I spent weeks building a food decision tool instead of something useful

"Hey Bob, this post made me laugh out loud 😂
I love the honesty. Most of us say we build “useful” tools but secretly want to make something fun first. You actually did it. justdecideformecom is pure dopamine — completely useless yet strangely addictive.
The astrological compatibility slider is genius. It’s the kind of stupid feature that people will screenshot and send to friends. That’s exactly how things spread. I’d lean hard into that “deliberately useless but fun” angle.
Quick feedback on your questions:

Battle mode has high viral potential, but the friction might be real. Maybe add a one-click “Quick Battle” link that people can copy and send to friends instantly?
Yes, expand the concept. Drinks, movies, date spots, even “what game should I play tonight” could all work with the same mechanic.

This feels like the kind of silly tool that could randomly blow up on TikTok or Twitter one day. Sometimes the “useless” ones win.
Curious: How many people have actually used the battle mode so far? Has anyone sent you screenshots of their food fights? 🔥
Keep shipping fun stuff, man. Rooting for the chaos."

it's fun! I like the idea. whether the battle is a good viral mechanic...I don't know. perhaps. Obviously for a specific targeted audience yes.
The useless slider is random, right? Saw it was eye of the universe or energy or something like that. I would actually lean into people liking it and use one - so it seems consistent and important :) (the astrology one for example, people will use it)

One thing does feel counter-intuitive: the sliders. Moving it to the right grows the left colour, so obviously gives more importance to the left choice. But my intuition is, oh I want to give more weight to the one on the right, so I pull right.

Making that one change will probably do more for first impressions than anything else. The headline tells people exactly what they're getting. Once that clicks for them they'll actually play with the sliders. Good call on prioritizing it.

The slider thing is a real insight into how people interact with interfaces. They don't always want utility, they want the feeling of control. Those programmatic SEO pages could turn into a serious long tail over time. Food debate queries have genuine search volume and almost no good answers. Keep going with this one.

I relate to this. I spent a week over-engineering a pixel grid
overlay feature for my screen tool before realising the basic
fullscreen function was what 95% of users actually needed. There
is something about being deep in the build that makes the
unnecessary feel essential. The question I now ask before any new
feature: will this make someone's first experience better, or is
this just for me? Usually answers itself pretty quickly.

Ha, I feel this so hard. I spent 3 months building a feature nobody asked for on my last project — an elaborate template system when users just wanted the basics to work faster.

The "building for yourself" trap is real. The irony is that the most successful thing I ever shipped was something I thought was embarrassingly simple.

Did you end up pivoting to something else or did you shelf it completely?

This is the best kind of project. You built something fun, shipped it, and learned a ton in the process. That matters way more than whether it has a business model on day one.

The astrological compatibility slider that does nothing is hilarious and also kind of genius. People love interacting with things that feel slightly absurd. That's why they share it. You accidentally stumbled onto a viral mechanic.

The programmatic SEO pages for food debates (pizza vs burger, ramen vs pho) is actually a really smart distribution play. Those are the kinds of queries people search for when they're bored and hungry. If you nail the on-page experience and make it fun enough to share, those pages could drive real traffic over time.

To answer your question about expanding beyond food: yes, but I'd do it as separate branded pages under the same domain rather than adding categories to the main tool. "justdecideforme.com/movies" or "/drinks" keeps the concept clean and each one becomes its own SEO page.

The fact that this runs on zero dollars is the cherry on top. Keep shipping weird stuff. The boring serious SaaS can wait.

This is exactly the kind of project IH needs more of — building something fun and weird just because! The 'useless slider' insight is brilliant UX psychology: people don't always want utility, they want to play. I'd love to see this expanded to movies and date night decisions — that's where the real viral potential lies. Keep shipping the fun stuff! 🎮

Ha, I relate to this more than I'd like. I spent a week over-engineering a pixel grid overlay feature for my screen tool before realising the basic fullscreen function was what 95% of users actually needed. There's something about being deep in the build that makes the unnecessary feel essential. The brutal but useful question I now ask before any new feature: "Will this make someone's first experience better, or is this for me?" Usually answers itself pretty quickly.

The fact that people move the astrology slider even though it does nothing is the most interesting data point in this entire post. That tells you something about what users actually want from this: entertainment, not utility. Lean into that. The battle mode sharing mechanic is smart but I'd make it one tap to share, not multiple steps. Every extra click kills virality. And yes, expand beyond food. 'Should I watch this or that on Netflix tonight' is the same decision paralysis with a bigger audience

I think the “useless slider” is exactly why it works — it makes it more shareable.

Battle mode feels good, but maybe a bit of friction. The core loop should stay super fast.

Honestly the astrological compatibility slider is the whole product 😄
People moving a slider that does nothing just because it feels important is probably the most accurate simulation of how most product decisions get made in real life.
The food battle idea is smart because you are not really asking people to share a tool. You are giving them a reason to argue with their friends. That always spreads.
One thing from building side — the programmatic SEO pages for food debates is actually very clever. Pizza vs burger has real search volume. People google this stuff when they genuinely cannot decide. You might get organic traffic without doing anything extra.
Will it make you rich? Probably not. But will it make someone finally stop arguing about where to eat tonight? Priceless 😄

Ha, we have all been there. I once spent two weeks perfecting an animation nobody would ever notice. Sometimes the "useless" projects teach you the most though. What stack did you build it with?

Honestly, the "useless" projects are often where the best product instincts come from. The fact that people move the astrological compatibility slider even though it does nothing is a genuinely interesting UX insight — people engage with things that feel playful and personal, even when they know it's silly. That's the kind of behavioral observation you can't get from reading startup advice posts.

The $0 hosting stack is also underrated. When we started building our SaaS (AI ad creative tool), one of the best decisions was keeping infra costs near zero in the early days so we could experiment without the pressure of burning money. You learn so much more when you're free to build weird things without a revenue clock ticking.

To answer your question about battle mode — I think the friction is worth it if sharing is the goal. The best viral loops I've seen aren't "share this tool," they're "settle this argument with me." That's basically what food battles are. I'd lean into the social/debate angle hard.

Honestly, "does it remove a tiny daily friction?" is a legitimate product question and yours answers yes. The zero-cost stack and programmatic SEO setup show you actually know what you're doing — this isn't a throwaway build, it's a real deployment with a real architecture. The brutal feedback you might get: the value prop needs to be clearer above the fold. "What do you want to eat?" gets to the point faster than explaining the sliders. But shipping is shipping — good work getting it out.