Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
Discussion 727 comments
Try it out: https://github.com/preloopdev/preloop
https://www.idlequest.net/ - a from-scratch recreation of the 1999 MMORPG classic EverQuest, featuring a real-time MMO server written in Go, a 3D game browser-based client built with Babylon.js, and the clasic UI recreated using React. You can play it both as a regular MMORPG but also in "idle mode" where it basically plays itself. This had up to 70 players online at once a while back which was really cool, though its popularity is in a bit of a lull right now. There are still tons of bugs and stuff that isn't fully implemented (and balance issues) but it's still fun for most people who have nostalgia for it.
https://www.newyokosuka.com/ - an unofficial Shenmue MMO experience. Based on the 1999 Sega Dreamcast game Shenmue, it's playable entirely in your browser! It's basic world exploration with forklift shenanigans, some basic dialogue systems, and a basic combat system test, but I'm about to push an update that includes all cutscenes and story progression as well. The story part is taking a bit of time because I'm having to mold it to fit in an MMO context. But it's a fun project to work on and the Shenmue community loves it so far.
I've had people play IdleQuest on tablets and Steam Deck but I'm fairly certain it would be horrible on phones.
How is this not going to get sued into oblivion by Sega? Especially using your real name with it.
That being said, I tried it on Firefox and just got an empty blue screen after the level loaded.
Sorry to hear about bluescreen, I haven't had any other reports of that from other players. Do you have resist fingerprinting turned on? It can mess with WebGL games a lot.
It's a PWA, not a native app over at https://fringeflypost.com/ (or you can go directly to https://fringeflypost.com/shows to browse if you don't want to make an account.)
I used to be a mechanic, and spend a lot of my free time working on project vehicles, motorcycles, tractors, trucks etc. I wanted a tool to track the tasks I needed done, then a way to easily access VIN info for parts search, then I DMV records, and finally built an iphone app to scan the OBD2 diagnostic codes and hook them up to a custom ai diagnostic prompt.
It's been a blast to work on, I need to focus on marketing it and get some users that aren't close friends, but it's been serving my purposes this summer so far.
I've seen nothing with anywhere close to this depth of diagnostic reporting.
https://crewchief.cc https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crewchief-auto/id6760673109
For Pricing calculations it's a mix of the fetched tool search prices data and guided prompt. There are lots of published records on what hours jobs _should_ take and average labor hours per region.
Where it is make-specific is the interpretation layer. The code database includes manufacturer-specific DTCs for the 10 major makes, and there's per-model data down to the generation level — known failure patterns, which codes are common on which engines. So a P0171 on an E46 gets read in the context of "this generation eats intake boots and DISA valves," not a generic lean-code writeup. The AI report is conditioned on the exact year/make/model/engine, which is where most of the diagnostic depth comes from.
That being said, I'm continually expanding support, it really just depends on what sort of barriers I run into with these bluetooth scanners. For certain types of diagnostics (large truck / Buses etc) I'll likely need to make a separate desktop app that connects directly wired.
It started when my ex and I were having trouble in our marriage (divorce will be finalised soon), probably after watching too many a YouTube DIY channels, and here I am a year and a half later :D
I moved in when it became livable 6 months ago (I had to shower at the gym for a month), and it should be finished sometime next year. I don't work that much on it though, as I am busy with my job and kids. Some rooms are nearly finished, others are barely started. I've got used to the concrete slab as a flooring and no doors.
Would I recommend it? Ummmm... probably not. But it's been an interesting experience, and I've learned a lot. I don't want to diminish professional contractors, as some of them are really skilled, but I feel you can get most of the way to "standard home finish" by watching a few YouTube videos on the topic. You will be slower of course and might need to repeat/fix your work, but then to push it to "luxury finish" you mainly just need a good eye for detail.
I started with Leptos - which gives you a nice declarative UI syntax and reactive elements. I used Claude to get that working on iOS, cocoa and GTK. I made a nice little iOS schedule app for attendees at conferences. It works great. All rust, native UI and a fast and small binary. The current UI code is here: https://github.com/josephg/leptos-native (not officially part of leptos). It works well, but not all of the components I want have been implemented.
