alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
What are you working on? Any new ideas which you're thinking about?
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I am taking a slightly different route this month and working on my Half Fast DevOps writing project. Borne from 25+ years in the trenches of software development, IT, DevOps, and any number of popularized names from the past two plus decades, it is part therapy, part satire, but mainly an attempt to make my tech-writing less soul-crushing.
Most of the documentation I read seems to have been created by a sleep-deprived robot in a stand-up or by a caffeinated squirrel with memory issues. So, I am searching for a voice to bring something different to talking about broken pipelines, observability bills expanding faster than my waistline, and heroic config file linting for the impatient.
I aim to make writing (and reading) my documentation tolerable (and perhaps even FUN!). I hope to make the next person who has to read my written word laugh and absolutely confirm my clear lack of sanity.
I’m currently working on a sequencer DAW plug-in (MIDI, audio) with multiple voices & precise timing/articulation controls, including a templating system & transformations to apply these changes to several steps/voices at the same time. Will also support importing/exporting tempo maps.
Can be used for everything from slightly skewed beat-making to generating undulating waves of sound!
Building https://gemlink.app, gemlink is an Internet content collection management platform, which collects efficiently through browser extension, flexibly organizes through websites, and forms a value content network through social sharing mechanisms. It can also be used as a "Read Later" product alternatives. In a Twitter-like experience, save a content is equivalent to "tweeting" (if it's public), and if it's private, it's only visible to yourself.
Project Website: https://gemlink.app/ Companion extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snapreader/pickciba...
jq Jake: An interactive challenge based approach to learning jq for JSON processing. https://jqjake.com
jq is an incredibly powerful tool, but it's not always the easiest tool to use. LLM's are remarkably good at constructing filters for most uses cases, but for people that work with JSON a lot, learning jq can be real benefit.
I adore Geoguessr, but when I play it I wish there was a bit more strategy, or a longer term planning aspect to the game instead of purely memorization and clicking.
So I'm building it. Still early, and I have nothing to share yet, but I'm already pretty confident my Geoguessr friends will love it when it's finished.
Writing the last chapter of my book myindiebook.com for the official release in July.
It's the story of how I quit my job ($100k/year) with no experience, foundation or advantage to build a profitable one-man business 3 years later.
Building some software for the Trim UI Brick. It's such a neat little thing; being able to turn it into an offline-first device that can handle my data needs would sincerely fill me with joy.
Right now I'm making an Anki-style flashcard system in Rust (https://github.com/jmahmood/Cardbrick/). It's amazing that all of the annoying stoppers I've had with build systems were blown away by Gemini. It's also nice to actually build something that is not another web application.
(I say this knowing there is zero value in me posting this in a thread with 1134 comments already)
I am close to releasing an iOS Camera app (yes another one lol) called Invisible Camera. It's a minimal app that works the way I like to shoot with my Fujifilm camera: focus on what I see, quickly apply a look / filter with a slider and shoot. The processing pipeline reduces the default color science applied by iOS to result in a more pleasant look.
You can join the beta https://testflight.apple.com/join/LEJk313o
When I can, I am also working on some features for https://midicircuit.com Beta here - https://testflight.apple.com/join/pNyAUEac
Working on `plakar` (https://github.com/PlakarKorp/plakar) an opensource backup utility and all of its related libraries and tools :-)
We've recently released a new archive format called ptar, it can be found on HN if interested :-)
detecting geometry from point cloud scans of buildings using ML/RL techniques :
flat planes and edges : https://youtu.be/-o58qe8egS4
semi-cylinder pipes : https://youtu.be/8fjHNDGKeu4
Aim to automate that TAM of 5Bn/yr of manual labor, growing at 12% cagr
SOM : ~100Mn
I’m building a browser-based static site generator and CMS.
I love SSGs as they’re simple and fast and the sites they make can be hosted anywhere with little maintenance. But, after helping a non-technical friend get up and running with one, the UX is rubbish.
So I’m building a combined CMS and SSG called Sparktype, designed for writing and publishing. Users can create pages or collections, write and export the generated site. At the moment it exports to zip, but I’m working on connecting to Netlify or GitHub for automatic deployment.
