4 apps live 10 in the lab

Dorien.

I used to translate words.
Now I ship apps.

3× hackathon winner · SEO & localization · from Bocas del Toro, Panamá

Hero Apps is my one-person studio. I build small AI tools for problems I see up close: newcomers who can't reach the plumber in Spanish, growing on X, turning a thread into a skill. Each one does a single job, right in your browser.

PoquitoTalk
Hola, ¿a qué hora puede venir?Plomero
0:07 Voice note · Panamanian Spanish
The tap is still leaking, 8am ok?Send
Velocity Radar
This week · under 5K
01@buildsinpublic+1,214
02@shipdaily+886
03@quietfounder+640
04@mvp_maria+512
05@latenightdev+498
Sealed every Friday
+ Tweet2Skill
@dorienvibecodesHow I set up Claude Code hooks…
SKILL.md
name: claude-hooks
when: "set up hooks"
steps:
  - create .claude/hooks
  - add PreToolUse…
🏆 Hackathon Hero
Submission closes in 47:59:59
  • Rules audited
  • MVP scaffolded
  • Demo video
  • Pitch script

Tap an app to try it on the phone

Live now

Four apps, ready when you are

No setup marathon. Open the app, do the thing, get back to building.

Tweet2Skill

tweet2skill.hero-apps.com
Popular

Turn X posts, threads and docs into clean, structured skills for your AI coding agent: Claude Code, Google Antigravity or Windsurf.

  • Instant in-browser extraction
  • Works across agent workspaces
  • Bring your own key, your data stays yours
Open Tweet2Skill

Hackathon Hero

hackathon.hero-apps.com
New

Your AI co-pilot for winning hackathons. It reads the rules so you don't miss a requirement, keeps your milestones on track and drafts your pitch.

  • Rule-scraping requirements audit
  • Live milestone countdown
  • AI pitch deck scaffolder
Open Hackathon Hero

PoquitoTalk

poquitotalk.hero-apps.com
Live

Type in English, Dutch or whatever you speak. PoquitoTalk turns it into a natural Panamanian Spanish voice note and sends it on WhatsApp, so the plumber, landlord or mechanic actually understands you.

  • One tap from text to voice note
  • Local phrasing, not textbook Spanish
  • Built for expats in Bocas del Toro
Open PoquitoTalk

Velocity Radar

velocity.hero-apps.com
Live

A weekly leaderboard of the fastest-growing X creators under 5,000 followers. See who is breaking out right now, study what they post, and track your own velocity with the free Chrome extension.

  • Weekly growth contest, sealed every Friday
  • Free Chrome extension for your own stats
  • Free forever, no account needed
Open Velocity Radar
The Hero standard

Small on purpose

01

One job, done brilliantly

No bloated dashboards. Every Hero App solves one specific problem, so it's quick to learn and hard to outgrow.

02

Your keys, your data

Where AI is involved you can bring your own API key. You stay in control of your costs and what you share.

03

Open it, use it

Everything runs in the browser. No installs, no onboarding call, no 14-step setup. Just the tool.

In the lab · RankBeacon suite

Get found on Google and in AI answers

RankBeacon is our upcoming SEO & GEO suite: small tools that help you rank in search results and get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Pick the ones you want and we'll tell you the moment they launch.

My story

From translating words
to shipping apps

Dorien Van den Abbeele, founder of Hero Apps
  • Born Belgium
  • Lives Bocas del Toro, Panamá
  • Speaks Dutch, English, Spanish, French
  • Grows cacao, on a jungle farm
  1. Belgium · 2012

    Fourteen years of making other people's words land

    I'm Dorien Van den Abbeele. With a Master's in Translation I founded VDA Translations and spent over a decade localizing software, fashion and tourism brands from English, Spanish and French into Dutch and Flemish. Translation teaches you one thing above all: the message only counts if the person on the other side actually gets it.

  2. Bocas del Toro · 2015

    An abandoned cacao farm on Dolphin Bay

    I moved to the Caribbean side of Panamá and, with my Panamanian partner, brought an abandoned cacao farm back to life. Sloths, fireflies, bioluminescence and tree-to-truffle chocolate became daily life. As the neighbour who speaks Spanish, I also became everyone's translator.

  3. The turn

    From prompts and SEO to shipping my own apps

    Localization pulled me into SEO, SEO pulled me into prompt engineering, and AI coding tools pulled me the rest of the way. I started building in public on X, entered hackathons and won three of them. Every app I ship starts as a problem I had that week.

  4. Hero Apps · today

    Tiny apps, one job each

    PoquitoTalk exists because I kept translating for newcomers in Bocas who could not reach their plumber. Velocity Radar exists because I wanted to learn from creators who grow faster than I do. Tweet2Skill and Hackathon Hero came out of my own workflow. If one of them saves you an hour, tell me. If it doesn't, I want to hear that even more.

    Hear about the next one
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