DEV Community: Stas Leonov

How I Found My First Real Open Source Contribution

Stas Leonov — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:39:18 +0000

So I've been wanting to contribute to open-source for a while, but every time I tried, I'd end up spending an hour just browsing through random repos and their issue trackers, getting completely lost in poorly written bug reports or tasks that assumed way more context than I had. It was frustrating enough that I kept putting it off.

Help Wanted basically solved this for me by flipping how you search for work. Instead of picking a project first and hoping it has beginner-friendly issues, you can filter by what you actually know—your programming languages, your experience level, the kind of work you're interested in—and it shows you issues that match. The AI summaries are genuinely helpful too. They cut through the noise and tell you what an issue is actually asking for without you having to dig through a mess of comments and context.

The site indexes hundreds of thousands of GitHub issues and enriches them with stuff that actually matters: complexity estimates, categories, project popularity. So you're not just finding random work, you're finding work in projects that are active and where your contribution might actually get merged and used. It's free, and if you've been sitting on the fence about contributing to open-source like I was, this removes most of the friction that was keeping you from starting.

Check it out: Help Wanted

How I automated my backlink outreach and actually got responses

Stas Leonov — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:37:19 +0000

I've been doing link building outreach for months now, and honestly, the process of finding targets and then sending generic templates to hundreds of publishers felt like throwing darts in the dark. Most replies were rejections or silence. Then I switched to OutreachLooper, which is basically an alternative to Buzzstream but actually understands why a link opportunity matters before you reach out.

What makes the difference is how much intelligence gets built in upfront. The tool finds relevant websites and competitor backlink gaps, but it also analyzes things like topical relevance, publisher quality, and editorial likelihood before you ever write an email. The AI helps you understand which opportunities are actually worth your time, and then it drafts personalized messages based on real research about why that specific outlet would care about your content. You review everything before sending, which kept me from making embarrassing mistakes.

The part that sold me was having everything in one place. Your Gmail integration keeps all replies connected to the publisher, previous conversations stay attached, and when links actually earn, you can track them alongside your search visibility changes in Google Search Console. I'm not wasting time jumping between five different tabs anymore, and I'm actually getting responses from people who feel like I did my homework instead of blasting template number seventeen at them.

Check it out: outreachlooper.com

I Stopped Paying for Studio Photoshoots After Finding MagicShot

Stas Leonov — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:36:16 +0000

I was spending way too much time jumping between different apps to create content for my ecommerce store. One day I need product photos, the next day I'm trying to generate a video from a still image, and don't even get me started on how annoying it was managing credits across five different platforms. Then I tried MagicShot and honestly, just having everything in one place with one credit balance made my life simpler.

What really impressed me is the headshot feature. I took a selfie in my kitchen, ran it through their tool, and got back legitimately professional-looking photos that actually looked like me—not some generic AI version. They've got the presets tuned per model so your face doesn't drift into uncanny valley territory. I've also used the text-to-image and text-to-video stuff for social content, and you can run the same prompt through multiple models and pick whichever output looks best.

The range of what's available is honestly wild. They've got 85 tools covering everything from basic image generation to 4K upscaling, background removal, text-to-speech, and they keep adding new models like Flux and Kling as they come out. If you're doing anything with product listings, social content, or just need professional-looking visuals regularly, it's worth checking out. The first month discount is decent too.

Check it out: MagicShot

How I Stopped Manually Reading 200+ Customer Reviews Every Week

Stas Leonov — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:34:16 +0000

I was staring at my product pages recently and realized most customers probably aren't reading through fifty reviews to decide if they should buy something. They just want the key takeaways. That's where Sumzy comes in. It takes all your existing reviews from WooCommerce or Shopify and generates a single, clean summary that shows up right on the product page. Shoppers get the main strengths and weaknesses in seconds instead of scrolling forever.

What sold me on it versus alternatives like Reviewcap, AIRA, Platoria, StoreAgent, YayCommerce, and Yotpo was how ridiculously simple the setup is. No API keys to configure, no complicated onboarding. I had it running in minutes. The summaries update automatically as new reviews come in, and you can choose your preferred language. It's genuinely built for store owners who don't want to spend a weekend getting a tool to work.

The real win is watching your conversion metrics improve. When customers can instantly see whether a product has issues with durability or sizing or whatever matters most, they buy faster and you get fewer returns. You get a two-week free trial to test it out, so there's basically no reason not to try it if you're serious about making review data actually useful.

