Best new design, self-hosted and launch platform resources: 18 October

18 October was a busy day for the directory: thirty free tools and websites, ten open-source projects from GitHub and one AI tool comparison site. I've grouped them so you can jump to what you need: notes, documents and email, then time, focus and money, research and AI, launch platforms and directories, design, and finally utilities and developer tools. Features and pricing change, so check each tool's own page before you commit.

Notes, docs and your inbox

Memos is a free, open-source, self-hosted note app built around a simple timeline. You jot a thought down in Markdown, no title, no folder, and find it again later by search, tag or date. You'll need Docker or a server, and it isn't made for long, structured documents. SiYuan is a free, open-source, local-first knowledge app. It pairs a block-based Markdown editor with two-way links, PDF annotation, table databases and spaced repetition flashcards. Some features, like official cloud sync, need a paid membership.

Workflowy is an outliner where everything is a bullet. You can nest it, zoom into it, tag it and move it around. The free Basic plan has every feature but caps new bullets at 100 a month. Tiny Little Office is a free, open-source set of small browser apps: a word processor, spreadsheet, outliner and presentation builder. There are no accounts, because each document lives inside its own link. It's only good for short documents, and there's no live co-editing.

Thunderbird is a free, open-source email app from MZLA Technologies, part of the Mozilla Foundation. It pulls several email accounts, calendars, contacts and feeds into one window, with filters, tags and OpenPGP encryption. Paperless-ngx is a free, open-source document management system. It runs OCR on scanned paper and PDFs and learns to tag them for you. There's no official hosted version, so you run it on your own server or NAS.

Your time, your focus and your money

Dayflow is a free, open-source Mac app that watches what you work on and turns it into a timeline of your day, complete with drafted standup notes and weekly focus patterns. It needs macOS 14 or later. One thing to know: if you pick a cloud AI provider, that provider gets your activity data. solidtime is a free, open-source time tracker for freelancers and agencies, with projects, clients, billable rates and imports from Toggl or Clockify. Self-hosting takes some setup, and billing and advanced reports are paid on its cloud.

Need to focus? Pomotroid is a free, open-source Pomodoro timer for Windows, macOS and Linux, with global shortcuts and a 52-week stats heatmap. Marinara Timer is a free online timer with Pomodoro, custom and kitchen modes, and every timer gets its own shareable link. Moodist is a free, open-source website with 84 ambient sounds you can layer, plus a sleep timer, Pomodoro timer and breathing exercises.

Crab Fit is a free, open-source scheduling tool. Everyone paints their free times on a shared grid, time zones convert automatically, and nobody has to sign up. Spliit is a free, open-source alternative to Splitwise for sharing costs on trips or in shared homes. Just note that anyone with the group link can edit. Actual Budget is a free, open-source envelope budgeting app that keeps your data on your device. Syncing needs a self-hosted or paid hosted server, and bank sync only works in some regions.

Research and AI helpers

Open Notebook is a free, open-source take on Google's NotebookLM that you run yourself with Docker. Add PDFs, web pages, videos and audio, chat with the AI model of your choice, and turn your research into multi-speaker podcasts. AI provider costs are separate unless you run models locally. llmwiki is a free, open-source command-line tool that turns papers, notes, PDFs and web pages into an interlinked Markdown wiki with citations. It's based on Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern, and compiling also uses AI provider credits unless you run models locally.

AI Compare Ninja is a free website for comparing AI tools before you pay for one. Search by task or browse about 960 tools by category. Each one shows its free access, paid tiers and limits, with links to the vendor's own pricing pages, and you can put two tools side by side. It's a catalogue, not a ranking. Prices can also change faster than any listing, so check the source before paying.

Places to launch and directories to browse

Three launch sites joined the directory. BetaList is a community where makers share early-stage startups and early adopters sign up to try them. Free submissions can sit in the review queue for a long time, and a paid option gets you published sooner. Fazier lists new apps, AI tools and side projects on a daily upvote leaderboard, while Microlaunch keeps each launch live for a month instead of a single day. Both are free to use, with paid options for extra visibility.

If you're hunting for tools, Futurepedia is a directory of thousands of AI tools you can filter by category, pricing and use case. It has free tutorials and AI news too, though sponsored listings are mixed in and paid courses get pushed hard. Startup Stash is a free, curated directory of tools and resources for founders, grouped into categories like design, marketing, hiring and fundraising. Some listings are sponsored, and a few may be out of date.

Design picks

Let's start with type and colour. Fontjoy suggests heading, subheading and body font pairings from Google Fonts. Khroma trains an algorithm in your browser on colours you pick, then generates combinations you're likely to enjoy. Happy Hues puts each palette on a real web page, so you can see how every element works together. And uiGradients is a free, open-source collection of handpicked gradients with copyable CSS, though it's rarely updated.

fffuel is a free collection of browser-based generators for SVG backgrounds, patterns, blobs and textures. Open Peeps, by Pablo Stanley, is a hand-drawn library of mix-and-match character elements released under CC0, so you can use it in commercial projects without attribution. Font Awesome gives you more than 2,000 free icons under open licences, with plenty more styles in its yearly Pro plan. LottieFiles hosts a big library of free Lottie animations, with many advanced tools and premium animations on paid plans.

Laws of UX, by designer Jon Yablonski, explains user experience principles like Hick's Law, Fitts's Law and Jakob's Law in clear illustrated cards, each with takeaways and further reading. It covers the principles, not hands-on tutorials.

Handy utilities and developer tools

QR Code Monkey is a free QR code generator with colours, logos and high-resolution downloads, and its static codes don't expire. Dynamic codes and tracking need a paid service. On Windows, WizTree scans disk space in seconds by reading the drive's file table. Bulk Rename Utility renames hundreds of files at once and previews every change. Greenshot is a free, open-source screenshot tool with a built-in editor. WizTree and Bulk Rename Utility are free for personal use only, so commercial use needs a paid licence.

Screenity is a free, open-source Chrome extension for recording your tab, desktop or camera with no recording limits, plus on-screen drawing and blur. It only works in Chromium browsers, and link sharing and captions are paid. SVGOMG, made by Jake Archibald, strips unnecessary code out of SVG files right in the browser, though aggressive settings can break some files.

Hoppscotch is a free, open-source API tool and a lightweight alternative to Postman for REST, GraphQL and WebSocket requests. Use it in the browser, on the desktop or self-hosted. massCode is a free, open-source developer workspace that keeps snippets, notes and HTTP requests in plain Markdown files. Diagram Design is a free, open-source skill for AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor that draws more than 40 diagram types from plain words. You'll need an agent that supports skills. The Odin Project is a free, open-source course that takes you through web development from HTML and CSS to Node.js or Ruby on Rails with real portfolio projects. It asks for a lot of self-discipline and there's no formal certificate.

That's just yesterday's batch. Browse the full directory to compare them with similar tools and filter by price, platform and category.