alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
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I made an HN filter for substacks and blogs: https://hnsubstacks.com/
It allowed me to explore a serverless deployement (on CF workers) with a toy project, that I wanted to make for myself.
Repo here: https://github.com/ariroffe/hnsubstacks/
Still working on Study Engine and Nomnominees(more or less done for now).
StudyEngine is a webapp I'm using while doing my masters in comp sci. I upload lecture notes, textbooks, papers, etc. It then extracts topics and tracks my mastery of them over time. It uses an LLM to generate questions and flash cards. It loops in some newer learning science ideas. It tests recognition first(multiple choice), and then once a level of mastery is matched, it switches to recall. Working on adding RAG to it, so I can surface where in the source material something can be reviewed when going over quiz results. Currently just for me an some friends. If can get a good eval set up, I might work on optimizing cost and seeing if it could be opened up.
NomNominees is simple webapp that tracks James Beard, Great American Beer Festival, Festival of Barrel Aged Beers, and other awards. I use it when I'm traveling to find places to check out. Even just a cluster on a map shows me neighborhoods I might want to check out.
I've been throwing together some web-playable retro arcade games:
Rally-X: https://linsomniac.github.io/rally-xy/
Tempest: https://linsomniac.github.io/teapot/
Dig-Dug: https://linsomniac.github.io/digger/
And not an arcade game, but a multi-player throwback to a multiplayer shooter game my team used to play called nSnipes: https://github.com/linsomniac/isnipes
iSnipes does require downloading and running a server, the others you just play on the web.
Many things:
- BrowserBox just landed WebAuthn (passkeys) - for now just macOS clients: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox
- This website is served entirely from a 200Kb binary: https://200kb.freelang.dev
- An open SSH server with a TUI web browser: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com
- All the government's 300K+ pages of UFO files released so far: https://hypergrid.systems/war.gov-ufo-viewer/microfilm5?fram...
And more
I’m working on https://checkpost.dev, a lightweight and easy-to-use osquery manager. It is open source, easy to self-host, and ships as a single binary. It only requires osquery to be installed on the endpoints. Checkpost is readonly and doesn't make any changes on the enrolled hosts.
It can run adhoc or scheduled queries and send the results to ClickHouse, or store them locally in Parquet files and use DuckDB to browse the results. It can also initiate YARA scans and collect the results. It also supports policy evaluation and alerting.
Building South Africa's version of TCGPlayer/Cardmarket/etc, for Yu-Gi-Oh! https://lekkerduelist.co.za
There's competition in the other TCGs, and of course a 2-sided marketplace is one of the hardest things to seed. So this is mostly just a project that I can put any fresh ideas into that I wouldn't be able to at my dayjob.
I am helping a not-for-profit, [NavSahyog](https://navsahyog.org/), build a custom software for their entire operations and programs that also tracks longitudinal impact. The organization conducts programs for children in Indian villages after school to build live skills.
This is my second iteration because the first version felt like a simplistic fit and improvement over their existing vendor provided app.
I have now designed a domain model based on my understanding and observations. I have a day job so I can't spend a lot of time in sync with the team. I have created a web app where the NGO management can test scenarios (by recording voice), and the AI (Claude Agent SDK) runs it past the domain model. In case, there is a gap, they can persist the scenario. After every iteration, I read through the scenarios and assimilate them into the domain model.
I've just finished this chrome extension recently: https://ypuf.com/
It helps me to automatically save a tab that's not been used in a while so it auto-closes it but saves it as well as having the ability to snooze a tab like how you'd do it in gmail.
Everything is locally stored with 100% privacy in mind.
And vim like navigation is natively done.
I have a daily puzzle game called https://lettered.io and I’ve been playing around with shareable replay gifs via gifenc. It’s been fun trying to get good looking replays without sacrificing size for quality
The age of AI has been incredible for the daily game space because you can play around with ideas so much faster and riff to find something that works. On the flip side, there’s a lot more games that just rip off another idea and change some mechanic slightly to make it “new”
Koji (https://github.com/iam-mhaseeb/koji) - A dead simple personal website engine for developers focused on simplicity.
