For developers and students

Tech challenges, ready to pick up.

Real problems people have written down in open-source issue trackers, developer threads and the gaps in public data. Every one is sourced, has a brief and a builder's kit, and is sized so a first version fits a weekend, a few weeks or a semester.

“There is no royal road to geometry.”

Euclid · as reported by Proclus

Where Newfoundland and Labrador

Kit readyA weekend
Open data · Anywhere
People in Newfoundland and Labrador can't chart regulated fuel prices over time without opening one PDF per day.
Solved looks like
A script that downloads the Board's price PDFs and builds one CSV (date, zone, product, maximum price), republished each day, with a simple chart by zone. Checked against 20 randomly chosen PDFs.
Proof3 sources · 3 quoted claims · pub.nl.ca, opendata.gov.nl.ca · Oct 2026
MarketNot sized yet
Kit5 steps · 21 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
Open data · Anywhere
Developers can't get a working, machine-readable list of current boil water advisories in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Solved looks like
A public CSV, JSON and RSS feed of current advisories (community, water system, date issued, reason), updated daily by a scheduled job from the portal's report, keeping each day's snapshot so advisory lengths can be worked out. Checked against the portal's report on 10 different days.
Proof3 sources · 4 quoted claims · opendata.gov.nl.ca, maps.gov.nl.ca · Oct 2026
MarketNot sized yet
Kit5 steps · 21 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
Web & mobile · Anywhere
Small organizations can't see what their website costs a visitor on a slow or metered connection.
Solved looks like
A free page where someone enters a web address and sees total download size, the cost at a per-GB rate they enter, load time at 5, 10 and 50 Mbps, and the three biggest files to fix first. Totals match browser developer tools within 10% on 10 real sites.
Proof2 sources · 4 quoted claims · almanac.httparchive.org, ised-isde.canada.ca · Jul 2026
Market90% of households
Kit5 steps · 22 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
Hardware & IoT · Anywhere
People tracking a Meshtastic radio can't tell when its position is old.
Solved looks like
When a node's phone-supplied position has not been updated for a set time, it marks the position as last known with its age, and the app shows ‘last known, X minutes ago’. Checked by disconnecting the phone and watching the flag appear.
Proof1 source · 3 quoted claims · github.com/meshtastic · Oct 2025
Market3 reactions on the issue
Kit5 steps · 21 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
Security & privacy · Anywhere
Security scanners can't match some OSV vulnerability records by package URL because OSV.dev has no conversion for those ecosystems.
Solved looks like
Each remaining ecosystem gets a PURL converter with tests using the type in the PURL spec, or is listed as having no PURL equivalent, and a test fails whenever a new ecosystem is added without either.
Proof1 source · 3 quoted claims · github.com/google · Oct 2026
Market1 reactions on the issue
Kit5 steps · 21 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
Data & pipelines · Anywhere
Metabase admins can't tell whether an alert was skipped on purpose or broke.
Solved looks like
The admin task history shows three distinct states, delivered, skipped because there were no results, and failed, with an automated test for each.
Proof1 source · 3 quoted claims · github.com/metabase · Sep 2026
MarketNot sized yet
Kit5 steps · 22 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
AI & agents · Anywhere
Python developers building MCP tools lose their argument descriptions, so the model never sees them.
Solved looks like
A pull request that fills each argument's description in the tool schema from Google, NumPy or Sphinx style docstrings, leaves the schema unchanged when there is no docstring, and has tests for each style.
Proof1 source · 3 quoted claims · github.com/modelcontextprotocol · Jun 2026
Market16 reactions on the issue
Kit5 steps · 20 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.
Kit readyA weekend
AI & agents · Anywhere
Developers can't give a coding agent read-only access to a server or database without approving every command by hand.
Solved looks like
A small, documented setup (script or container image) that gives an agent a shell and a PostgreSQL connection where reads run without prompts and every write is refused by account permissions, not by text matching. Checkable with a test list of 30 commands and queries (15 reads, 15 writes, including tricky ones like find -delete or SELECT ... INTO) where every write fails and every read works.
Proof2 sources · 3 quoted claims · news.ycombinator.com, genai.owasp.org · Jan 2026
Market85 points on Hacker News
Kit5 steps · 17 tools · starter prompt ready
1. Sourced (done)
2. Kit (done)
3. Wanted (next)
4. Building
5. Solved
Open the kit →
Be the first to want this solved. Nobody is building it yet.