I shipped available.dev on a Saturday morning, posted it to Reddit, and went to make coffee.
When I came back, 45 developers were sitting in the waiting room, staring at each other.
The Numbers (First 12 Hours)
2,147 unique visitors 102 GitHub signups 45 developers entered the room 364 upvotes on r/webdevI didn't expect any of this.
Why I Built This
Job hunting as a developer is broken in a specific way: there's no signal for availability.
LinkedIn shows you people who might be open to opportunities. Job boards show you companies that might be hiring. Neither shows you who's actually available right now.
I kept thinking: what if there was just a room? A public waiting room where developers who are looking for work sit until they find something. No resumes. No applications. No "open to opportunities" that's been on for 3 years.
Just: "I'm here. I'm available. Here's my one-liner."
How It Works
The concept is aggressively simple:
- 1.Sign in with GitHub (verifies you're a real developer)
- 2.Write a one-liner describing what you do
- 3.Pick your skills — React, Python, TypeScript, whatever
- 4.Sit in the room
- 5.When you find work, you leave
That's it. No matching algorithms. No AI. No personality assessments. Just a list of people who are available, sorted by how long they've been waiting.
Employers can browse freely. No account needed. See someone interesting? Their GitHub is right there. Their contact info (if they added it) is right there.
What the Room Looks Like Now
Right now there are developers in the room with experience in everything from machine learning to Go to mobile development. Senior engineers, recent bootcamp grads, specialists, generalists.
Some have been waiting a few hours. Some a few days.
Every one of them showed up because they wanted to be seen. That's the whole point.
What's Missing
Employers.
I built the supply side first. The room is full of developers. But we need the demand side — companies and recruiters actually browsing, actually reaching out.
If you're hiring, go look at the room. These aren't passive candidates who might respond to your LinkedIn InMail in 2 weeks. These are people who are available today.
What's Next
I'm building in public, so here's the roadmap:
Activity signals — Show when someone was last active. A developer who checked in yesterday is more responsive than one who signed up and disappeared. Better filtering — Location preferences, seniority levels, remote vs on-site. Right now it's just skills. Open source — The code will be public. If you want to run your own waiting room for a specific niche, you'll be able to.The Stack (For the Curious)
- •Next.js 16 with App Router
- •Supabase for auth and database
- •Drizzle ORM for type-safe queries
- •Tailwind CSS for styling
- •Vercel for hosting
Nothing fancy. The point was to ship fast and see if the idea resonated.
It did.
Try It
If you're looking for work: Enter the waiting room → If you're hiring: Browse available developers →45 developers showed up in 12 hours. Now let's see who finds them.