Salahmate (https://salahmate.app) - A mobile app that helps Muslims build the habit of praying gently.
I built my own weather prediction / visualization app: https://wx.rsp.li (on-device temperature lapsing, on device interpolation modes, user-selectable aggregations, etc…). One of these days I should do a writeup.
I also asked Claude to build a photo gallery for me https://places.pascalspoerri.ch (HDR, map support, similar images)
Just trying to learn C again, making things from scratch in a multiplatform way, interfacing with X11 on Linux and wasm on the browser.
It's been fun dealing with memory and C's weird design in this age of agentic coding.
We are creating an AI for science and engineering: https://vicena.ai
It's connected to all papers of course, and all kinds of scientific simulators and specialised models. But I'm currently in Shanghai talking to labs to join a CloudLab (and hopefully setting up our own robotic labs), so that AI can actually order real physical experiments that are executed cheaply, efficiently and seamlessly as tool calls.
Through experiments like autoresearch we have seen that AI is already, if not always smarter, at least more systematic than humans at following the scientific method relentlessly (hypothesis-experiment loop). Let's see what we can do by connecting it to the real-world :)
I've been building some sqlite plugins for playing with ngrams for text search. I'm not sure why, but I've learned a lot about the internal sqlite apis and it brings me a lot of joy. I would like to start a blog detailing some of this work but haven't found the time yet
https://finbodhi.com — It's an app for your financial journey. It helps you track, understand, benchmark and plan your finances - with double-entry accounting. You own your financial data. It’s local-first, syncs across devices, and everything’s encrypted in transit (we do have your email for subscription tracking and analytics). Supports multiple-accounts (track as a family or even as an advisor), multi-currency, a custom sheet/calculator to operate on your accounts (calculate taxes etc) and much more. Supports price for most Indian investment vehicles and US stocks.
Most recently we added support for creating custom dashboards. You can compare return with leading/trailing/rolling charts for investment options and benchmark (create custom dashboards tracking nav and value chart of) your portfolio (or a subset of assets you own) and US stocks, etfs etc. And family dashboard (e.g. you can see networth, cashflows, income, use sheets at family level and more). See https://finbodhi.com/changelog for details.
We also write about related topics:
We wrote about comparing investment options: https://finbodhi.com/docs/blog/compare-charts
Benchmarking your returns: https://finbodhi.com/docs/blog/benchmark-scenarios
Understanding double entry account: https://finbodhi.com/docs/understanding-double-entry
I got tired of Codex/Claude not being able to write good UI reliably, so I made a TypeScript library toolbox to help with that.
https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/MachinaLayout.JS
Pretty much just SwiftUI-like layout/style in TypeScript with a bunch of utility tools from other languages I like, like Rust's payload enums, table helpers, LINQ-like queries, state management, etc. It's framework neutral so it works with React, React Native, and Vue right now. Everything is just plain TypeScript that compiles to the DOM, so no HTML or CSS needed for most normal web apps, they can all be written in plain .ts or tsx files.
My daily word game “Snibble” [0]
It’s basically snake meets scrabble meets PvP stealing. It’s a novel idea and I think it’s cool it hasn’t really been done before :)
The issue is it’s too complicated, the onboarding is dogwater, and the aesthetic is too complex
So I’ve spent the weekend fixing onboarding, fixing and relaxing the visuals mix and simplifying mechanics.
I’ve also tested LLMs playing the game through a harness I wrote. LLMs get smashed, they can form words and steal, but they lose badly to conventional bots.
I’ll be exposing an LLM leaderboard on my next release (hoping this weekend) with links to game replays for the LLMs.
Would love for people to give it a try, give me some feedback, and say what you’d love to see on the roadmap.