At the moment I’m rewriting the core to ditch the vibe coded parts and break the whole thing into an app backend API and separate platform layer. I want to be able to write apps in wasm and have a windows / mac / Linux host that can run them using native UI. And a runner to run any app using a TUI. And have a compilation process to compile the whole thing into a single native process for app developers and to publish to the App Store.
https://github.com/josephg/dweb-sched
It's got full native calendar integration - so if you want you can favorite a session and it'll automatically add the session to your calendar in ios. (Or un-favorite to remove). It looks and feels completely native. I'm using taffy for layout - which is a pure native rust implementation of CSS's flexbox & grid layout engine. So layout works the same everywhere, using the same primitives you find in the browser.
The UI framework is still quite experimental though. I'm rewriting the core at the moment. The API won't stay the same for 1.0.
I was never much of a game developer, but recently my 5 year old son wanted to play a game so we decided to build one together.
It's a boat game, you basically steer a boat in an isometric 2d world, transporting passengers, cargo etc between ports.
As we designed it, the ideas just kept on coming. He made or directed a lot of the art inside of the game (even the audio), and we included friends and family as characters within the game.
A lot of fun to build - hilarious at times. I used Lua and LÖVE2D, building basically a game engine for an isometric world, so that took significantly more time than expected.
If you want to test it [1], please do, but keep in mind it's only in Norwegian, but I am sure most people would be able to figure it out as it's meant for age group 5 and up:
[1] https://apps.apple.com/no/app/b%C3%A5tspillet/id6791630382
At this point our entire extended family and their kids, grandchildren etc are actually playing this, so it's been super fun.
https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids
I also attempted to make a game with my eldest daughter initially. Unsurprisingly, she didn't want to sit there watching me code or drag things around in Godot's level editor.
Admittedly, I really need to make a new blog post showing the latest improvements brought about from the in school pilot I'm running weekly at the moment.
- it is a collection of ~ 2700 temples across India, with images sourced from wikipedia
- it shows you a random temple each time you visit
- it has a map view of temples across India
So this is just the tip of the iceberg. I am trying to build a catalogue of all temples, starting with India, and expanding on to the rest of the world. The focus is on temples originating from Indic religions like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.
I have personally discovered many cool temples that I have never heard of, but I am struggling on how to gamify this. Feedback welcome!
It's an automation game and factory builder with "falling sand" physics. Think Noita meets Factorio.
I also remember playing that Powder Toy game on my phone in grade school, and I have a ton of nostalgia for these kinds of physics.
Will there be significant hidden mechanics/riddles/lore built into the world in a Noita-like way, or is the physics engine the limit of that comparison?
How does such a deal work? Do they contact you? Or are there places where you can promote your game to get it on Game Pass?
It's my publisher (Hooded Horse) handling it so not sure about the exact process. I don't think it's easy to get a day 1 deal though so I'm very grateful for it.
Good luck on your game & launch!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4564800/Dictatorship_Simu...
I've overcome about a dozen "there's simply no way to do this in MacOS and I have to abandon the project" challenges so far. MacOS really does not want to let you manage windows in this novel of a way, and I've had to come up with a handful of tricks to maintain the illusion that the WM is accessing the compositor at a lower level than it actually is. But it works, and I'm dogfooding it as I go!
I'm hopefully only a few weeks away now from a full announcement and a beta. If you're curious to try the first beta, feel free to get in touch at clayton at presteign dot com.
Parallelly, I'm working on an attention-based memory retrieval system that achieved SOTA on LongMemEval, LoCoMo, and code retrieval benchmarks. https://github.com/AttemorySystem/attemory/
Maybe later I'll build a live-streaming AI agent that plays Slay the Spire while conversing with viewers and remembering everything in chat!
What do you mean by agent in this context? Does it mean LLMs?
What search problem are you solving for deck building and is MCTS for combat the same as that in Go AIs?