My goal is to build something that allows people to create a publication with the ease and polish of say, Medium or Substack, but which is completely portable and will work on almost any hosting.
It’s very early MVP - the editor works, but the default site theme is rough around the edges and there are a bunch of bugs. I’m currently working on getting it good enough so that I can create its own marketing and documentation site with it.
I’d love any thoughts or feedback you might have.
Phoenix — https://github.com/shofetim/phoenix
A multi-server process supervisor. Existing init processes (systemd, runit, s6, etc) work great on a single server but when you need to manage/deploy many servers, the tooling gets really complicated (K8s). Phoenix extends the process supervision model from one server, to many. Run this thing once / keep one copy of this around / keep this running on all machines that match pattern X etc.
Turns out the (obvious in hindsight?) problem is automated but simple networking. Currently digging deep into wireguard based overlay networking before rolling the next version of Phoenix out.
I started a podcast and have been having a lot of fun talking with staff-level engineers about their passions. It’s called Interrobang.
https://catskull.net/podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/interrobang-with-dave-...
I built the whole tech stack with Jekyll and Cloudflare and wrote about it on my blog: https://catskull.net/podcast-workflow.html
Finally, I built a simple chat app as a web component with a Cloudflare durable object and have a few AI bots spamming the chat that may or may not ignore you: https://catskull.net/the-most-dangerous-app.html
I've been working for some time on a voxel building environment which uses irregular voxels (cellular voxels) instead of the usual cubic grid ones.
If you're curious, you can see it here (needs WebGL2 + Wasm):
I’m working on Reflect [0], it’s a private self discovery and self experimentation app. You can track metrics, set goals, get alerted to anomalies, view correlations, visualize your data, etc.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
I’m working on Great Rift Safari — an AI-powered platform that helps travelers design fully personalized safari itineraries in East Africa (think Kenya and Tanzania).
Instead of wading through endless lodge options, park fees, and confusing seasonal details, you just share your interests (big cats, birding, photography, budget, luxury, etc.), and our AI planner (plus input from local experts) builds a detailed, day-by-day itinerary for you.
We also show realistic price estimates and handle all the local logistics, so you can focus on the adventure, not the spreadsheets.
If anyone here has struggled to plan a safari (or has feedback on what would make it easier), I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Website: https://www.greatriftsafari.com
https://selectube.app/ Working on curated YouTube for kids. Trying to make a place where my kids can watch the good stuff without getting sucked into all the mindless junk.
Also it’s been a fun excuse to try out Cursor and other AI tools I don’t normally use in my day job.
I have 1 user - my 8 yr old son.
Fostrom (https://fostrom.io/) - A developer-focused IoT Cloud Platform.
In Fostrom, devices connect via our SDKs or standard protocols such as MQTT and HTTP, and send and receive structured, typed data, through pre-defined Packet Schemas. Each device gets its own sequential mailbox for messages. You can trigger webhooks or broadcast messages to other devices based on incoming data, powered by programmable actions (written in JS).
We entered Technical Preview recently. Since then, we've been working on:
- Major upgrades to Actions: making it easier to write action code, along with testing before deploying, and more docs on how to write good actions. Coming this week.
- We're in the process of releasing Device SDKs in multiple languages, including JS, Python, and Elixir soon. The SDKs are powered by an underlying lightweight Device Agent written in Rust.
- A new data explorer to view and analyze your fleet's datapoints, which will be available in a few weeks.
Happy to answer questions and appreciate any feedback.
I love word games. My day starts with Wordle and Spelling Bee. I have been looking for something to work on with AI. I have watched the videos and read the articles and used Claude to help figure out issues with another app I'm working on. I came up with Letter Lockbox [https://www.letterlockbox.com]. It started as something fun to play around with but friends and family love it so I have been adding on to it as I go. I added a Postgres database and Clerk for user management so users can save their results. I added streaks, stats, and sharing. I built out my own admin area to allow easier adding of puzzles and analytics on game play. I'm really proud of it.
I _was_ working on an open-source, self-hostable app for sending out newsletter to your friends and families. I made a MVP but then I scrapped it after realising how cumbersome it is to manage email related functionalities. Since its strictly for connecting with your friends and family, I figured, why not let users use their own email to send out the updates.
