Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
happykidscoloring.com
Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
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Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#2Hi HN!
I built a free printable coloring pages website for kids, powered by AI generation.
The Fun Part: Almost all the code was generated by Windsurf with Claude Sonnet 4.5. This was an interesting experiment - I never thought I could actually pull this off. It's fascinating to see what's possible with AI-assisted development today.
Background: As a parent, I noticed my kids love coloring, but most online resources are either low quality or require paid subscriptions. So I built this using AI to provide high-quality coloring pages for free to all parents.
Core Features: - AI-generated high-quality line art (powered by Google Gemini) - 50+ themed categories (animals, holidays, nature, etc.) - Age-appropriate content (3-12 years) with difficulty levels - One-click PDF download, print-ready - Multi-language support (English, Chinese, etc.) - User favorites and browsing history
Tech Stack: - Next.js 16 + React 19 - Drizzle ORM + PostgreSQL - MeiliSearch for search - Cloudflare R2 for image storage - Google Gemini AI for content and category generation - Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
Interesting Challenges: 1. AI category consistency - Built a "memory system" to make AI reuse existing categories instead of creating duplicates 2. Image optimization - Using Next.js Image optimization with preloading strategy, LCP Future Plans: - Custom AI generation from user prompts (text-to-coloring-page) - Image upload to generate coloring pages (image-to-coloring-page) - User upload and sharing features
Feel free to try it out and share your feedback! I'd especially love to hear suggestions on technical implementation and product direction.
The source code is not open-sourced yet, but happy to discuss technical details.
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#3Hi HN! I built a free printable coloring pages website for kids, powered by AI generation. The Fun Part: Almost all the code was generated by Windsurf with Claude Sonnet 4.5. This was an interesting experiment - I never thought I could actually pull this off. It's fascinating to see what's possible with AI-assisted development today. Background: As a parent, I noticed my kids love coloring, but most online resources…
Hi!
Nice work congratulations !
I have a question on how you generated the 2D line arts. You wrote that you used Google Gemini. I’m Interested to have more details on the prompt or the process you side it have quality line arts.
Thank you very much!
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#4Hi HN! I built a free printable coloring pages website for kids, powered by AI generation. The Fun Part: Almost all the code was generated by Windsurf with Claude Sonnet 4.5. This was an interesting experiment - I never thought I could actually pull this off. It's fascinating to see what's possible with AI-assisted development today. Background: As a parent, I noticed my kids love coloring, but most online resources…
Nice one, my daughter will love it. Have you thought about adding colored version done with some other ai to provide reference? my son (hes younger) prefers ones like that
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#5Hi HN! I built a free printable coloring pages website for kids, powered by AI generation. The Fun Part: Almost all the code was generated by Windsurf with Claude Sonnet 4.5. This was an interesting experiment - I never thought I could actually pull this off. It's fascinating to see what's possible with AI-assisted development today. Background: As a parent, I noticed my kids love coloring, but most online resources…
Nice one, my daughter will love it. Have you thought about adding colored version done with some other ai to provide reference? my son (hes younger) prefers ones like that
Great minds think alike! I'm actually working on this feature right now - adding AI-colored reference versions alongside the line art. It should be live very soon. Thanks for the feedback, and I hope your daughter enjoys the current pages!
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#6Hi HN! I built a free printable coloring pages website for kids, powered by AI generation. The Fun Part: Almost all the code was generated by Windsurf with Claude Sonnet 4.5. This was an interesting experiment - I never thought I could actually pull this off. It's fascinating to see what's possible with AI-assisted development today. Background: As a parent, I noticed my kids love coloring, but most online resources…
Hi! Nice work congratulations ! I have a question on how you generated the 2D line arts. You wrote that you used Google Gemini. I’m Interested to have more details on the prompt or the process you side it have quality line arts. Thank you very much!
Thanks! I use Gemini's Imagen 3 API with specific prompts emphasizing "black and white line art, coloring book style, simple clean outlines, no shading".
Key is being very explicit about:
- Line art only, no shading/gradients - Age-appropriate complexity - Theme-specific keywords
Biggest challenge was consistency - took many iterations to dial in the prompts. I also manually filter out images with unwanted shading (working on automating this).
Happy to discuss more if you're exploring similar ideas!
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#7This is fantastic! Definitely bookmarking!
While I'm not one to suggest monetizing something that benefits a community I think you could reasonably monetize this by providing CaaS (ha! Coloring as a Service).
You could have weekly or monthly pdfs of generations emailed for particular themes like kids' school mascots, religious subjects like for Sunday school, curriculum subject correlating theme, etc.
Additionally, I would have it hide a signature somewhere in case someone starts scraping images and commercially selling them, or additionally license them to be able scrape them using Cloudflare.
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#8This is fantastic! Definitely bookmarking! While I'm not one to suggest monetizing something that benefits a community I think you could reasonably monetize this by providing CaaS (ha! Coloring as a Service). You could have weekly or monthly pdfs of generations emailed for particular themes like kids' school mascots, religious subjects like for Sunday school, curriculum subject correlating theme, etc. Additionally, I…
AI Crawling protection
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#9This is fantastic! Definitely bookmarking! While I'm not one to suggest monetizing something that benefits a community I think you could reasonably monetize this by providing CaaS (ha! Coloring as a Service). You could have weekly or monthly pdfs of generations emailed for particular themes like kids' school mascots, religious subjects like for Sunday school, curriculum subject correlating theme, etc. Additionally, I…
Oh! Another idea, have the uploading themes be a paid feature. I would consider site licensing for orgs. So if a school system wants to make it available to all teachers, they can pay a flat fee.
There's an incredible amount of potential with this! I'm jealous I didn't think of it!
Re: Show HN: I built a free kids coloring site with AI
#10This is fantastic! Definitely bookmarking! While I'm not one to suggest monetizing something that benefits a community I think you could reasonably monetize this by providing CaaS (ha! Coloring as a Service). You could have weekly or monthly pdfs of generations emailed for particular themes like kids' school mascots, religious subjects like for Sunday school, curriculum subject correlating theme, etc. Additionally, I…
Oh! Another idea, have the uploading themes be a paid feature. I would consider site licensing for orgs. So if a school system wants to make it available to all teachers, they can pay a flat fee. There's an incredible amount of potential with this! I'm jealous I didn't think of it!
Great suggestions! I love the B2B angle - weekly themed PDFs for schools/organizations is something I hadn't fully considered.
For now keeping it free to build user base, but definitely thinking about premium tiers for: - Custom theme uploads - Organization licensing - Curriculum-specific content
The Cloudflare crawl protection is a good call too. Already using R2, so makes sense to add that layer.
Thanks for the thoughtful ideas - this is exactly why I posted here!