Check it out: Sumzy

I Stopped Manually Redrawing PNGs as SVGs After Finding Vectorify

Stas Leonov — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:32:16 +0000

I've been converting old logo files to SVG lately, and honestly, most tools either take forever or spit out messy output that needs manual cleanup. Vectorify actually gets it done in seconds with results clean enough to use right away. You upload a PNG, JPG, WEBP, or BMP, and it handles the conversion without the usual bloat or weird artifacts. If you've tried Vectorizer.AI, Vector Magic, SVG Converter, Adobe Express Image to SVG, Convertio, Online-Convert, Autotracer, Picsvg, Vectorizer.io, SVG AI, SVGcode, or SvgTrace and found them slow or frustrating, Vectorify cuts through that.

The main thing that stands out is how practical it is. I needed to vectorize a bunch of icons for a responsive web redesign, and instead of redrawing everything or wrestling with tracing tools, I just batched them through. The SVGs actually scale properly and stay crisp, which matters when you're deploying across different screen sizes. It's designed for people like developers and designers who need production-ready assets fast, not tools that require a learning curve or constant tweaking.

If you're regularly working with raster graphics and need vectors without the friction, this saves real time. Worth trying if the alternatives have let you down before.

Check it out: Vectorify

How I Started Turning Sunday Sermons Into TikTok Videos

Stas Leonov — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:30:16 +0000

Our church has tons of great sermon content just sitting there, and we kept talking about how we should be sharing clips on social media. The problem was always the same—nobody wanted to spend hours cutting down a full sermon into something that actually works for short-form video. It's tedious work, and honestly, we weren't even sure where to find the good moments worth pulling out.

SermonFramer actually does this for you. You upload your sermon or Bible study, and it transcribes everything, then finds complete moments that have a real opening, enough context so people understand what's happening, and a natural ending. It creates vertical previews with captions already added. Your team reviews what it suggests and can edit the transcript or adjust timing if needed, but the heavy lifting is done. You're not hunting through an hour-long video trying to spot something quotable.

What I appreciate most is that nothing publishes automatically. Someone on our team always reviews it first and makes the final call. We can adjust captions, add an intro, customize the framing. We've also set up shared workspaces and brand kits so everything looks consistent across different people's uploads. For churches trying to actually use their sermon content online instead of just letting it disappear, this saves real time and makes it actually happen.

Check it out: SermonFramer

I Stopped Manually Arranging Wedding Seating With Spreadsheets

Stas Leonov — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:20:16 +0000

I got way too deep into a spreadsheet nightmare trying to plan my wedding seating chart. I had columns for dietary restrictions, plus ones, table assignments, and somehow everything was misaligned. My mom suggested a different arrangement, my fiancé disagreed, and we were all working from different versions of the same file. It was genuinely maddening.

Then I found PlanSeats and honestly, it fixed the whole thing. Instead of staring at rows and columns, I just dragged table shapes onto a canvas that actually looked like our venue. I imported our guest list from a CSV file and started arranging people around the tables visually—way more intuitive than trying to imagine how it would actually look. The real game changer was sharing it with my planner and venue coordinator. We all logged in and could see updates in real time, so nobody was working off stale information anymore.

On event day, guests just scanned a QR code and found their seat immediately. No confused people wandering around asking us where they should sit. I printed out a clean PDF of the whole thing as backup. If you're planning any kind of event—wedding, corporate thing, even a family milestone—and you're tired of spreadsheet chaos, it's worth checking out.

Check it out: PlanSeats

How I Found My First Dev Job in Perth Without Moving

Stas Leonov — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:16:50 +0000

If you're looking for work in Perth or regional WA, you've probably noticed how general job boards are pretty useless when you actually live here. You end up scrolling through hundreds of listings that aren't relevant to your area, and honestly, most of the big sites don't seem to care much about what's actually available locally. Jobs In Perth fixes this by focusing specifically on Western Australia, so when you search, you're seeing roles that are actually in your region—whether that's FIFO positions, healthcare, construction, tech, or hospitality. You can filter by suburb, salary, and work type, which means less wasted time and more genuine matches.

On the other side, I've talked to a few small business owners who were frustrated with the cost and hassle of advertising on bigger boards. They mentioned Jobs In Perth lets them post a job for A$29 flat-rate with no hidden fees or contracts, and the applications come straight to them. For local employers trying to hire without breaking the bank, that's a genuinely useful alternative. The whole thing feels built by someone who actually understands what matters to people working and hiring in Perth, not some generic national platform trying to do everything at once.

