alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)
What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
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I'm working on a semantic layer for Nextcloud: https://astrolabecloud.com
The service is composed of two open-source services, namely a Nextcloud app (Astrolabe) and backend (nextcloud-mcp-server). I use the service as an MCP server across a number of apps, and others use it primarily for semantic search over large numbers of documents.
Both are open source, and I'm working on a managed offering, completely based in the EU, for individuals/teams that already use Nextcloud and want to be able to use semantic search across some or all of their documents.
Essentially your data stays in Nextcloud, and the MCP server backend keeps a vectordb in sync to enable semantic queries over your content. The number of supported apps is growing, including:
- notes
- deck cards
- files
- news items (RSS feeds)
- cookbook recipes
- contacts & calendar
And I'm adding support for other apps as I go.
I'm working on a system-wide desktop ad-blocker and privacy guard called Zen (for almost 2.5 years now): https://github.com/irbis-sh/zen-desktop
Working on it has been a joy as ad-blocking tech touches so many aspects of software engineering - from systems and security to the intricacies of JS environments in browsers.
Benefits-wise, system-wide filtering disables ads and tracking not just in browsers, but desktop apps as well (which you'll be amazed how much they do). It's especially relevant now as Google is re-activating their efforts to hinder ad-blockers by killing Manifest V2 in Chrome. So much of tech is actively bleeding cash on AI right now, which means the efforts to screw over users will only accelerate. This makes something that sits at the network level indispensable imo.
Im working on a web-based general purpose tree editor with some unique features. https://github.com/justindmassey/tree-editor
I've been working on a inference engine for a System F Omega inspired language and getting to a point where it is starting to feel good in small programs. I'm not sure why I started this, but I'm hoping to make something like an experience reminiscent of Lisp/Smalltalk by working in an interactive environment.
My goal with this language was to pick a set of primitives to compose and express as much as possible.
I don't have a demo up yet but if anyone was curious https://codeberg.org/lilbigdoot/gloo/src/branch/thinkythough...
The two main features I am missing right now are recursive types (I want to do proper mutual recursion and have been procrastinating) and some form of type classes or implicit modules. Structural typing has been useful and I'm finding a lot of features are falling out for free from that.
Long term goal is to create something with performance within a reasonable range of C# / Java etc generally, with tools for opting out of GC. I don't plan on chasing zero cost memory safety, since I want to spend my "budget" on tooling and expressiveness.
Until the language semantics stabilize I plan on generating some pretty naive JS/TS to play around with real programs, and eventually target .NET and native (likely via C++ transpilation)
I'm working on building a Gaussian Splatting PLatformhosted on Cloud GPUs so folks can integrate capture/splat rendering in their own apps.
Currently in beta, working out some pipeline optimizations. Looking for people to test! Feel free to try it out, join the discord, etc. Looking for feedback on the experience, reliability, etc.
The goal is for folks to be able to tune their own pipelines, right now I am working on adding more API params/knobs. Looking to build a good capture guide too, since most folks struggle with capture IMO
My little project for today is sort of hardware hacking of Chinese Aubess WiFi switch with power monitor so I can reflash it without desoldering anything. :)
- https://namebrewery.com: An MCP for looking up domain name availability. Brainstorming names within the LLM has been great and now I can have it do the registrar look ups from within the LLM too.
- https://altitag.com: A real estate photographer can upload a drone photo and get points of interest pins overlaid on the photo using EXIF data. The annotations help provide some nice neighborhood context without needing to open up Photoshop.
I'm working on a dashboard for ranking llms, then finding the best local (by size) and/or hosted (by price) variants of the models. Currently have ArtificialAnalysis leaderboard for ranking, ollama registry for local models and openrouter for hosted models. https://ollamadash.up.railway.app
By default, home page gives all models in the leaderboard, local and hosted. Search for models in the search box on the home page to find the top models by ranking, local(by size) and hosted (by price).
You can also do deep querying/sorting/searching filters of models in each of these three nodes (see the other tabs on top).
