I "accidentally" built an awesome-useless ecosystem. There is an owl. The Tamagotchi is dying. Gemini did not resist.

This is a submission for the DEV April Fools Challenge

What I Built

Hello, my name is Sara, and I'm a software engineer. I build observable AI infrastructure. I make complex systems legible, auditable, and safe.

Today, in full yolo mode, I used those skills to build awesome-useless — a real awesome-* list for useless software. Like awesome-python but for things that should not exist.

It is a russian doll. Open it and find something weirder inside.

🪆 awesome-useless — the repo. A curated list. Real badges. Real CI. Contributions welcome. Useful PRs will be rejected.

🪆 oh-my-silly-me — a shell framework that makes your terminal measurably worse. Has a Tamagotchi that always dies.

🪆 .spells — a hidden grimoire. ls -la and you'll see things. We cannot be held responsible.

🪆 devCities.lol — the innermost doll. You describe yourself. A tired government owl named Agent Hoot builds you a personal 1997 Devcities homepage. You get a shareable URL. Your portfolio is now safe from modern web design. Forever. In 1997.

I have no regrets. My git log tells a different story.

Demo

→ Try devCities.lol— yeah, I went there.

How it works:

1. Land on devcities.lol — a Windows 98 portal

2. Describe yourself in the prompt box:

   "I'm ___, frontend dev with strong feelings about border-radius. My stack is TypeScript and regret. My cat, Mr. Whiskers, reviews all my PRs. He has never approved one."

3. Hit 🦉 ENTER O.W.L.S PROTECTION
   Behind the scenes, the Gemini API wakes up Agent Hoot.
   He reads your description. He built your 1997 homepage.
   He does not ask questions. This also concerns us.

4. Watch the terminal go...

5. Your personal 1997 devCities homepage appears. It is not pretty. It was never going to be pretty. Your name is in rainbow Comic Sans. Your stack has been renamed to chaos. Your hot take is marked CLASSIFIED. The guestbook has one entry — Agent Hoot. Also classified. You made this. You cannot unmake this. This is yours now.

--> Hit "🔗 SHARE YOUR PAGE" — the entire Geocities nightmare
gets compressed into a URL. No backend. No database. Just pure 1997 chaos encoded into a link. Send it to your friends. Send it to your enemies. Send it to your tech lead, who keeps saying "we should rewrite this in Rust."

oh-my-silly-me in action:

source oh-my-silly-me/silly.sh

ksshhhhh...bing bing bing...CONNECTED AT 28.8 KBPS
MEMORANDUM: Please report any unauthorized use of the 'Tab' key to Agent Hoot.
🐣 [TAMAGOTCHI] is currently 0 minutes old. It is 1799 seconds from its inevitable doom.
🦉 [CLASSIFIED] ~/your-directory $

You can also cast spells:

cast ghostbuster

Gemini identified 3 ghosts, 7 personality enhancements, and 13 anomalies in total. It was recommended to leave offerings in the node_modules folder at midnight. Agent Hoot will collect them.

Code

saraeloop / awesome-useless

An awesome list for software that solves nothing. Contributions welcome.

awesome-useless ✨

A curated list of awesome useless code, tools, and resources.
Contributions welcome. Useful PRs will be rejected.

🏆 An entry in the DEV.to April Fools Challenge · #418challenge · #devchallenge

---

Contents

• Tools
• Projects
• Prompts
• Spells

---

🛠️ Tools

• oh-my-silly-me — A shell framework for the unproductive. Like oh-my-zsh but worse in every measurable way.

🏛️ Projects

• devCities — Your dev portfolio. In 1997. A government owl builds your Devcities homepage from a prompt.

🧠 Prompts

• unhinged-prompts — AI prompts that should not exist. Curated by someone who regrets all of them.

🧙 Spells

• .spells — A hidden grimoire. ls -la and you'll see things. Cast them on any AI: Gemini, Claude, Codex, or other. We cannot be held responsible.