So I made a proof of concept app on iOS that uses gmail API to send out newsletter emails. I wish I could just send prepopulated emails (with inline attachments and recipients) to iOS mail client instead of asking for gmail OAuth permissions, but it doesn't look possible.
Now I'm trying to create a polished app for alpha testing. Been exploring data persistence (Swift Data, Core Data, rxdb etc) and settled on Core Data. Architecture wise, I've settled on MVVM + Swift UI. At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to make mocks and XCode preview data geneeration ergonomic.
So far, I am pleasantly surprised at Swift and iOS development, but I still hate XCode.
A comic book curation app:
https://github.com/rishighan/threetwo
Think of it as a Plex for the digital copies of comics. Point it to a folder full of comics, and it will infer metadata, and present your collection in a Plex-like manner.
ThreeTwo supports Comicinfo.xml, Metron's format. Generally there is no universally agreed-upon metadata format for comic books, comic book archives are essentially .zip or .rar files with images with a fragmented naming convention. ThreeTwo itself uses regexes to parse filenames and match that against ComicVine to extract metadata from there. This is currently the problem I am trying to attack.
Other than that, it integrates with DC++ via AirDC++, and also incorporates an OPDS server.
I'm building StaticBot.dev. I was surprised how tedious the manual setup for hosting static websites on AWS infra still was after 2 decades in the industry, and as I wanted to put a few websites out there to test waters for some ideas I had recently, decided to tackle it myself. So basically scratching very own specific itch: deploying and managing a fleet of static project websites in AWS infrastructure with IaC and nice UI. I wouldn't myself use something with (hidden) vendor lock-in, so opted for "hybrid" approach where user can deploy conveniently using the tool but has up-to-date terraform code avaiable in s3 so can take over project deployment anytime. Not much of a business mind so I might open source the whole thing later on (though the value of code kind of plumetted lately as AI can generate it so well).
Aside from games (my job is indie game developer) I’m working on a pixel art app for macOS “Dottie” https://bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3lqxc3jwqss... that leverages my learnings from years of research https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41136905
And I’m looking to productise a bookmarking app “Tsundoku” I built for myself and have been using for a year https://bsky.app/profile/gingerbeardman.com/post/3ls2ymul33s...
I'm working on a neighbourhood analysis app. It gives people looking for a new apartment or travelling to a new city all the information they need at a glance. I ingested a lot of public info into a database and combined it with routing services to provide a simplified analysis of any spot. This includes local infrastructure and amenities, quality of public transport access, distances to the city center or your workplace, demographics and more. One thing I wanted to make sure is to keep everything local, since those API calls can get very expensive very quickly. I am learning a ton here.
I'm currently close to the public release. After that, I want to learn some ML techniques to predict Pieter Levels' Hoodmaps classifications from my publically sourced data. It would be cool to have accurate automatic predictions of the places-to-be for every city.
An Ai Thumbnail maker https://thumbnail.ai/
I'm working on an AI thumbnail maker. You just upload a picture and pick a design type and it generates a thumbnail for you. It's still v1 and would appreciate feed back.
Https://DoubleMemory.com: an Apple only (Mac and iOS) external memory and bookmarking app. Hoping to add auto tagging to it with apple’s foundation model framework.
Thinking about building an arena like product discovery platform to help people finding the perfect app for them… like a bookmarking app…
I'm working on a git(1) implementation written in Python. I'm following along the amazing James Coglan's book. Currently 23 chapters in, about to finish off the Part II of the book. Can't wait for the final, third part.
I love books like this one. Some other examples are "Crafting interpreters", "Writing a C compiler", "Building a debugger", and a couple other lower quality ones. The potential in this space for aspiring technical writers is enormous. Let me know if you know some other books that guide you through implementing complex systems software from scratch.