I categorize the game's actions into three types: combat, deck-building, and other interactions.
For combat, MCTS is used. Yes, it's similar to the approach used in Go AI.
For deck-building, a sparse graph search is used: the goal is to rapidly identify winning deck templates within the graph structure.
Only the remaining aspects are delegated to the LLM to make reasoned decisions.
I really enjoy working on the app though. The backend is Elixir, with a Phoenix LiveView dashboard. I've got a cluster of 3 nodes running, talking to each other. The probes that check the monitoring targets are tiny go binaries, spread across hosting providers across the world. I've also got synthetic probes now, running in little playwright sandboxes.
A lot of the challenges have been around how to distribute work across the probes, with different strategies for the basic TCP/HTTP probes vs the synthetic workers, and how to effectively store large amounts of events (Clickhouse).
It started getting some search impressions and clicks, so I decided to launch the next 9 of the top 10 ideas that ChatGPT came up with for this type of site - won't post all of them here, but https://the-dwell.com/ (data on ship and truck dwell times/port congestion) is doing the best thus far from a traffic perspective.
First I had it send me a weekly analysis of the GA4/GSC data to see what could be improved about the site, but I've since automated that - each week it reviews traffic and search queries, then updates articles or creates new ones to meet demand. So now in theory I have a full engine to launch these sites and have them self-improve over time. Kinda neat to see all of that being done autonomously.
The thing that these sites really need are some backlinks, so I'm thinking through how to get those. I had ChatGPT generate some lists of places that might find real value in linking to these sorts of things, but I'm unwilling to let an AI agent start emailing people. I'm going to try sending some emails to some of the places that seem like a really good fit, see what the response is, and if it's good try to figure out how to do that on a larger scale without AI email spam.
But you're right that it'd make sense to have an aggregate view on the level above (e.g. https://the-dwell.com/anchored). I shall go command Fable to figure out all the places where this would be appropriate and add it.
Which leads me to trying to get the processing off github actions (it's all duckdb pipelines), which has led me to improve the orchestration implementation of my 'better sql' [2] to optimize the asset based refresh flow. I'm now wiring that up in a general cloud service to give me the data orchestration platform I've always wanted. Building a multi-tenant cloud experience has been interesting!
[1]: https://greenmtnboy.github.io/sf_tree_reporting [2]: https://github.com/trilogy-data/pytrilogy
wireplug lets you create mesh VPNs using standard WireGuard. Your wg config files stay almost the same, except you no longer have to specify an `Endpoint` for your peers. Instead, wireplug detects all your possible endpoints (including LAN) and coordinates them with your peers for you. It handles NAT traversal and works with the in-kernel WireGuard driver on Linux and OpenBSD. This lets you keep managing your own keys and network topology, while also maintaining connectivity when moving between networks.
Currently working on improving NAT traversal by adding support for PCP and NAT-PMP.
I've worked on it for about a year, with 1700 commits. I've been going back and forth if I should just open up the canvas or also the multiplayer experience.
I've always had the dream to make some money from a side project, but I don't think this one is it, so I'll just make the entire repo public. Just want to clean up some stuff first.
Lots of fun tech used: duckDB WASM, Cloudflare Durable Objects, tldraw and pocketbase
If you just want to see what it looks like here's a demo looking at hackernews data: https://kavla.dev/hn
There's also no email verification gatekeeping it so feel free to just input some bogus data when signing up
Also looks like the table shapes broke, there should be data that you can browse and download. I've replaced those with screenshots just in case anyone else sees it
For now, there's no backend and it's hosted on GitHub Pages; it's a static website reading chunks from an sqlite-based DB file. I intend to change it in the future by running an LLM (preferably a frontier Gemini model, as works great for Persian) over the whole data set so you won't need a key to read the translated poetry. However, I don't have the budget of $1000-$2000 to spend on the tokens currently.
Website: https://0x5ce.github.io/farsidaan
Code: https://github.com/0x5CE/farsidaan
P.S. Contributions welcome.
