Top One Uwu
A free AI-powered writing assistant for everyone — students, writers, and professionals — built at 19 as a college student while learning SvelteKit and experimenting with the OpenAI API. Went viral in the Programming Philippines community and was covered by Inquirer.net and CLTV36.
Featured in Inquirer.net & CLTV36
The problem
In 2022, while I was a college student learning SvelteKit and experimenting with the then-new OpenAI models, I kept hitting the same wall: the tools that help with schoolwork — grammar checkers, paraphrasing tools, essay helpers like Grammarly — were all locked behind paid subscriptions that an average student can’t afford. I needed those capabilities for free, so I decided to build them myself.
The solution
Top One Uwu became a completely free, AI-powered writing assistant for everyone — students, writers, and professionals: paste any text and fix its grammar, rephrase, expand, or summarize it, or generate a full essay and its title from a topic prompt, with plagiarism checking on top. I set a hard goal to publish it free with zero cost from my own pocket: Render and Supabase ran on free and hobby plans, with multiple Render clone servers spun up to distribute heavy traffic, and the AI itself ran on OpenAI free credits — extended by a community pool where users could safely contribute their own API keys, sharing free AI usage with everyone. Built solo while still in college, it went viral in the Programming Philippines community and caught the attention of Inquirer.net and CLTV36.
Key features
What I learned
Tech stack
Screenshots