[0] - https://snibble.gg/
Codebook - https://github.com/0x007BA7/codebook
It’s a better code reader built on top of sem (treesitter). I’m getting a lot of massive PRs at work now, and this has helped a lot with reading them. It decomposes the changes into entities and sorts based on what has the most dependencies. This tends to put the most important functions first. Plus I can click through the dependencies for each function and mark things as reviewed as I’m reading them. It’s a big improvement over the GitHub review flow for me at least.
Same as last month for once - optimizing how well agents can work with a new language [1]. I've been able to 2-3x success rate and drop total tokens for complex tasks significantly (though the initial syntax dump is rough - need to do some ablation there to get it down).
The best part has been that I think it's significantly improved things for humans too; it's weirdly satisfying to be able to measure improved ergonomics. Also, since a big pitch/theory was that the language should be ideal for agents as a result of the original nice things for humans it was designed for, it's a relief to be able actually measure a concrete lift.
[1] https://trilogydata.dev/ - SQL with types, composable functions of arbitrary complexity, and a native semantic layer.
Got another daughter last week!
There were a lot of complications post delivery, and I want to make some sort of interactive story about it. We'll see how it goes
(Everyone is safe and sound)
Just finished working on a new version of customizable Clarity Linux (GTK+) icons.
Created a new website and new icon manager: https://clarity.pl.eu.org
Complite - Elventy template/starter
And a Polish WikiZEIT project:
And ALT - LanguageTool for Emacs
A Web-based, self-hosted database client and editor for teams - https://github.com/p-raj/collab-sqlc
Supports - Postgres - DynamoDB - Clickhouse - Redis
Primary idea is to evolve from SQL client to a Database Client, where users would be able to host queries, share queries and the work remains auditable.
Previously it was an SQL client, a PopSQL alternative. But I am trying to re-work the architecture so that it can support more databases, and services (query-as-service, query-as-reporting-job, etc).
I'm working on a nationwide US parcel dataset: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/landrecordsus/us-parcel-laye....
It's mostly "public" data, but incumbent data vendors charge $90k+ for this data because it has to be acquired and aggregated from 3200+ US counties. This is a lot of work if you aren't using LLMs and agents to do much of the work for you.
I'm trying to make quality parcel data more accessible to everyone.
1. A compiler for real-time tensor processing (arbitrary DSP, ML). In something like LISP or Haskell, the goal is to compile lambda calculus for fast/reliable execution—as such, you can express a program in a fully general language that can represent any computation and execute it without explicitly modeling the lower levels of the machine. I'm building a compiler that does the same thing for the subset of programs that are guaranteed to execute on-budget. The effect: you write code that looks like DSP/ML math and it compiles/runs optimally with execution guaranteed by construction.
2. My take on an agent framework ... append only log + content hypergraph in Elixir, tools that regularly pull data from other services into Postgres—built as a kind of 'exoskeleton' around claude/codex so it's not competing with fast-moving tools.
Thinking about category theoretic models of computation: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03817
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Some things I want other people to build:
- Indexing for Github
- All-in-one social media ingestion libraries for agents
- GOFAI-inspired knowledge / semantic / research graph stuff—I want to point agents at rules/structures for writing connected, verifiable statements
I'm working on https://topicle.com/ An alternative to Reddit that more aggressively polices bots, spam and astroturfing and has strong guardrails in place against bad moderation. No private profiles that bots use to hide, every mod action can be appealed, mod logs are public, LLM posts are blocked. There's so much obviously inauthentic activity and questionable moderation on Reddit, I decided to try addressing it.
Exploring map based game ideas like arcade racing in your neighborhood: https://trippi.app/drift/
Still working on https://compears.shop we’ve added some new features to help people shop in the EU for cheap. I’m hoping we get to expand this to more EU countries
I’m working on https://main-duck.com/ which simplifies converting your code to mcp. I plan to make this easy to integrate into CI so mcps can be updated easily. It’s hosted remotely and I’m very excited about where it’ll go.
