A collective of makers using modern tools — including AI — to solve real, everyday problems for real people, and give the result away free and open source.
Useful beats impressive. AI is a tool, not a paywall. Free and open, or it doesn't count.
Software has never been cheaper to build, yet ordinary people have never paid more for less. A wave of "AI-powered" products charges rent for problems that could be solved once and given away forever — while the small, real annoyances that actually make people's lives harder go unfixed, because you can't build an empire on them.
We fix them anyway. For free. In the open.
A note from the founder.
I didn't arrive here from a manifesto. I arrived here from projects.
Over years of building software — on my own things, with clients, alongside other developers — I kept noticing the same pattern. On project after project, too many of the people around me were hungrier for money than for craft. More eager to bill than to learn. Quicker to ship something just-good-enough to charge for than to actually understand the problem or care whether it worked.
The tools kept getting better. AI made it possible to build in a weekend what used to take a team a quarter. And instead of that abundance flowing to the people with the problems, I watched it get wrapped in a subscription and sold back to them — thin products at fat prices, dressed up as innovation.
At some point "that's just how the industry is" stopped being an acceptable answer. If building is this cheap now, then the small, real problems ordinary people have are finally worth solving — not because there's money in them, but because there's finally no excuse not to.
So this is the opposite bet. Be greedy for the craft, not the invoice. Use the same powerful tools, point them at real everyday annoyances, and give the results away. If that means I earn less, fine — I'd rather build things I'm proud of, in the open, with people who feel the same way.
That's what MakerCommons is. If you've felt that same itch, you're already one of us.
- Someone brings a real problem — small, concrete, shared by many. → Open a "problem" issue
- The collective picks it up and scopes a small, focused tool.
- We build it in the open, using whatever gets it done well — including AI.
- We give it away under a copyleft license, so improvements always come back.
- The next person improves it. The commons grows.
- 🧩 Have a problem worth solving? Tell us about it.
- 💡 Want to build? Grab an open problem or propose a tool.
- 📣 Just here for the vibe? Read the Manifesto and share it.
You don't need a degree, a startup, or permission — just a real problem or the will to help solve one.
Browse everything we've shipped in the tools index. (Nothing yet — be the first.)