Check it out: Jobs In Perth

How SellerCopilot Helped Me Stop Guessing on Amazon Listings

Stas Leonov — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:14:50 +0000

I spend way too much time tweaking my Amazon listings and trying to figure out what's actually moving the needle. Last month I realized I was sitting on hundreds of customer reviews but had no system for understanding what people actually wanted, let alone responding thoughtfully to feedback. That's when I started using SellerCopilot and honestly it's saved me probably ten hours a week.

The tool handles the stuff that was eating my time. I can generate optimized titles and bullet points without staring at my screen trying to guess what keywords matter. The competitor analysis actually shows me what's working in my category instead of me just scrolling endlessly. But the part that surprised me most was the review insights feature—it turns a mountain of feedback into clear patterns about what customers love or hate about my products.

The professional review responses are pretty solid too. I used to draft these from scratch, especially for negative reviews where you need to sound helpful without being defensive. Now I've got suggestions ready to go, which I obviously customize, but it gets me 80 percent of the way there. Starting with ten free credits meant I could test everything without committing first. If you're selling on Amazon and juggling multiple SKUs, this cuts through a lot of the busywork.

Check it out: SellerCopilot

How I stopped manually copying school dates into my calendar

Stas Leonov — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:10:50 +0000

I've been drowning in school emails and WhatsApp messages for years now. There's always something I'm forgetting — a permission slip deadline, a sports day, when exactly half term is. I'd get three different messages about the same event from three different parents, half the time in different formats, and I'd just pray I'd written it down somewhere. My phone notes were chaos, and my calendar was even worse because I had to manually add everything.

Nuet actually connects to my email and the WhatsApp groups I choose, then it just pulls all the school stuff automatically into one calendar. No forwarding emails to myself, no typing anything in. Term dates, parents' evenings, trips, all the deadlines — they all just appear. It works across Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, whatever email you use, and it organizes everything for the whole family so my partner can see it too. It runs in the background so I'm not checking seventeen different apps to remember what's happening when.

The relief is genuinely noticeable. I'm not carrying around that mental weight of trying to remember if football is Thursday or Friday, or whether I missed a deadline. Honestly, if you're managing school life for one or more kids and you're getting information from multiple sources, this just works. It's £6.99 a month and there's a free week to try it.

Check it out: Nuet

How I Navigate the NFT Market Without Getting Lost in Scam Projects

Stas Leonov — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:08:50 +0000

Finding legit NFT projects is honestly frustrating. There's so much noise out there, and you end up scrolling through Discord links and OpenSea pages that might be abandoned or sketchy. I've been burned before by projects that looked decent initially but turned out to be dead on arrival. That's where Other Worlders NFT Directory actually helps. Everything's organized by blockchain and category, so whether you're looking at Ethereum collections, Solana stuff, or Bitcoin NFTs, you can actually filter and find what you're after without doing endless research yourself.

What makes it different is that every listing gets checked before it goes live. It's not just a free-for-all submission platform where anyone can throw anything up there. Projects can submit for free by pasting their OpenSea URL and the info pulls in automatically, but then actual humans review it before publishing. Teams can edit their listings and make sure everything's accurate. There's also paid sponsorship if they want more visibility, but at least that's clearly labeled so you know what's what.

I've found it useful for quickly scanning new projects across different chains without having to hunt through Discord or Twitter threads. If you're actually trying to evaluate NFT projects seriously instead of just gambling on hype, having a directory with vetted listings saves hours of digging around.

Check it out: Other Worlders NFT Directory

I Used InterviewWatch to Stop Hiring Blind in Technical Interviews

Stas Leonov — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:06:50 +0000

I've been running remote interviews for about six months now and it's gotten ridiculous how often candidates clearly aren't actually doing the work themselves. Someone's got an AI tool whispering answers on a second monitor, or they're using a voice changer, or honestly sometimes it's just obvious they've got someone else at the keyboard. But you can't prove it from a video call, and that's where everything falls apart.

InterviewWatch actually solves this without being creepy about it. It's an alternative to Hirevue that doesn't record your screen or audio—it just detects what's actually happening on the candidate's machine. It catches AI assistants running in the background, remote desktop sessions, virtual cameras, monitor switching, all of it. The candidate runs the agent while you're interviewing them, and you get a live integrity score as you talk. After the call ends you get a tamper-evident report showing exactly what happened and when. I can actually ask about suspicious signals while we're still on the call instead of discovering problems after I've already moved someone forward.

The best part is it actually works with whatever hiring system you already have. Our ATS connected in about five minutes and candidates just agree to run it like any other tool. It feels fair to them because it's not secretly recording anything, and it's way more reliable than me trying to guess if someone's cheating based on how they're answering questions.

Check it out: interviewwatch.com