The next steps I am working on (would love feedback on this or anything else):
Phase 1: - Change clicks on home page model tiles in one column to search and show models filtered by that across Artificial Analysis, Ollama, OpenRouter - User specifies their system VRAM (unified/dedicated) and we automatically filter the home page with models that would fit on that RAM - in the three columns. - User specifies their price range (per MTok, max across input and output), and we similarly filter and rank by those models across all columns. - User specifies both (VRAM and price range), and we filter by both - leaderboard is union of local and hosted, local by VRAM and hosted by price range match.
Phase 2: Once I have this working, add a local desktop client that automatically reads user system and infers VRAM, renders app as webview. Considering pyside6 with Qt for this.
Phase 3: On desktop client, user can download and chat with the local models automatically based on leaderboard, optionally call hosted models, etc. Used primarily to evaluate and compare local vs hosted models for user's use cases. Also have some interesting alternate experiences to host within the local private app for user to interact with llms, agents, etc.
Do let me know whether this seems useful, or how I can make it more useful.
I've designed my first automated test equipment (4 voltmeters with 4 gains, 4 ammeters with 4 shunts, 4 regulated voltage sources) in kicad and now I'm slowly assembling it, testing and calibrating: https://imgur.com/a/ate444-Y0cORf2
Still plugging away on SourceMinder (https://github.com/ebcode/SourceMinder). I know, I know, everyone and their brother is working on token-saving schemes for LLMs. But I’ve found it to be useful even without the LLM. I’m working on a proper website for it now where you can try it out in the browser (wasm port) — try before you don’t buy (it’s GPL). Feedback welcome.
Working on a brand-new version of my free project management tool, Post Haste. It’s a tool for creating new projects from templates where you set the initial folder structure and project settings, as well as enforcing naming conventions. It was initially created for video editors but you can use it in any industry.
It’s a complete redesign from scratch that combines Mac and Windows into a single codebase via Dioxus (right now they’re two completely separate codebases).
Existing app is at https://www.digitalrebellion.com/posthaste
I have two projects that I'm hoping to release in the months ahead. These are both pretty pointless but fun projects.
One is a TRS-80 Model I emulator in JavaScript called Trash80. About 10 months ago I started this project just for fun while experimenting with what now seems to be called agentic loops. I got things working pretty well with the Z80 passing the ZEXALL suite and a lot of real TRS-80 software running fine. It sat for months untouched before I decided it is worth releasing and recently started it up again.
I didn't want to release it without a ROM, so I rigged up some agents to build a clean-room style L2 ROM w/ a fairly complete BASIC and even readline-style control commands, history, and a proper cursor. That went very well, but the agents cheated on floating point and implemented some weird Q5.2 like-thing. I told them to fix it, but I guess I didn't give clear enough instructions because they replaced it with a BCD hybrid monstrosity instead of proper floating point. The proper floating point is now underway, but I'm mostly using excess Codex credits before they expire, so it's only moving forward when I have credits I don't need.
I also built a silly ASCII fractal browser in Z80 assembly so that I can ship with a virtual disk that has software on it. The emulator works in the browser and the terminal. Unicode sextant block graphics map very well to TRS-80 Model I semigraphiccs/squots, so it really does run everything very well in the terminal, even games. I also added a line-mode for line-based applications, so you can use a readline-like interface and feel like it's native terminal app as well, though that has some issues I need to fix. And of course, you can shebang TRS-80 BASIC files and run them through the emulator too.
Another project was a demo of chromesthesia, a form of synesthesia where sounds trigger experiences of color. I thought it was done and ready to release, but then I had a new idea. The visualization while cool, was kind of boring. I decided to replace it with an attempt at a semi-physically accurate cymatics simulation with artificial coloring based on chromesthesia. Cymatics is the practice of making sounds visible by vibrating a surface, such as a plate with sand on it. As the sound changes, symmetrically interesting patterns form and evolve. I've got something working now with wave generation and microphone input, but sometimes it gets a bit stuck and stops evolving as it should, so I have to find time to figure that out.
Currently all unreleased, but when they do release it will be at www.leshylabs.com. I sometimes post updates on X, but not too often. (https://x.com/LeshyLabs)
I'm working on water treatment equipment that does not use chemicals. Manufacturing is bloody hard!
We are in the process of writing our own vertical stack with Go to control the machine instead of expensive and handicapped solutions from Siemens and etc.
https://www.storystarling.com - create a non-fiction children's book explaining your super-niche-geek topic to your kid. Pick any topic, your kid becomes the little explorer, we illustrate and print it. Requires registration, but then lets you read the whole book before paying.
