alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
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I rely heavily on DeepL Write for my day job, but I dislike the constant logouts, nagging, and laggy UI. I coded a DeepL Write replacement that uses the same layout (two text windows side by side, with the left window for entry and the right window showing suggested edits as an actionable diff), but all suggestions are based on Harper + Gemma.
When I want the program to reformulate a sentence or phrase, it sends the sentence to an AI that provides word or phrase suggestions. I've connected this to Tinfoil.sh (not affiliated) via API key.
Now, I have a much more private DeepL Write replacement with a snappy, consistent user experience that costs much less. Unfortunately, the suggestions are not as high quality. It's very much an 80% solution. It was still fun!
Most of the rest concerns scraping. The biggest project is an extraction tool for the German transparency register that I need for work.
Amongst lots of little tools, fed up of scribbling down my son’s football (soccer) scores in the Notes app, I cobbled together a little web app instead:
https://football.sensecall.co.uk/
Other parents on the team love it. The live sharing is pretty handy when some aren’t able to watch the game.
Not too much, speaking of public one which you can try:
- Habit Tracked which allow to track not only habits (done, not done) but also numbers and time of the day - https://habitpocket.io/
- Todo list, my own interpretation of Todoist and Things 3 - https://taskpocket.io/
Both of the apps above was built using AI especially for the frontend. Both backend at some point of time I almost completely refactored/rewrote myself
Speaking of private apps:
- I made a small app which allows me to track business expenses and categorize them Built with AI and using AI.
1. i'm notoriously bad about filing expense reports for my own companies. i built a macos desktop app which integrates with Plaid and keeps track of the things i need to expense, using an LLM to guess which company and whether it's reimbursible.
2. A MacOS app to manage my wife's SD Cards - downloads playlists from Spotify and finds the music, then makes sure the tracks are analyzed for BPM, key, then synced with Rekordbox for CDJ-3000s
3. https://clawchat.live - a homebrew package, which honestly works better locally but is available online, which provides a Rust chat server for separate LLMs to talk to each other and coordinate work. Longest session between Codex and Claude has been over 24 hours on big tasks. Generally I make one session the coordinator and the other does the coding.
I’ve used Claude to help write development utilities to support my retro computing interests.
The most complete tool being this unit testing support library for Apple IIgs assembly language development.
I've continued working on a tool for my daughter, our friends, and I to scan and index Pokemon cards. The tool is a phone app and website (https://MyBulkCards.com) The phone app uses the camera to scan a card and run the image through a couple of models, a record is written of the card along with the location. It's pretty basic, but I can store cards in boxes like “Box 1 AAA, Box 1 BBB, …” and find cards easy peasy. There’s also a friends feature so I can see what others have locally. We borrow cards from each other quite a bit.
It's been a super fun tool to build. The phone app just got approved in the Android app store. I have a bit of cleanup, but plan on releasing it soon.
The small local ISP that I use doesn't provide a Tizen OS app for their VOD service, so I built one mostly by pointing Codex at the .apk of their Android app.
Oh man a few things
1. A dashboard that tracks my personal metrics (github, strava, todo completion, flossing)
2. A eink display for that dashboard
3. A realtime node graph that shows a codebase (and/or its diffs) in a way that I can visualize what functions call which, and under what conditions
4. A agent that automatically fills out government forms and creates invoices for my friends brewery based on the delivery notes in their google calendar.
A tmux config to handle my project based agent workflow
> agentmux
> Configurable tmux agent launcher. Define AI agents (or any CLI) in TOML; sessions auto-launch the correct agent, tabs are colour-coded per agent, and prefix m cycles through the list.
Built an Android app to streamline the messaging web-apps I use to stay in touch with some contacts. I already refrained from installing those services' apps due to privacy concerns. https://gitlab.com/not_john/palpipe
I've built a stacked-PR tool for myself, it's just a simple wrapper around git commands. State stored locally in .git/config - https://github.com/alexghr/graphene
Lots of small dashboards/log investigations deployed to private Github Pages for $WORK. This has been a great way to share insights.
