I used to overthink this a lot, but I found that the best ideas usually come from just being annoyed by something in my own workflow. A few months ago, I got tired of how messy my local documentation was, so I built a small CLI tool to auto-format it. It wasn’t “groundbreaking,” but because I actually used it every day, I stayed motivated to polish the code. If you’re looking for open source, I’ve had the best luck looking at the “Issues” tab of libraries I already use. Often there’s a small bug or a requested helper function that’s been sitting there for months. It’s way less pressure than starting from scratch, and you get that instant feedback loop from other contributors, which keeps it interesting. Just build something that saves you ten minutes a week; you’ll be surprised how many other people have the exact same frustration.
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