

When2meet is a free group scheduling tool. Everyone paints the hours they're free on a shared grid, and nobody needs an account. The interface is dated, and there's no calendar integration. Every Time Zone lines up the current time in the cities you choose on a single slider, which makes planning calls across countries much easier. Monkeytype is a free, open-source typing test with timed, word count and quote modes, lots of themes and languages, and an optional account if you want to track progress.

Colours, illustrations and icons to play with

Coolors gives you a fresh colour palette every time you hit the spacebar, and you can lock the colours you like. The free plan has ads, and some saving and export options need Pro. Color Hunt is a curated collection of four-colour palettes you can browse by theme. Huemint uses machine learning to suggest palettes and shows them on live mockups. Realtime Colors drops your chosen colours and fonts onto a sample website, with contrast checks and export to CSS or Tailwind.

On to graphics. unDraw offers flat illustrations that are free for personal and commercial use without attribution, and it recolours them to match the highlight colour you pick. Haikei generates randomised blobs, waves and backgrounds to export as SVG or PNG. SVG Repo hosts a huge library of SVG icons and vectors with a built-in colour editor. Licences vary from file to file, so check each one before commercial use.

Where to find even more free software

AlternativeTo is a community directory of alternatives to popular apps and services, which you can filter by platform and licence, though some listings can be out of date. OpenAlternative focuses on open-source replacements for commercial tools and shows each project's GitHub activity, licence and hosting options. Free for Dev is an open-source list of developer services with free tiers. Those limits can change without notice. Uneed is a directory and launch platform where makers share new products daily, and browsing and voting cost nothing.

Sharing files, editing media and backing up

Wormhole encrypts files end to end in your browser before they upload, then shares them by link. You can send up to 10 GB without an account, and files are deleted after 24 hours or a set number of downloads. PairDrop sends files and text between devices peer to peer from the browser, as long as both devices are open at the same time.

HandBrake is a free, open-source video transcoder with presets for phones, web and streaming. ezgif creates and edits GIFs in the browser and converts between GIF, WebP, APNG and MP4, with ad-supported pages and upload size limits. Flameshot captures screenshots and lets you annotate them with arrows, text and blur, but it doesn't record the screen. FreeFileSync compares folders and syncs the differences for backups. 7-Zip creates and opens ZIP and 7z archives with AES-256 encryption, though there's no official macOS app.

Tools for developers and your privacy

regex101 tests regular expressions with live matching and a plain-language explanation, across flavours like PCRE2, JavaScript and Python. CyberChef, from GCHQ, chains operations like Base64, hashing and JSON formatting into recipes that run locally in your browser. Ray.so, from Raycast, turns code snippets into polished images for posts, docs and slides. Have I Been Pwned tells you if your email address shows up in known data breaches and offers free alerts. It can only cover breaches it knows about.

Open-source AI agent projects on GitHub

Ten free, open-source projects came in too. Token Monitor is a local-first desktop widget that shows token usage, costs and limits across AI coding tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Kenfold is a self-hosted memory server that shares project memories over MCP, so different agents keep their context. Tree-sitter Analyzer is a local code-intelligence MCP and CLI that lets agents look at symbols, dependencies and call graphs before they edit anything. BrowserCode runs AI coding CLIs in a WebAssembly browser sandbox, and OpenGateLLM, from Etalab, is an API gateway for teams running self-hosted language models.

TrendRadar pulls together hot topics and RSS feeds and uses AI to filter and summarise them. OpenBiliClaw is a local-first content-discovery agent that searches across several platforms. Blurt is a macOS dictation app from AssemblyAI. How to Train Your GPT is a twelve-chapter commented guide to building a language model from scratch. And MoneyPrinterTurbo turns a topic into short videos by automating the script, voice and subtitles, though its output still benefits from a human review. These are third-party projects provided as-is by their maintainers. Several need Docker, self-hosting or your own model or API access, so review each project's licence, code and security before installing.

That's only a slice of what's been added lately. Browse the full directory to filter by category, type, pricing and goal, and find the right fit for your work.