This started as one annoying afternoon.

I needed to format a messy JSON blob. Quick thing. So I searched "json formatter online", clicked the first result, and got hit with a cookie banner, two ads, and a popup asking me to subscribe before I'd even pasted anything. I closed it, tried the next one, same story.

At some point I thought, you know what, I'll just build my own. How hard can a JSON formatter be.

That one tool turned into 21. It's a small app called UtilityBox now ( https://www.utilitybox.shop/ ) and it has the usual suspects: calculator, QR code generator, password generator, regex tester, EMI calculator, currency converter, a split-expense thing for trips, SQL formatter, and a bunch more. No account, no ads in your face, everything runs in your browser.

I'm not going to pretend it's some big engineering achievement.…