alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
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wasm based in browser steganography with a full file system/viewer embedded.
Working on a tool that lets you author in WordPress as usual (own Docker container, full editor + plugins) but exports the site to static HTML for the public version, so PHP doesn't run in front of readers. Deploy targets are Cloudflare Pages, a Git remote, or statichost.eu. Solo, just launched, currently grinding through hardening. Called Stelae if you want to have a look.
Adding support for the threads/atomics proposal to my Wasm to Go transpiler: https://github.com/ncruces/wasm2go
Since I started it a couple of months ago, it's been used by me to transpile SQLite to Go, and by some other folks to transpile other C, C++, Zig and even Perl libraries to Go.
I’m working on Beanback, my side project SaaS app for ‘effortless digital loyalty for cafes’.
It replaces paper stamp cards with Apple Wallet passes (Google Wallet coming soon) without the need for customers to download an app or signup. It’s still very work-in-progress (forgive the landing page) but I’m enjoying using Ruby on Rails. Please let me know your thoughts!
A couple of fun random projects:
- https://shirt.cash - Vibe code your t-shirt ideas and sell them.
- This weekend was substack MCP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHARlcInLqU)
new ideas welcome lol
For occasions like birthdays or Christmas where people want to give you gifts, I have always wanted to ask them to make donations to charities of my choosing instead. So I built an app to enable this: http://donateyourgift.com/ It is very simple but I didn't find anything quite singly-focused like it, so I built it just to scratch my own itch.
I am working on Desiderata (https://github.com/github-of-NMI/Desiderata).
An LLM benchmark for open-weight models only, with secret questions.
The questions are asked multiple times to calculate a consistency score.
The results are available in JSON, containing the hash of the question with the number of correct and incorrect answers, the number of unique answers, and the number of times no answer is given. (Uses \boxed{})
I’m working on bomberman in ClojureScript, using no libraries, and making sure I write every line myself, it feels good to go slowly for a change having used a lot of LLMs in the past year.
I've been iterating on the type system of a somewhat-kooky programming language I'm developing: https://github.com/mkantor/please-lang-prototype
A small launcher for Claude Code, to make switching between different providers and configurations easier:
For example, if I downgrade from Max to Pro I'd still be able to use the subscription, but also run sessions with other models (less expensive/local) as desired:
ccode init-config # initializes a new config file for me to set everything up
ccode edit-config # opens it in my editor so I can change, can also include editor as argument e.g. vim
ccode # launches whatever my default profile is
ccode --deepseek # Using their API key, they have a discount this month
ccode --openrouter # Whatever OpenRouter model I have configured in the config file
ccode --openrouter-preset # Also supports OpenRouter presets e.g. if I don't want to use quantized models
ccode --deepseek --control # launches a Remote Control session, shows up in web/desktop app as a regular session
ccode --deepseek --auto # overrides the default permissions, --yolo also works
... (and so on, there's more examples on the website)
I finally got around to signing app for Mac, which is what this post originally was about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075366 (the new versions will be out soon)
Also thinking that I might make it an Anthropic API --> OpenAI API proxy that allows talking to providers that don't support the Anthropic API directly, alongside allowing switching models dynamically during a session (Claude Code wouldn't even have to know about it, it'd just send requests to a local endpoint and the proxy would do the rest).
Early on, but Go is lovely to work with, mdBook is great for getting a site off the ground and I'm really surprised that more people don't use Itch.io for distributing software (or the pay-what-you-want model in general), it's dead simple!
I’m working on Recoil, memory safe, compiled static language (yeah, I know, everybody’s doing it) with Rebol syntax and built-in candies like parsing, finite state machine and rich syntax (that’s given, because of Rebol).
It’s nice to see how well-thought language design can pay off years later, with lower token usage. From entropy POV, Rebol syntax is certainly close to optimal state.
A civilization clone, but going way deeper than is reasonable (inspired by dwarf fortress). I'm currently building the geophysics simulation that will allow for realistic terrain generation, powered by actual mantle convection and plate tectonics. Once this is finished, then an actual per-cell atmospheric and oceanic model. This should keep me entertained for at least a year, at which point I can start working on the actual gameplay part of things.
After having it on my TODO list for a long time, I've installed EndeavourOS on another m.2 drive on my desktop. With the advancements in gaming support on Linux over the last few years, over 80% of my daily tasks, work, and games are well-supported by Linux. I've been using Linux in VirtualBox or WSL for many years, but it's been a long time since I've ran Linux directly on hardware. I'm excited!
A no-code platform packaged as an AI tool for building data-driven applications and serving as a data store for AI to tell it interact with your data; https://saasufy.com/ - Tested with Claude Code and pi.
Better GitHub insights: https://temporiohq.com - still new and there’s a lot of question about how to adapt to the age of accelerated software engineering.