Java Server Side Rendering Web Framework -- zero external runtime dependencies outside the web server layer -- https://github.com/vadimv/server-components The idea is to provide complete Java-centric modern web UI stack for building internal tools and admin panels.
PGlite - Postgres in wasm
Loads of useful things in the pipeline: multi connection support, native library, extensions and many more ideas.
Working on Gaming Couch, a web-based local multiplayer party game platform. It's like a lovechild of Jackbox and Mario Party: https://gamingcouch.com
Just before the weekend I shipped a new mini-game called Pop It: Desert Island (https://gamingcouch.com/blog/pop-it-desert-island-launch). Launch went well: ~3,800 players from 56 countries over the weekend, and it immediately became the most played game on the platform.
It's a battle royale with an ocean/beach themed world, taking inspiration from Roblox, Mario Kart and others. The whole game is built in JavaScript (three.js for the 3D world) using a JS SDK I've been working on. It doubled as a test drive of the same SDK I want to launch for third-party developers, so anyone can build and ship a simple, fun multiplayer party game for the platform, ideally in a single weekend.
If you're a game dev, or aspiring to be one, and want to develop and ship your own party game check out this page https://gamingcouch.com/developers
The TL;DR of Gaming Couch:
- Free Early Access with +20 competitive mini-games.
- Players use their phones as controllers (gamepads work too).
- Completely web-based, no downloads or installs needed.
- Every game supports up to 8 players and is action-based, with quick ~1 minute rounds to keep a good pace. No language-based trivia or asynchronous (turn based) games.
Working on full stack prototyping agents that own their own Aws account (zero deploy friction). Think speed of lovable/ base44 with power of Aws services
PastML - https://pastml.com/
AI-first, MCP ready to host single HTML page. Connect & publish directly from ChatGPT app.
I am building https://nexaflow.com - a customer support AI agent with built-in modules so small businesses need not buy 4-5 services to run a business. We ship with CRM, Ticketing, Appointment/Scheduler, Booking management system (for Small clinics, etc). Nexaflow agents can answer (and take action on) customer queries coming from Whatsapp, Email, Web (widget) and more.
Working on https://razzify.in - Learn hacking using CTF challenges and get hired. https://securepilot.in - Indias first cybersecurity incident management platform for individuals.
I am building https://EasyAnalytica.com - single place for all your dashboards. It generates dashboards automatically from data without using ai. It supports getting data from google sheets, api's, url's etc. I have recently added support for gsc as data source and i plan to continue adding more in coming weeks.
I finally decided to put together a Sonos controller with the navigation I wanted and SMAPI servers for the live music archive, and all the grateful dead and phish shows. Thanks Claude! A PWA with tailscale and I have a controller that does what I want and works at home on an S1 system and at the beach on an S2 - seamlessly. Better than the "real" thing as far as I can tell.
Aggregator for new posts in build threads from 277 old-school DIY forums.
Build threads of people building cars, 4x4s, motorcycles, boats, airplanes, hot rods, musical instruments, etc.
I'm doing a personal research project into the technical maturity of ccTLDs. So far I've mostly been working with easily accessible public information, which I'm almost ready to publish, but the next phase is going to be trying to identify markers of stack complexity (provisioning etc) which is going to be tricky.
I'd love to hear from anyone else doing work in this area!
Working on https://github.com/AqilbekAbilaev/ozendb
Free, open-source and drop-in replacement for Studio-3T. All the featured behind Studio-3T subscription for free in OzenDB.
Released beta version recently. Feel free to check out. Will be glad for feedback)
I’ve been exploring what sort of agentic tooling to write for creative coding and realtime VFX. My second iteration just got released earlier this week (also open source): https://sxp.studio/apps/subz
If you’re open to the idea of composing code blocks and ideas, plus some generative UI exploration, feel free to join!
