86 tools. Zero backend. One person. Two hospital visits. $200 in tokens in 24 hours. This is what building in public actually looks like — not the highlight reel, but the raw commit history of a human being.
The Genesis: Why Would Anyone Build 86 Free Tools?
On March 18, 2026, I launched ToolKnit — a collection of free, browser-based utilities that require no signup, no uploads, and zero trust.
Today, it's 86 tools across 10 categories. PDF converters that run entirely client-side using PDF-lib.js. Image resizers powered by HTML5 Canvas. A Morse Code Translator with audible beep playback at adjustable WPM. A MIDI Keyboard with 8 synthesized timbres — Grand Piano, Electric Organ, Synth Lead, String Ensemble, Pipa, Guitar, Flute, and Music Box — all generated in real-time through the Web Audio API. A Lyric Visualizer that parses LRC files and syncs lyrics to audio waveforms. Even a drinking-game dare spinner with 300 dares across 6 categories, slot-machine text reveal animation, and confetti celebrations.
But here's what the landing page doesn't tell you: I just spent $200 in a single day on Claude Max tokens to migrate a handful of pages to a new bilingual architecture. I killed a feature after 48 hours of intensive debugging. And somewhere between the ffmpeg.wasm Worker CORS errors and the hospital visit, I learned that some bugs aren't in the code at all.