I'm currently working on a tool to control my tmux sessions from my phone. Specifically all the codex panes so I can remote control my running sessions from my phone while I'm away from my desk while also keeping them in sync with tmux for when I'm back at my computer. On this one I'm using Codex as a helper, it's not allowed to write any code so it's going along a lot slower :)
oof, a ton of them, here are a few that passed my minimum quality standards and made public: a video compression service (inspired by 8mb.video) [0], a music player that gets songs from a specific repository for Geometry Dash [1], a screenshot tool "for crappy OSes" (windows) [2], spaghetti C code that prints "i love you" to stdout [3], more spaghetti code [4], and a speedhack cheat for singleplayer games on Linux [5]
[0] https://github.com/Jotalea/keiryo
[1] https://github.com/Jotalea/nong-player-gtk
[2] https://github.com/Jotalea/crapshot
[3] https://github.com/Jotalea/miscellaneous/blob/main/iloveyou....
[4] https://github.com/Jotalea/miscellaneous/blob/main/password....
[5] https://github.com/Jotalea/miscellaneous/blob/main/speedhack...
A little utility for Windows called TaskbarIconOverlay that puts a custom icon on top of a taskbar item. I have many VSCodes running at once and it's hard to tell which is which: https://github.com/jlahijani/TaskbarIconOverlay
I made a bunch of silly projects at first to help me manage daily life. For example, automating saving important emails based on prior history. Extracting text and putting it into csv files, downloading finance reports, reminder scripts, watchdog scripts. All the boring stuff pretty much what was done at first.
Now, i have gotten to point where i am replacing actual useful applications that I need to get stuff done. Plugs here: https://github.com/skittleson/mqtt_broker_esp and https://github.com/skittleson/WyzeBridge.
Ive created a Light Gauge Steel framing tool, to design my shed and it growing beyond expected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DauZYdsUQ1g&feature=youtu.be
I built a telegram bot that has access to my entire obsidian vault so I can ask it any questions about all my data. Here it is describing itself:
I'm literally the bot, so I can describe myself! Here's what I do and what you've got planned:
What I do now:
- Act as your second brain connected to your Obsidian vaults
— daily notes, goals, client info, business info, ideas, and facts
- Search your vaults for context when you ask questions
- Help with journal prompts and reflections in your daily notes (I ask context dependent questions randomly throughout the day that are based on your notes)
- Create new files when you need them
- Answer questions about your life, businesses, gear, plans, etc.
- Reminders (i.e. "/remindme in 2 days to [action]" and it will text me at that time)
Total game changer and I never would have built it without LLMs.
I built wasm2go, which I had meant to for some time but was a gargantuan task to get into a good enough shape to test if it was a good idea.
I think it was (a good idea), and AI made it easier for sure.
Built the tool to kind of builds the tools. Just publicly made available yesterday actually. https://github.com/fabritorio/fabritorio
I am still extensively dogfooding but I think I'm mostly there for my use case, probably adding some other channel support like Telegram or Discord so that it can reach out your current self host. But yeah not a prio since at least for me most of my use cases are just within my own PC (or LAN).
EDIT: Quick summary of what it is, basically you can spin up agents seamlessly and modify, supports copy paste, etc. I want it visual as well and kind of "always on", think Factorio rather than every other workflow, run on start tools.
Made a fun app that generates daily riddles. If you give an llm an answer then ask it for a riddle, it's pretty clever and fun to see what connections it draws: https://riddles.jpn.fyi/
I'm also currently working on an app that lets me hum a tune into my phone and generate guitar tabs. The audio processing is proving to be temperamental at pitch detection, but I'm planning on looking at some autotune libraries to see how they clean up audio for processing. Main problem I have is that I'll come up with a tune in my head, but by the time I sit down with a guitar and find my first target note, I've forgotten most of what I'd hummed.
A frustration at trying to keep track of my families requests for shopping grew into https://nimblist.app https://github.com/tmnrtn/nimblist-selfhost
I've also built a web based tool to track my partners business cashflow which I'm in the process of making available for self hosting
ReverseCam - A camera app to show the non-mirror preview while taking selfies.