My art with pen plotters. Recently released a new series of brush plots. Very inspired by Soulages: https://harmonique.one/collections/brush-plots
Buildermark calculates how much of your code is written by agents. Open source, local, and cross-platform (written in Go).
I'm working on GPS tools to help support my current contract. I've found there are no good tools for tracing a route on a map and having a mobile device think it's traveling that route. I'm not just talking GPS coordinates, but speed, direction, motion detection, precise timing between waypoints, being able to play these trips forward and backward, step by step, etc. I'm talking time-travel debugging for GPS applications.
It's early days. I'm not even sure it's possible.
I'm learning about inference by running vLLM on a k8s cluster (EKS), building a gateway to keep a <2s TTFT SLO.
Most recent ha-ha moment: I kept wondering if it was normal that my cluster was only able to process 4 requests per second per vLLM engine (just seemed really low to me).
I realized a better metric is in-flight requests... Each engine is processing 70 requests at any given time, streaming tokens for over 30s.
I'm working on https://vtxmacro.com, a free and fully autonomous LLM trading platform. Basically have any model you want trade for you. Right now I support ~860 models across 16 providers (including OpenRouter), plus Local AI and OpenAI Compatible endpoints.
The bot settings (system prompt and user prompt, temperature, reasoning, etc.) are 100% transparent and customizable, and all users can view and copy anyone else's settings from the leaderboard. The goal is to build the best trading bots possible by seeing what works.
You can run a bot on Gemini 4 31B with a free tier Google AI Studio account (I'm running 5 bots on it myself). Or just run Gemma 4 26B on your PC if you have the GPU for it. I'm running 5 on my 5090, so I'm trading with 10 bots total.
The platform is connected to Hyperliquid and you can trace all the trades on the blockchain from the user's Analytics page (always public).
The way it works is you set a loop interval (default 1 minute) and the model receives the candles, market stats, indicators, account balance, current positions and so on and decides Buy, Sell, or Hold and how many units.
It's still experimental but I have already processed 1m+ prompts, 10k+ trades, and almost $1m in volume since January 2026. I have around 15 bots running right now, you can check their PnL on the leaderboard (public). I've made a lot of changes in the last few weeks so most recent either 24h or 7d results are the most relevant. The model you use is super important (Gemma 4 31B so far is the best value I found, better than Gemini 3 Flash and you can run it for free) and also the coin you choose is important too. Preferably, you want something that's trending. My friend's bot did well with ZEC and VVV this week.
Right now I'm working on improving reliability (I bought a Japanese VPS to run my own HL node), and this weekend I moved the app from Render to my own DC VPS for 10x+ cheaper and 1000x more bandwidth (25 TB instead of 25 GB, seriously if you're using Render and want cheaper infra look into buying your own VPS).
I'm also implementing CLI/MCP for OpenClaw support. And next is an automatic screener that will use LLMs to pick the most promising cryptos to trade (since I noticed this has a huge effect on PnL).
If you have questions, let me know, the Trade page has my Telegram group link.
Currently developing https://pelicantools.app, a collection of tools to rework YouTube. Any YouTube video can be transcribed to an elegant text or a complete article.
If you're a creator, researcher or developer looking to reap the rewards of a video without consuming it fully, then it's helpful.
Whole thing is up and running on vercel.
It's a work in progress — would be great to get some input!
I’m working on what I call a Software Delegate [0].
You delegate a task or GitHub issue to it and it uses AI coding agents and developer tools to write the code, run checks, read failures, fix problems, and iterate until the result is good, then comes back with a pull request. It does everything a human dev would do, fully automated.
https://github.com/xemantic/markanywhere
Incremental Markdown parser that emits streams of semantic events, plus tools to manipulate them - designed for real-time rendering of streamed LLM output.
Writing my own programming language eyg.run that for a long time had no syntax. I worked on a structural editor for a long time and this weekend I finally documented the sneaky text syntax that did exist for testing. So the structural editor I'm not sure about the future. The language is still fun to write and use tho.
I started a new software defined automation project. I wanted something that I could just open a webpage and start writing code that could just be uploaded and ran instantly. I picked an ESP32-P4 for the first hardware. It’s MIT licensed and has a git repo that I put up this morning https://github.com/OpenPiLab/pilab-esp32-p4-plc
I'm working on a web app that animates hand drawn human characters. You try it here without any login or anything:
It doesn't use generative AI, instead it auto-rigs the drawings in just a few seconds.
A language learning app called lexaway. Premise is people can learn like LLMs learned - word prediction. I use tatoeba, an online sentence pairing thing, and it's nice well it's worked for me. I hate the green bird fyi so it's free and open source.
Menu bar app that reduces your Claude Code token costs by ~50% so you get 2x more usage out of your plan.