I am working on a babelfish ie speech-to-speech language translation for use during vacations namely Tokyo Disneyland where you can't ask the speaker to stop speaking. I am kind of surprised that it does not exist yet. I want it to be like this this video where the app/device talks in English in realtime over the Japanese speaker https://youtu.be/PfPC4KEdTDY?si=h4BfmkNvQnmOzvgC&t=62 however I found no iOS app that can do this yet, they all require the speaker to stop speaking before translating. I know Google translate can live speech-to-text but I'm wondering if I can achieve speech-to-speech with earbuds and a shotgun microphone so I don't have to look at my phone. and there's new iOS on-device models so I'm hoping I can get better offline accuracy
I’m working on LearnMathsToday, a mobile app that helps students learn math in a fun and engaging way. It’s self-paced, with AI-generated questions that adapt to each student’s level. One unique feature is AI-powered marking, which gives instant feedback on written answers. I’ve also added gamification—points, levels, and a storyline—to keep students motivated. Right now, the app is based on the Singapore syllabus, since I’m based in Singapore.
Feel free to download here:
https://apps.apple.com/app/learnmathstoday/id6740993744
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.learnmaths...
currently in the process of building a small CPG/food lab/accelerator/incubator. I have access to talent, supply chain, logistics network, retail space and a little bit of capital. I want to take and implement the VC model for SaaS startups in Mexico. I'll have a very specific selection process for products we would take on and I'll provide all the infrastructure to get the product onto store shelves in Mexico, USA and hopefully Europe.
I have no idea what I'm doing but I never really have. I've always just figured it out on the way.
A simple “ChatGPT for email.” I just want to be able to ask things like “What time is my flight next week” or “Can you pull up the email where I sent John the final documentation for the api?”
I don’t want to auto compose messages or anything. I just want the computer to filter out things I don’t care about and tell me the answer to things without hunting around my inbox.
I started work on Teem [1] as a grad student 25 years ago; a coordinated set of C libraries for scientific visualization. It includes the original implementation of the NRRD file format [2]. One of my goals for this summer is to finally finish a version 2, so I try to spend a little time every day whittling down my todo list for that release. Currently fixing some things in the command-line parsing library ("hest"). Hearing about other people's long-standing projects is encouraging.
[1] https://teem.sourceforge.net/ but these docs are super outdated
Even though I am not actively looking for work I am reading Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview. https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Cracking-Coding-Interview-Succ.... It’s a dense read and I find myself oddly attracted to mulling over the questions and trying various solutions. I would be doing yard work, walking, hiking, biking and thinking about how to best solve the question I attempted yesterday. I feel more interested in solving the problems the same way people work crossword puzzles or attempt those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles than trying to game the interview process.
I'm working on a site (https://panoptic.live/) designed for watching multiple livestreams from different platforms at once.
You can drag and drop links from YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, or Kick.
You can watch multiple streams at once in a grid and/or navigate quickly and smoothly from one single stream to another.
You can add or remove streams, save mixes for later, and share mixes via URL.
It works best on a really big screen and it's decent on a laptop. Phones aren't really supported at this point. If you have a large, secondary monitor off to the side, that's ideal for passively viewing a lot of streams. Happy to answer any questions.
PFAS Free Life: https://pfasfreelife.com
I’m trying to build a consolidated database of PFAS free products that make it easier for shoppers to find safe foods, cleaners, clothes, and other products families commonly use. The database shows not only the product, but the reason it’s considered pfas free; sometimes all you have to go on is the brands word, sometimes there is third party testing for pfas, sometimes there is a material issue justifying it. We tried to present it all for the consumer to easily decide. Users can search, or browse for products using categories.
The database is here: https://database.pfasfreelife.com/
I built https://wherevernow.com/ to solve three visceral problems:
News Perspective Gap Compare how major events are reported by local vs international outlets (e.g. Taiwan election coverage in Taipei Times vs BBC)
Price Transparency Settle debates like "Are Xiaohongshu prices real?" by checking identical products on U.S/Walmart and China/JD.com simultaneously
Authentic Connections Join discussions on 2channel (Japan) or Reddit (Brazil) without VPN, preserving original language/cultural context
Tech approach: Country-specific keyword routing (like valentin.app for search) Lightweight proxies to bypass geo-blocks (no data storage) Crowdsourced local portal directory Would love feedback from globetrotting hackers!
I'm building a site that tracks the price of power tool batteries (currently Milwaukee and Dewalt). It's been an itch I've wanted to scratch for a while so I would know when the battery was a good price vs. the Ah rating. The prices are scraped nearly daily and plotted on a price-per-ah vs. total Ah chart.