The front camera apps always show the mirror preview. Most of us hate photos others take of us, but love our selfies. It's because we groom ourselves and find our perfect angles using the mirror preview. So it's jarring when we see the photos of us taken by others. I always wanted a camera app that showed the non-mirror preview. Surprisingly most camera apps don't have this option. So I created this app to scratch my own itch:)
Note: Photos and videos are only stored in the browser. No data is sent to any servers. You can also install this as an app from your browser since it's a progressive web app.
https://truepb.net/ - My unashamedly vibe coded strava analysis & athletics results site. I'm no dev but I've used it to up my knowledge in cicd, security, postgres and frontend/backend development.
https://wodblock.com an app to track workouts, can generate functional/hiit workouts too using AI (give me something leg heavy but with some cardio, etc).
https://jazzcatalog.com an app the learn jazz standards. You upload PDFs and it extracts the songs, can add annotations, metronome, some have associated youtube video. Working on adding tools to record loops through audio interface, AUv3 effects, MIDI.
https://music.nicotejera.com a variety of tools I built for myself to learn music theory, ear training, etc.
I made https://github.com/gagarwal304/meridian to analyze claude's open telemtry data and learn how to improve my claude.md for token efficiency and better output from claude code
I use deciduous every day while working with LLMs to create more of my own tools/projects. It is a living memory for agents stored in a simple, portable manner. https://deciduous.dev
- https://github.com/sethdeckard/atria : TUI for managing multiple AI coding agents that doesn't force a particular workflow on you. You can use tmux, the built-in PTY, or terminal integrations with iTerm2, kitty, or WezTerm.
- https://github.com/sethdeckard/loadout : TUI and CLI for managing a personal library of Claude Code and Codex skills across your machines.
- https://github.com/sethdeckard/atlas : TUI and CLI (also works as "cd launcher") that creates a smart, automatic map of every Git repository under your projects root.
I'm using these almost daily.
I built an iOS app for my sons who play club basketball. It’s designed to bridge the gap between practicing solo on the court and the pressure of playing in a game.
It uses mechanics and body movement, via visual detection through the cameras, to identify when you’re about to take a shot or make a pass.
It then pumps distracting noises (honks, cheers, jeers, etc.) into the headphones to try to distract you. It also runs a continuous 24-second clock so you build a natural sense of how much time is left before you need to get a shot off.
I'm looking for more people to join the test flight: https://clutchshot.app/
A pure Go, in-memory Cassandra emulator
Technically for work, but it was during a hackathon so we could reduce the amount of tests we need to run against real or containerized instances. Go as the language just because that's the stack interacting with it the most.
https://calcal.eu - A tool I built to plan my gear list and calorie intake for various multi day outdoor activities
https://github.com/LukaWe/espCoinWatch - espCoinWatch, an ESP8266-based Bitcoin/Crypto Ticker with Weather Support.
https://github.com/LukaWe/LocalExifGeoMap LocalExifGeoMap - privacy-focused, browser-based tool to visualize and analyze GPS data from a batch of photos. generate interactive maps, heatmaps, elevation profiles, and trip statistics. etc.
The VJ Curator app is a fork of VLC where you can press the 0-9 hotkeys to easily curate the video clips. After pressing a number key then the video clip will be automatically moved into a folder with a matching number - https://github.com/wivy1/vj-curator
Collection of JSX scripts for After Effects which automate repetitive production tasks since I often work with hundreds of comps in my projects - https://github.com/nuclearsugar/AfterEffectsScripts/
I built a 3D database schema visualization tool after YEARS of struggling to explain relational DB-related topics to non-technical audiences.
A terminal and keyboard based email user agent with support for markdown, all written in Python with Textual https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll/pony
This inventory tracker app that runs entirely in the browser with yjs, and syncs over peer.js, that I have not been very good about using lately
https://eternityforest.github.io/Stuffer/
Not an app, but a productivity system, partially refined by telling AI every time I forgot anything and asking for research references on human error that are relevant to that specific mistake:
I have built :
- a GUI terminal-based Markdown previewer called "leaf": https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf
- and a lightweight AI automation framework called "flow": https://github.com/RivoLink/flow
I made a Tree-Sitter based parser for Emacs Org-Mode files (that's mostly complete, mostly): https://github.com/Idorobots/tree-sitter-org
On top of that, I made a Python parser that's meant to improve upon the awesome `orgparse`: https://github.com/Idorobots/org-parser
And now I'm building a CLI for Emacs Org-Mode, mostly focused on ad-hoc querying, agenda planning, etc: https://github.com/Idorobots/org-cli
I made a timesheet entry, invoicing, and basic bookkeeping system for my freelance business. It works pretty well, I used "spec driven development" with Codex and it one-shot the entire application except for the PDF invoice layout which needed iteration.