People seem to like it so far :-)
Been working on an open source, free, Heroku alternative at https://canine.sh for about two years.
I feel like even after all these years we’re still missing the devex that Heroku provided.
It’s been super fun to experiment & integrate MCP into it.
We just passed 2000 developers last month actively deploying with canine.
I'm working on Tidepools, a daily journaling / task management app (local-first, Mac/iOS/web) with a proactive AI coach. Mostly what the coach does is ask you questions. It can also suggest tasks. Right now I'm working on sandboxed plugins that the coach can modify, so the user can request behavior changes.
Working on an RSS reader (https://github.com/megaflorasoftware/serial), trying to see if there’s room for a FOSS RSS reader that’s a bit more fun and less brutalist than the other great but more technical user-minded options out there
Dealing with some rough stuff in life so I'm involved in random stuff to distract myself. Moved my personal blog to Astro. I wanted to scratch and itch I had about self hosting my comments. So I built a lightweight node-based opensource comment system called discuss - https://github.com/karthikeyankc/discuss.
Trying to get my product (desktop application) to the state of minimal sellable version (according to my quality level expectations). I tend to be perfectionist, thinking it is never even good enough. Hopefully I can show it to you/world in the summer, and hear what people think of it. But for now (or the past 5 years), I have nothing to show and tell.
Reflect [1], it’s a local-first privacy focused self tracking and data analysis app where you can set goals and run self experiments
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
Working on new puzzles for my tiny word puzzle web game for programmers and computer science nerds.
It's a PWA and works offline. Tech: js, no libs, Canvas API, Web Audio, not vibe coded, but I did use Claude for graphics and tests. Puzzles curated by hand.
Just started working on a book to celebrate the 50th year of our symposium, which is coming up in 5 years. The initial idea is a how-to book, filled with essays from past contributors, but since we only started yesterday - that may change.
Building tenuo.ai (https://github.com/tenuo-ai/tenuo): task-scoped authorization for AI agents. Rust implementation of capabilities + cryptographic offline verification.
I've found it hard to keep up with movie and TV news (particularly when the new Backrooms film is coming out).
So, I built an agent to help remind me -- it's a subscription based service that sends you updates every morning, and stores your preferences so it can learn what you like.
I'm doing this with my son. Dcflagproject.com
Replit for the website (he did the first 80%), Gemini to make the flyers and he'll be walking the neighborhood and talking to neighbors.
Bought a TI dev board with c7x and c66 dsp cores. Have it doing PEQ and FIR room correction, along with tube amplifier emulation.
Will be trying to implement a virtual bass array next.
Working on https://mdview.io - markdown reader for big documents, including navigatable mermaid diagrams, LaTeX, Fixing broken syntax and ton of other features. It's early stage but getting popular really fast( I guess it just does it's job right)
Just rolled out a big new update for my video cloud platform https://www.kollaborate.tv with a new player, side-by-side playback comparison and a big improvement in accessibility.
Currently we’re using AWS and Backblaze B2, but I’m formulating a plan to move to colocated servers. Not being billed per GB will open up a lot of new opportunities. Even at today’s server prices the math still adds up.
I am working on the Learnix operating system (https://gitHub.com/sagi21805/LearnixOS) Mainly an educational project, to understand and teach about OS and Rust concepts (The OS is written in Rust)
Still chugging along and curating https://hnarcade.com Submit your games!
A podcast that isn’t about AI (in the normal way)! I started Pagenerd with some friends to talk about science fiction - loosely defined - and give us a chance to hang out. It’s pretty good. Find it at https://pagenerd.com which links to all the usual places.
Wrote a Forth VM in C in about 1996 based on TCJ articles by Brag Rodriguez. Managed to get it to compile with modern GCC this morning and fix all the horrible issues with valgrind. Trying to adapt it to a context where it'll be usable for a spreadsheet-like system with reasonable decimal numeric precision. Consider it an RPL calculator with an Excel-like front end.
https://acoust.io began as a project to learn React. However, I received a few customers after posting it on Reddit. I’m still figuring out the best way to position it in the crowded market, but I’m enjoying the process of building and learning.
I'm improving my web app to learn languages with short stories: https://webbu.app. I've been making it easier to track your progress, hear pronunciation of words, and adding more advanced levels.
Diving deeper into woodworking and knocking out a few cabinetry/storage projects with the work-in-progress up at at https://shopspec.io
A scripting language that is very fun to write and lets you make interactive music, installations, generative compositions etc https://github.com/audion-lang/audion
hack music
I vibe-produced a website for an (earnest?) pastiche of Final Fantasy games (i.e., for a game that does not, and probably never will, exist). I noticed that Nano Banana could generate reasonable facsimiles of Square Enix's promotional render style and ran with it. Next up: faking some gameplay or a few shots from an FMV-style cutscene.
https://findfantasyxviii.com