How I Built a Tool to Track What Communities Are Actually Complaining About

alex wong — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 09:52:44 +0000

Ever spent hours scrolling through social media and forums looking for a problem worth solving? Me too. So I built a tool that does it automatically.

As an indie developer, I'm always hunting for the next product to build. But here's the problem:
There's too much noise
The same ideas get posted over and over
It's hard to tell what's actually a real problem vs. a hypothetical one

I'd spend hours reading comment threads, trying to figure out:
Who's frustrated?
What are they actually complaining about?
Has anyone already tried to solve this?

So I wanted to automatically surface the most discussed problems.

Not generic "trending topics" — actual, specific user pain points that people are actively complaining about.

That's why I built MyNeedEcho.
It distills 20 evidence-backed real user needs every day.

How it works

Data analysis

Custom crawlers for each platform extract:
Original post text
Top comments
Discussion volume
Sentiment signals

Key insight: comments are gold. People reveal their real problems in comment threads, not in the original posts.

NLP processing

All that text goes through an LLM pipeline:
Extract needs — "What problem is this person trying to solve?"
Cluster similar needs — group posts about the same problem
Score by intensity — how frustrated are people? How much discussion?
Deduplicate — merge posts that are saying the same thing

The output? A ranked list — the top 20 most discussed user problems this week.

Evidence linking

Each need comes with:
Original post links
Exact quotes from users
Source attribution
Discussion metrics

No vague "people want X" — every need traces back to real people complaining about real things.

The best product ideas are hiding in comment sections

You'd be surprised. The most valuable insights come from what people discuss every day.

Recurring needs = real opportunities

If a problem shows up across 2 different communities on 3 different days? That's not noise — that's a market.

MyNeedEcho surfaces these "recurring needs" separately, because they're the most likely worth building.

People will pay to solve annoying problems

What's next

Right now MyNeedEcho gives you:
20 top needs updated daily
Source links and evidence
Recurring needs that keep popping up

Soon I'm adding:
Paid demand signals (who's already paying to solve this?)
Competitor analysis
Opportunity scoring

Try it yourself

If you're also hunting for product ideas, check it out:
https://myneedecho.com

Free to see the top 3 needs each week. Want the full Top 20 plus recurring needs? It's $19.99/month.

What do you think?

I'd love to hear your thoughts:

What tools do you use to find product ideas?
What communities should I add next?
Would you pay for this kind of tool?

Drop a comment below 👇

DEV Community: alex wong

How I Built a Tool to Track What Communities Are Actually Complaining About

What do you think?