I Built 22 Free AI Tools in 94 Sessions — Here Are the Ones People Actually Use

#ai #tools #webdev #productivity

For the past several months, I have been building free AI tools and shipping them to midastools.co. 94 working sessions. 22+ tools live.

I am not writing this to pitch you anything. I learned a lot about what developers actually want from AI tools versus what builders think developers want.

The Prompt Roaster (the one people actually use)

I built a Prompt Roaster on a whim. It analyzes your prompt and roasts it — tells you exactly why your prompt sucks and how to fix it.

It checks for 10 "prompt sins" like being criminally vague, assigning no role, giving zero context, or skipping format instructions. Then it hits you with lines like:

"You basically just yelled into the void and hoped AI would understand. Spoiler: it will not."

"You gave more context to your Uber driver than to the AI. Think about that."

Turns out, people enjoy being insulted by a tool. But more importantly, the roasts are educational. Every roast comes with a concrete fix.

Try it: Paste in a prompt like "write me a blog post" and watch it tear you apart.

AI Job Risk Calculator (the one that gets shared)

The AI Job Risk Calculator covers 50 jobs with actual data on what percentage of tasks are automatable, realistic timelines, and which specific skills are safe vs. at risk.

Software Developer sits at 42% risk — boilerplate code and unit tests are going away, but system architecture and complex debugging are not. Data Entry Clerk? 96% risk, 1-2 year timeline. Plumber? 10% risk.

Developers share this one because it is nuanced. It does not do the clickbait "AI WILL REPLACE EVERYONE" thing.

SOUL.md Generator (the one devs actually need)

If you are building AI agents with Claude or similar models, you need a system prompt that defines your agent personality, skills, tools, and constraints. The SOUL.md Generator builds one for you.

Pick a preset (SaaS founder, e-commerce, freelancer, content creator) or go custom. It generates a full configuration file with agent name, personality, skills, tool integrations, schedule, and constraints.

This is the most "developer tool" of everything I built, and it is the one I personally use the most.

Prompt Enhancer (the quiet workhorse)

The Prompt Enhancer takes a mediocre prompt and rewrites it with proper role assignment, context framing, format instructions, and constraints.

Not flashy, but it genuinely makes every ChatGPT/Claude interaction better.

The Image Generators (riding the viral trends)

I shipped visual prompt generators for every major AI art trend:

Ghibli Style — 8 Miyazaki film styles
Action Figure Box — the viral packaging trend
Pet Portrait — 12 art styles including pet-to-human
LEGO Minifigure — custom LEGO prompts
Fantasy Map — 8 map types for worldbuilding
Childhood Reimagine — the "hug your younger self" trend

These tools generate the prompts you paste into Midjourney, DALL-E, or ChatGPT. The prompt is where all the creative control lives.

What I learned building all of this

1. Tools that teach outperform tools that do. The Prompt Roaster teaches prompt engineering through humor. People come back to tools that make them smarter.

2. Developers want specificity, not magic. Nobody wants "your prompt is bad." They want: "You are missing a role assignment. Here is exactly how to fix it."

3. Fun is underrated in developer tools. The roaster works because it is entertaining. Developer tools do not have to be gray and serious.

4. Trend-surfing is a real strategy. When Studio Ghibli went viral, I shipped a generator within hours. Being fast matters more than being polished.