Devlog #4: If you’ve been following my journey, HighlightClipper is almost ready!

It’s getting better at analysing and generating the highlight montage, and I’ve added multiple API end points to connect the backend and the server.I’ve made some UX changes, added a video preview on the website, added logging, implemented gracefully handling errors, generated graphs, etc.

But before I could pop the champagne, I ran into one last, incredibly stubborn road block: YouTube’s Anti-Bot Algorithm.

The Bot Wars

Turns out, when you try to automatically download several 90-minute, high bit-rate 1080p soccer matches in rapid succession, YT’s servers start asking questions.

My terminal went from showing beautiful, smooth download progress bars to talkin bout sum HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests and Sign into confirm you're not a bot.

I spent an hour or two trying to fix this, trying stuff like importing cookies from chrome (no luck) but eventually found a workaround! By emulating an iOS device, where the anti-bot algorithms are more lax, I could easily pretend to be a human… I mean, I am a human tho!

My Midlife Crisis

I’ve talked a lot about the technical aspects of my project in these devlogs. But as I finilize the core functionality of HighlightClipper, I want to talk about the actual experience of being a developer right now.

I’ve hit The Dilemma.

HighlightClipper works. The MVP is done. But looking at my code, my fingers are itching to add more features. I want to refactor some of my backend to be more “professional”. I want to add an API schema and write unit tests. I want to add more analytics on the results page.

But at the same time, the allure of a brand-new, cool project is calling my name. Do I stay and polish this project into an even better application, or do I pack up and build the next cool thing?I genuinely don’t know the right answer. I’d love some advice from the community…

When do you decide a project is truly “finished”?