I built an AI landscape designer because SketchUp was too hard. Reached 5k+ designs generated
Hey IndieHackers,
I've been building Hadaa.app — an AI landscape design tool for homeowners, landscapers, and real estate agents.
Why it exists I bought a house, inherited a dirt patch, and spent weeks trying to learn SketchUp before giving up. A professional quote came back at thousands — just for a concept. I knew GenAI had reached the point where this problem was solvable, so I built the tool I needed. Turns out a lot of other people needed it too. We're now at 60,000+ users across 130+ countries.
The problem Most people can't visualize spatial changes to their outdoor space. Hiring a landscape architect costs thousands just for drawings. Generic AI tools like Midjourney generate beautiful images — but they don't understand your yard. They'll suggest tropical palms in Minnesota and give you zero planting guidance. Pretty pictures you can't build from.
What Hadaa does differently It's not a filter and it's not a mood board generator. Hadaa reads the depth, lighting, and existing structures in your photo — the fence line, the driveway, the facade — and renders a photorealistic 4K design that respects your actual space. Four engines under the hood:
Style Engine — 48+ landscape styles applied to your real yard via one click or plain-English prompt
Smart Fix — edit a single element by typing what you want; everything else stays untouched
Sketch Engine — upload a napkin sketch or CAD file and get a photorealistic 3D render in minutes
Biological Engine — every plant cross-referenced against your USDA hardiness zone, so nothing in your design will die in your climate
Every design also exports a contractor-ready planting guide and bill of quantities: botanical names, exact plant counts, cubic yards of mulch, square footage for pavers. You can hand it directly to a nursery or contractor.
Tech stack
Rails 7 + Hotwire — fast, monolithic, no regrets
Tailwind CSS
Custom generative models for spatially-aware inpainting
What's working
The Sketch Engine consistently surprises people — hand a rough drawing to an AI and get back a photorealistic render is genuinely magical to watch
The Masking Brush gives users control that generic tools can't match — protect the oak tree you love, redesign everything else
The planting guide output is converting well with professionals; landscape architects and contractors find it immediately usable
4.8 stars from 2,000+ reviews
The hard part Getting people to understand this isn't a photo filter or a style preset. The core value is spatial accuracy and biological validity — a design you can actually build, with plants that will actually survive. That's a harder thing to communicate in a headline than "make your yard look pretty."
Would love feedback on how we're telling that story. Landing page: https://hadaa.app/
ALTERNATIVETO LISTING
Hadaa is a purpose-built AI alternative to landscape CAD tools like SketchUp, general image generators like Midjourney, and consumer apps like iScape or DreamzAR. Where CAD tools require weeks of learning and generic AI ignores your actual yard, Hadaa is trained specifically for exterior landscape design — combining spatial reasoning, botanical data, and climate science in a single browser-based workflow.
Pros over CAD (SketchUp, AutoCAD) Photorealistic renders in 60 seconds vs. days of modeling. No 3D skills required. Accepts hand-drawn sketches and CAD exports as input and converts them to 3D renders automatically.
Pros over generic AI (Midjourney, Stable Diffusion) Reads and preserves your existing yard geometry. Validates every plant against your USDA hardiness zone. Outputs a contractor-ready planting guide and bill of quantities — not just an image.
Key features
Photorealistic 4K landscape visualization from a single photo
48+ curated landscape styles with plain-English editing
Sketch and CAD to 3D render pipeline
USDA hardiness zone plant filtering across all 13 zones
Masking Brush for selective redesign
AI diagnostics that auto-detect and fix curb appeal issues
Planting guide with botanical names, quantities, and material estimates
Video walkthrough generation
Plans from $14/month — no design experience required