It's a calculator for what an AI feature costs to serve. Cost per request, cost per month, which part of the bill is eating you (output tokens, usually). No signup, all the math is on the page. Any feedback is welcome.
https://cloudboss.co/docs/unobin
My original idea for this was to compile an Ansible-like playbook to a binary. I made a POC for it around 2020, and then it sat on the shelf. More recently I picked it up again following a more Terraform-like model. It compiles IaC to a binary with all dependencies included, standardized CLI options, autogenerated configs, optional visualization in the browser, and lots of other features.
To people who say just use Terraform: I do, a lot. But it still bothers me enough to try building something different.
Note: this involves blockchain VMs. If that's a dealbreaker, feel free to skip. I get it.
I've spent 8 years working on RISC-V VMs for blockchains, recently also contributing to ZK VMs. Modern blockchain VMs are drastically more powerful, and I'm curious how far we can push them. I started porting real game logic to blockchain VMs, running game loop, physics simulation, collision detection, etc., on blockchain VMs. So far I have:
* Teeworlds to CKB-VM: https://xuejie.space/2026_06_16_teeworlds_on_ckb/
* One Hour One Life to CKB-VM: https://xuejie.space/2026_06_29_porting_one_hour_one_life_ga...
* A small ray tracer to Jolt ZK VM: https://xuejie.space/2026_07_10_cpp_ray_tracer_on_jolt_zk_vm...
Source is available for 2 of the 3, I need to clean up the OHOL one.
Some context: CKB-VM [1] is a RISC-V virtual machine I designed for Nervos starting in 2018. Jolt ZK VM [2] is a zero-knowledge virtual machine developed by a16z. Both execute RISC-V code, but due to different design, Jolt ZK VM is a much faster CPU than CKB-VM.
Technically this is a fun challenge. Many techniques I used resemble game development tricks from the 90s on game consoles: fixed point math, banked memory in ROMs, aggressively inlining tricks, etc. I want to push to see where the ceiling is. Right now I'm trying to get a Godot [3] + JoltPhysics [4] game loop running on Jolt ZK VM.
Happy to answer questions about the VM internals, the porting process, or anything in general.
[1] https://github.com/nervosnetwork/ckb-vm
Working on Morpheus, an experiment to improve tool usage over small llm like Qwen 30b by introducing JEPA (https://github.com/ichiriac/morpheus)
I am working on this Review Flow. An extention for Cursor / VScode to enable IDE as first class for code reviews.
It came from a frustration that I needed to switch between the browser and the IDE to navigate through the code and leaving comments on Gitlab at the company.
So I thought it could useful to create something and let it be accessible to the public as open source.
link: https://github.com/LuyandaLia/reviewflow
In a nutshell, it accepts draft comments, which can be modified and submitted.
It auto configs the env for Python as it uses FastAPI for calls to Gitlab.
It's my initial attempt. Suggestions, reviews, contributions are invited.
One love
Building a rootless, namespace powered (deeply stretching the definition of a container), on demand application workspace.
- Each component in a mini app in a heavily locked down container - Components are deployed and built in a web workspace, in the same workspace you can open a terminal and use your favourite coding agent to work on component code (each terminal is itself heavily sandboxes, has rw access only to the edited component code and users home dir) - Everything comes with heavy rbac and minimum permissions - Oh so much more
Explaining this well is hard, much like explaining to someone what Kubernetes or AWS does. This is at a level of what a sophisticated company infrastructure team would run, just as a workspace you can deploy for yourself easily and agents just build within that framework (I’m a cofounder of a infra/compute/datacenter startup and intimately familiar with this kind of complexity)
The main thesis is that Claw-style agents still feel like school projects, and that in the agentic era apps on demand will be more of a thing, and that the current systems weren’t built to deal with a whole new app built every few minutes.
May or may not end up as open source soon
I'm working on https://artifacts.iofold.com, a way to use artifacts (self contained html + optional assets like image/video/json) easily across agents, with feedback loop and docsend style wttribiti gates.
Have made it agent friendly enough that my teammates' agents can read and drop commennts on specs/storyboards etc, and my agent can close the loop by iterating with a new artifact version.