I think that the IoT open source software landscape is missing a simple middleware to abstract the various network providers. I'm trying to fill that gap and hope to author a "show HN" soon about that :-)
I'm working on Bsharp, an Android app to teach perfect pitch (absolute pitch) to my kids: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app
You play a duck in a small shared town. You pick a job, pay rent, post on a Twitter-style feed, vote in local elections. The simulation keeps running when you close the tab. No PvP, no loot boxes, no combat. Playtime is a few minutes a day by design.
I'm working on a competitive coding gameshow. I'm imagining a combination of great british bakeoff, battle bots, and dota. Basically contestants get dropped into a fully equipped dev machine (all the bells and whistles one could want/expect including neovim, agent harnesses, cool styling, etc and if you want you can always clone your dotfiles and stow them!). I've gotten a decent prototype that live streams from Fly.io sprites to twitch, and I'm able to voice over or have OpenAI do commentary on the match. I've got a demo here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2792893261. Still a ways to go, but it seemed like a fun way to tinker with Sprites.
I’m working on tools optimized for agents, not humans, as the main users. Token efficiency, state, and loops matter more here than traditional UX.
- vibesurfer (https://github.com/frane/vibesurfer): a web browser for agents, without Chromium and CDP.
- agented (https://github.com/frane/agented): a “text editor” for agents, with undo, state, and LSP support.
- grpvn (https://github.com/frane/grpvn): a local chat for your local agent and LLMs.
I’m working on Kern, a small, git native, make and unix inspired llm workflow.
Modules are simply folders, and the tool just reads from stdio and outputs to stdout. Runs are stored in simple text files with all the info of inputs, outputs and other metadata.
I wonder how many people are scraping this thread right now and posting into llm something like “take the best ideas from this thread with highest chance of quick revenue”.
Anyway, I’m working on my manual skills of soldering.
I’ve been plugging away at my running coach style app, powered by the original idea of training for a trail race while living in a flat area with no easy access to natural climbing that has evolved into a fully functional plan generator: https://runcoach.fly.dev
It works well for me so far and I’m pretty happy with it!
teale.com - distributed ai inference using networked devices essentially folding@home but sharing underutilized ram (when you're asleep, someone else in the world is awake)
would really appreciate testers but also any companies thinking about distributed inference powered by their own company devices on a private network. my own company has 200+ 16gb ram machines that we're using for inference.
I’m working on a website where you can paste your NuGet package references and get notified by email if/when a package you’re using is found in a vulnerability database.
I needed to get customers for Hyperclast [1], but I keep putting off GTM (go to market) tasks. I'd rather be building, you know. So I created https://tractionbeast.com/ as a tool for myself. It gives me bite-sized GTM tasks every day. I just review and do them. This completely removes the inertia for me! My other founder-friends like it too so I turned it into a product.
[1] https://hyperclast.com/ - open, fast, self-hostable replacement for Notion
Messing around with my Lambda Calculus tutorial repo. I just did a total rewrite of Nominal Inductive Types.
I’ve been considering new features on Book Bounce for my use cases. I’m pretty hesitant to start anything new on it while I’m waiting for approval for Google Play…
https://bedtimebookhelper.com/
In the mean time, I’m working on a recipe application I’ve had countless false starts on. It’s centered around iterations and version on recipes, tracking changes to ingredients and directions to build new a new recipe from an existing one.
I’m starting with a go Bubbletea tui this time and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it compared to the React SPAs I’ve tried before. Not feeling compelled to style anything while working on the UX has been nice.
TensorZero, LLMOps gateway, was archived yesterday and I forked it to continue development and keep it open source. I also applied for 6 months of codex credits which I will dedicate to the project.
Helping my wife ship https://quantral.com - a platform to monitor X and Reddit for financial chatter and score companies and authors. We discovered lots of stocks early in this AI cycle from X. There’s lots of noise, so we built a platform to more easily monitor the social sentiment for our investment purposes, but now we are trying to spin out a fully fledged consumer product.
I’m working on Snapy, a system that helps secondhand retail stores digitize and broadcast their live inventory across Google, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, eBay, and more.
We’re live in 3 stores and it’s working great.