Still working on my video game.
I didnt realize how much overhead an sfml window draw call has, granted I have yet to target optimizing that yet.
Seems like my first candidate for multithreading; also I think the scheme I implemented for how to manage texture/sprite switching is advised against and may need to slightly refactor how I store and swap based on object state.
Yeet
I'm one of the creators of a tool called PBRgen, which is an AI-powered online PBR material generator. The idea is that it can generate seamless materials for games and 3D animations etc. We’re still in early beta and really want to shape this with input from artists, so we are looking for artists and creators to help test and give feedback on the tool.
Here’s the link to try it out: https://pbrgen.aixpoly.com/ (limited spots available)
Let us know what works, what doesn’t, or what you wish it did. All feedback is so helpful right now.
A simplified DAW for mixing together tracks with different keys and tempos. It uses WebAssembly and emscripten under the hood for audio processing.
It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set.
I‘m building Sticker, a simple note-taking app for Mac that lets you add markdown based notes to applications, files and other windows. The note is only shown when the connected file, window or app is selected / has focus. Currently, I use it myself to add notes to specific files and projects, e.g. adding a note to my tax folder for 2025 instead of creating a txt file or adding a ToDo to a specific workspace when opened in VS Code. The notes are completely file/markdown based and can be simply synced with other devices. This way, it’s also possible to edit the note outside of Sticker.
I'm working on an app that I use to track my sets/reps. I've added in a trends screen (both for muscle groups and for individual exercises) to check on if I'm actually progressively overloading on a consistent basis. I'm currently adding an AI wrapper around the data to figure out better insights about certain exercises, what I'm missing, etc.
I'm working on TokenDagger [0] a high performance implementation of OpenAI's Tiktoken. My benchmarks are showing 2-3x higher throughput, as well as ~4x faster tokenization for code samples on a single thread.
https://tinkerdeck.com/projects/rent-buy-growth
I've been basing one of the biggest financial decisions in my life - whether to buy a house - in large part on NYT/NerdWallet Rent-Buy calculators. But when I dig in, it seems that the model is both extremely sensitive to home/S&P500 growth assumptions, and that their defaults aren't well thought through.
This site is my attempt to organize my thoughts on what reasonable defaults should be, and provides an interactive tool to explore housing and S&P500 growth historical growth rates.
I'd appreciate feedback!
An iOS app that lets you change the paint color of your rooms and try out new interior design styles (ex: Rustic, Coastal, etc).
I built it because I was blown away with what the latest image generation models can do and found that interior design is one area where it could already provide significant value for people. I’ve already used it in just about every room in my house to help me decide on:
- which paint color I should use
- how I should arrange my furniture
- what color theme I should be using to match the design I’ve gone with
- general inspiration on decor
It’s free to download to try with sample imagery. Unfortunately due to the cost of image generation, you won't be able to upload your own photos in the free version (yet). But I’m constantly improving the app and would really love some feedback.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/roomai-restyle-your-home/id674...
Still working on Orbiter[1] but with some big changes.
Orbiter started as static website and web app hosting, but we recently added what we call server functions (what you call serverless functions). So now you can build full stack apps. Our preferred development stack to support is the new bhvr[2] stack.
Working on https://www.space4ads.com - an Out of Home Advertising Marketplace that connects advertisers with underutilized commercial spaces. Think Airbnb, but for ad placements. We're targeting vacant storefronts, construction walls, cargo vans, box trucks, 18-wheelers, and basically any commercial space with foot traffic or vehicle visibility that's not being monetized for advertising.
I've been working on my business for 4 years now, sometimes taking extended breaks when I run out of motivation.
Lately, I've noticed that my (beefy) server is always clogged with background jobs that tend to run longer than they used to. It’s started impacting operations, as customers have been complaining about their backups running a bit late.
We're network bound, so I can't just add more compute power (Notion's API has a rate limit of 2700 req/15 mins). I suspect we're being getting rate limited left and right, which is causing these delays.
I've been slowly building a website full of daily puzzle games (https://regularly.co/). I built the first game for my wife (https://regularly.co/countable) which she plays every day. Floored is my personal favourite, I find it deceptively challenging