Building Formatic – A Privacy-First Tool to End "Lost in Translation" in Code
Hey Indie Hackers,
I'm building Formatic, and I'd love to get your brutally honest feedback.
The Problem:
I was working with a distributed team and noticed a recurring friction point: brilliant developers were spending too much mental energy parsing English code comments instead of solving logic problems. They'd constantly tab out to translators, and sometimes the nuance of a critical comment would get lost. Even worse, the "solution" of letting everyone write comments in their native language fragmented the codebase and created a maintenance nightmare.
The existing options either required sending your proprietary code to a third-party API (a hard no for many) or were just glorified ChatGPT wrappers.
The "Aha" Moment:
The real need isn't about changing the codebase's language—it's about comprehension. Developers need to read code in their language but write and commit in a unified, standard language (almost always English).
My Solution: Formatic
Formatic is a privacy-first developer tool that acts as a comprehension layer for your code.
Privacy-First by Design: All formatting happens locally in your browser. For AI-powered translation, we use secure, temporary tokens and never store your code on our servers.
Read in Your Language, Write in English: Hover over a comment in your IDE (VS Code/JetBrains extensions are in the works) and see an instant translation. The source code remains pristine English.
Fits Existing Workflow: It’s not about creating a parallel, multi-lingual codebase. It's about eliminating friction for the developer reading the code right now.
The Current MVP:
The Formatic live. Right now, you can:
Paste code and format it client-side.
Use the comprehension mode to hover over comments and see translations.
It's early, but it demonstrates the core value proposition.
My Ask for This Community:
I'm at a critical validation point. I know this solves my problem, but I need to know if it solves yours.
For developers in global teams: Does this "comprehension over translation" approach resonate? Is this a real pain point for your team?
For everyone: Does the privacy-first angle make this more compelling than a free, generic translation tool?
For the product-wise: What's the one feature that would make this a "must-have" for you? (e.g., GitHub PR integration, a specific IDE plugin, etc.)
Just generally: Am I completely off base? Be blunt.
I'm documenting the entire journey and will be completely transparent with what I learn from you all. Your feedback at this early stage is incredibly valuable.
Thanks for reading