I built a little Gmail cleaner because my inbox had a bunch of "newsletters I unsubscribed from in my head but never actually did." Headers only, never message bodies, because privacy should still matter, I think. It worked very well and the amount of spam I get dropped dramatically, which was the point.
Everything was built with AI as part of a 12-in-12 challenge I'm doing, where I'm building 12 products in 12 months. https://twelve.zamith.pt/
Quietbox (https://quietbox.zamith.pt/) - Clear spammy emails from your inbox
I recently built a physics-driven auto-panner based on PONG, so I can also play PONG inside my DAW. https://portwaydsp.com
I also built https://plugins.audio - a Dribbble-esque showcase of audio plugins.
It's been a dream to be able to work in the audio software space. I've been a musician, designer, coder all my life, and had a few moonlights with building audio plugins over the years. But now with AI at hand, I can use it to fill that missing technical requirement while still retaining my domain expertise (music/design).
I made a home assistant esp32 device to toggle the light switch for me. Codex done all the software stuffs, I just plug it into mac, let codex "this is a esp32, this is how i connect it with a motor, make it xxx". And it works exactly as I want after 15 minutes.
I schedule reminder calls to myself before some important appointments. It keeps calling me until I receive the message which it reads me (I set the message when scheduling the reminder call) and I have to say "message received" which marks the notification as delivered. (I use Twilio to place the call.)
I find a phone call is more likely to get through to me than a reminder or alarm, which I can ignore or forget; an ordinary reminder is not as interactive.
Claude built it all and although there's a script for it, I just set the reminders in an interactive Claude code session in the directory. (Like I'll open a claude code session there and say "using the script in this directory, call me tomorrow at 7 a.m. with the message 'dr's appointment'."
It works well for me.
Most of it has been to maximize productivity with AI
1) Use chatgpt pro from codex cli, opencode, claude etc as you can't get it via API. This has been the biggest boost in productivity for me as I don't have to copy and paste.
https://github.com/agentify-sh/desktop
2) A small gate to make sure any agent cannot run destructive rm -rf or git reset --hard commands, it has saved me many many times
https://github.com/agentify-sh/safeexec
3) For mac users, summarizes and speaks out loud after codex finishes a turn
I made an android app to objectively track how often my newborn cries overnight because you get so tired you can't really remember:
Any parents with kids that cry in the night might benefit!
- A HTML prototyping skill and a simple upload web app to share it privately with my team
- A Chrome extension to make design comments and ASCII wireframes right on the page you're working on and feed it to your AI coding tool as a prompt https://getdesignjam.com/
- An iRacing overlay to compare the telemetry of a reference lap against your live data https://flylapsim.com/
It's been a ton of fun to be able to dabble in software thanks to AI. Especially for small personal tools like these it's so powerful
- An outreach planner composed in a single html file. Data can be exported to, and imported from, a JSON that can be passed to the LLM for enrichment. https://kashifaziz.me/outreach-planner/
- An analysis pipeline that takes data from D1 (storing user searches), Posthog and Clicky (analytics) to periodically generate user journey reports.
- halalcodecheck.com - a database of emulsifier codes and food ingredients. Building this with the goal to help consumer verify and find alterantives of food ingredients across US, EU / UK and Asia.
I bashed out a dashboard for myself the other month, monitors firewall alerts/warnings/shows connected devices, process monitors on a few pc's that I keep an eye on, a to-do list/calendar combination that let's me track some internal tasks I need to do weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc, oh and it pings cloudflare to keep me up to date on the website stats. And an Amidakuji game to help me and another staff member pick who's doing X task that day :P
Nothing major, and only works with my infra, but it saves me a few minutes a few times a day to just be able to check the tab, and if there's an alert load up the full stats page.
I have a telegram bot, and I used to have it read message in a group chat to detect the language, and if it wasn't English, it would use gpt5 nano to translate.
To save on inference, I had Claude create a lightweight typescript library to handle translations and detection. Now I get the previous functionality for 200mb~ ram versus paid API credits.
I also built a home assistant menu bar in osx, let's me easily monitor activity, toggle devices, view cameras, etc.
- create your own digital Lego minifgure - https://www.BrickifyMe.com
- create your own coloring pages - https://www.coloringsai.com
- World Cup Prediction Pool - https://www.wk-pool.com
And many more