The system has two parts: a mobile app that lets employees snap photos of products to generate and publish listings, and a hardware box that sits inline between the barcode scanner and POS to track in-store sales and automatically remove the corresponding listing when something sells
I’m working on Snapy, a system that helps secondhand retail stores digitize and broadcast their live inventory across Google, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, eBay, and more.
We’re live in 3 stores and it’s working great.
The system has two parts: a mobile app that lets employees snap photos of products to generate and publish listings, and a hardware box that sits inline between the barcode scanner and POS to track in-store sales and automatically remove the corresponding listing when something sells.
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...
I am working on an open-source alternative to Quokka.js. https://github.com/apatki1996/quoll
It started out as a project to try Fable. It wrote a lot of the code and I am learning as I go. I am still questioning some of the design choices but so far it is working. I do want to improve it, so any feedback is welcome.
I’m working on improving the global agents.md experience.
I’m doing composable and dynamic global profiles which are selected based on what you’re doing.
Im still working on station display: https://stationdisplay.com/
I also just posted a new blog post on trash valorisation: https://stefan.schueller.net/posts/kva-winterthur/
I’m working on a coding agent that doesn’t have access to the shell. Essentially all it could do is edit and read code, verify and run tests. But due to that limitation I’ve made it target only rust projects for the time being.
A 3D optics simulator (lenses, mirrors etc.) - https://opticsketch.github.io/opticsketch/.
I sometimes need to have a quick but realistic model of an optical system without paying a few thousand for some of the well known commercial offerings, so I've been building this.
I’m building https://design.withfudge.com, a Prolog-backed design search engine that lets designers/agents query structured design knowledge from real websites. It uses data from my other startup, https://fontofweb.com, to help designers find concrete inspiration e.g fonts, colors, layouts, screenshots, and patterns, so they can make better design decisions.
I've been working on my vision for a better web app development ecosystem. https://wildloop.dev/
It currently exists of 12 libraries/tool, most of which are pretty stable by now, though some are still very much in flux.
This is one of those things that turns out to be kind of a lot of work. :-)
ive been getting claude to reverse engineer my raybans glasses case, so i can figure out a 3d printed insert to put in thats less likely to break.
in the process, figuring out some tricks for getting opus to work with 3d a bit better
two tricks ive found is to:
1. get claude to present all the orientations to you, then pick which one after 2. convert 3d problems to 2d ones - get it to draw streamlines describing the geometry, rather than trying to look at the whole thing in 3d
fable was a fair bit better at working in 3d than opus is. well, opus mostly isnt
I am building on a publishing platform that aims to go against some of the tide.
Strictly human content, pagination instead of endless feeds, one-off payments instead of subscriptions, linear feed by default, public profile scoring instead of secretive algorithms.
Hope to share it soon around here, too.
Any fans of Divvy/window management software? I'm working on a replacement, its near production level, open to any thoughts/suggestions. for apple silicone.
integrated agent review surfaces with https://github.com/backnotprop/plannotator
HTML/artifact canvases have a lot of potential
https://x.com/backnotprop/status/2064951065439834378?s=20
https://x.com/backnotprop/status/2065436433985474726?s=20
https://github.com/plannotator/effective-html
Shared context workspaces are important
VERDURE is a creative sandbox where you grow and shape plants through trimming and pruning. You can also unlock a 'recipe panel' to further customize them and build a entire collection of your creations. I like to try and recreate real plant designs with it. It is a bit unusual.
- https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch - Android app with most visited domains, fast search
- https://github.com/rumca-js/awesome-database-feeds - list of RSS sources
- https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database - list of domains
Nothing besides normal work. Sometimes is good to do a break on personal projects after 3 years nonstop
I'm working on Ito.ai : https://www.ito.ai/
It's Agentic QA + auto-provisioning sandboxes. Makes it plug and play to do code reviews that actually run your code instead of looking at it really hard. B/c the agents control all of the environment (ie running all of the services), it's able to collect runtime evidence about pretty much everything.
A couple open source examples: (Excalidraw) https://app.ito.ai/share/d1cb1475-fbe5-4c71-901b-409ba2aa6d6... & (n8n) https://app.ito.ai/share/bb7d73aa-fd08-482d-9938-87938e2a232...