---

Contributing

Submit your own useless project via PR. Agent Hoot will review it....takes a while. It will be worth it.

We welcome contributions that are:

• ✅ Useless
• ✅ Silly
• ✅…

View on GitHub

The repo is a russian doll. Each layer contains something weirder.

ls -la when you get there.

How I Built It

The stack:

• TypeScript + Vite (the app that hides websites in 1997 has strict mode enabled)
• 98.css (Windows 98 government portal aesthetic)
• Gemini API / gemini-3.1-pro-preview (Agent Hoot, the Identity Reassignment Officer)
• lz-string (compress entire Geocities pages into shareable URLs)
• Vanilla chaos (CSS, HTML, the spirit of 1997)
• Bash/zsh (oh-my-silly-me shell framework)

The Gemini API does the actual work:

When you describe yourself, the prompt tells Gemini:

"You are Agent Hoot, O.W.L.S. Identity Reassignment Officer. This page was made by a developer in 1997 who was EXTREMELY proud of it. It should look intentional. Chaotic but lovingly crafted. It looks like someone spent their whole weekend on this. Useless ≠ ugly. Charming chaos ≠ visual disaster."

That last instruction went through 5 iterations. The first 4 produced visual disasters. The 5th produced Sara's CyberDomain. Sara's CyberDomain is beautiful. In 1997.

Gemini CLI built oh-my-silly-me:

I prompted Gemini CLI to build a shell framework that makes your terminal worse. It built Tamagotchis, Enya error handlers, dial-up simulators, and a cast command for AI spells. It did not object once. This concerns me deeply.

Google Imagen created Agent Hoot:

He did not consent.

Total cost of all Gemini API calls: approximately $0.83

⚠️ The Incident Report

Every mission has casualties.

O.W.L.S. INCIDENT LOG
======================
Classification: EYES ONLY

INCIDENT #001: THE MODEL THAT DID NOT EXIST
gemini-3.0-flash is not found for API version v1beta.
We asked for the future. The future was not available.
We settled for 2.5. for a bit, then 3.0 flasharoooo!

INCIDENT #002: THE TYPING THAT WOULD NOT STOP
> Agent Hoot is still typing.
> Agent Hoot is still typing..
> Agent Hoot is still typing...
[× 87]
Agent Hoot typed for 4 minutes.
Agent Hoot was very thorough.
We could not stop him.

INCIDENT #003: THE LINTER THAT HAD OPINIONS
The CI markdown linter told us:
"This repo is a joke —
let's not fight the linter on every creative choice."
We disabled the rules.
The linter was right.
We were also right.

INCIDENT #004: THE TAMAGOTCHI
It died.
We could not save it.
Nobody can save it.
This is by design.
This is fine.

TOTAL CASUALTIES: 4 incidents, 1 Tamagotchi
STATUS: Operational. Mostly. It is 1997.

The repo is real. The contributions are welcome.
The useless PRs will be merged with great pride.
The useful PRs will be rejected with great sorrow.

Star the repo. Submit your useless thing.
The grimoire is open. ls -la and you'll see.

github.com/saraeloop/awesome-useless

Prize Category

Best Google AI Usage — Gemini CLI built the shell framework. Gemini API powers the identity reassignment. Google Imagen created Agent Hoot. Total Google AI involvement: everything except the existential crisis, which was my own.

Best Ode to Larry Masinter — Our servers are teapots. HTTP 418. This is not an error. This is a lifestyle. The HTCPCP/1.0 certification appears in the footer of every page. Agent Hoot has been a teapot since 1997. Agent Hoot did not choose this.

Community Favorite — devCities gives every developer their own shareable 1997 homepage. The repo accepts PRs for new useless projects. The tamagotchi dies for everyone equally. This is community.

The visitor counter is at 000312.
It will reach 000313 eventually.
Agent Hoot is still watching.
It is 1997.
It is always 1997.

🦉