SwellSlots — Surf Forecasts, Reimagined
Stop squinting at endless data tables just to figure out if the waves are worth the drive.
SwellSlots packs swell height, swell period, wind speed, wind direction, and tide state into a single color-coded weekly grid. One glance tells you when conditions line up — no scrolling, no mental math, no switching between three different apps.
Most surf forecast tools feel like they were designed for meteorologists, not surfers. Clinical layouts, cold interfaces, walls of numbers. SwellSlots takes the opposite approach: a visual-first design where color does the heavy lifting. Good conditions pop. Bad ones fade. You scan the week in seconds and know exactly when to paddle out.
What's under the hood:
SwellSlots covers over 2,000 surf spots worldwide. Building that database was its own adventure — Google Maps can't tell the difference between a surf beach and a swimming beach, so we built a separate AI-assisted pipeline (internally called "Surf Scout") to source and classify spots. It got us about 80% of the way there. The remaining 20% was manual curation: cross-referencing local knowledge, verifying break types, and filtering out the noise. The result is a curated, global spot database that's constantly improving.
On the tech side, SwellSlots is built with SvelteKit and TailwindCSS 4, deployed on Hetzner. It's fast, lightweight, and designed to feel snappy on mobile — because that's where most surfers are checking conditions, usually half-awake at 5am with one eye open.
Who it's for:
Whether you're a weekend warrior checking Friday night if Saturday morning is worth the alarm, a travelling surfer scoping an unfamiliar coastline, or a local who just wants a faster way to scan the week — SwellSlots is built for you. It's for anyone who's tired of forecast apps that make you work harder than the paddle out.
What's next:
SwellSlots is actively growing its spot database, improving forecast accuracy, and building out features based on community feedback. If your local break is missing, let us know — we'll add it.
Try it. Check your spot. Tell us what you think.
Comments (1)
A surf forecast grid with a Street Fighter style twist is the most fun UI idea I have seen for weather data. SwellSlots makes checking surf conditions actually enjoyable instead of boring.