This probably sounds like a crazy question, but if you are already getting translations using someone else's API keys, can't you just store/cache that response so that the next time the translation is requested, you already have it?
I've been a bit obsessed with chess lately and have read/heard things like "X is the top engine move, but no one under master plays that line". To me this begs the questions "which line are players below master playing" and "which line are players at/above/below my rating playing". This question motivated me to build a tool to analyze the move distribution (win/draw/loss rate) from a given position across rating buckets (400, 500, 600... 3000). Luckily, https://database.lichess.org/ provides an open/free database of games that have just the data required to build such a tool.
The Rated Analysis tool consists of an 1) an offline job to compute/store the positional move distribution bucketed by rating, and 2) the https://rated-analysis.pickle-dev.com/ webpage to serve the data along with some nice to haves like loading user games from platforms like chess.com/lichess.org.
- the desktop client: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/fdrive
- the web client: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
I just finished my master's in Psychedelics and Consciousness Studies, and built the library I wanted while studying. I started it over a year ago, but put it down until my practicum advisor suggested I dust it off and go hard on it during my last term.
As of this writing, there are over 35,700 papers by over 82,200 authors organized into 37 topics, growing daily. There's a 2D map of the whole corpus and evidence syntheses on the topic pages, plus the ability to generate your own syntheses with any prompt.
It's built with Rails 8.1, uses one Postgres (for full-text search, vectors, and job queue), and runs on a $24/mo DigitalOcean droplet that I just upgraded from the $12 tier and deploy to with Kamal. Total LLM spend so far is ~$28 in DeepSeek-V4-Flash, trending down after a big one-time backfill push.
Relevance was the hardest part to get right by far. Ensuring we keep papers on LSD the psychedelic vs Lumpy Skin Disease, or Ketamine for depression vs anesthesia in cats was no small feat. The design ended up being a cheap keyword prefilter, then an LLM rubric that accepts or rejects papers. More on that here: https://consciousnesslibrary.org/docs/article-pipeline.html
It's free, no ads, no signup to read anything, and a registered 501(c)(3) I fund myself for now. I'd really like to know what breaks or any other feedback, and would love to answer any questions about it!
That said, I've been working with Josie Kins who runs https://effectindex.com/ and she's been building out a new system that incorporates categorized subjective effects on psychedelics, dosage and harm reduction info, with a huge amount of trip reports from all over the internet that we'll integrate into the individual topics sections probably in the next couple months.
1) grounding LLM scripture references in the actual text and eliminating hallucinations. This is the platform for that. https://withlattice.com
2) how to use AI to get people into scripture more as opposed to being a substitute for it. This is the product I made for it - it uses #1 above. https://trysojourn.app
We will soon add more import conveniences, like asking your llm to generate importer for your special pdf formats. 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’ve mentioned it before, but we can get some pretty good results for developing implementation and tests with this setup. The context isolation makes it easy to separate test and code writing using a specification as a source of truth. Tests are then run by an arbiter that feedback to tests or implementation depending on who it blames for test failures. The tests are then treated as an independent implementation, and through the math of coincident errors, the arbiter feedback loop ensures that both are eventually correct (N-versions and clean room research did this with humans in the 80s). This then allows us to use less reliable LLMs to develop code, like Qwen on a MacBook Pro.
I hope to have something out on GitHub before my beach period ends (well, if I’m unsuccessful in getting a new role, then I’ll have a lot more time to play at least).
Edit: ok I cheated using Gemini. Gardening leave is you are leaving or were terminated, and they have to pay your salary but don't want you near company assets. On the Beach is you are waiting for your next assignment and have access to training and such, you aren't consider a security breach.
I'm in both worlds right now: I wasn't technically terminated, so I can look for a new position (like being on the beach), BUT they think I'm a potential security breach so my access to corporate resources is really nerfed (like on gardening leave).
Gemini calls it being a "displaced employee". I like to think I'm just on the beach in Bali working on my own projects.
The bet is that current models are good enough that anyone can one-shot a fun browser game. What they can't generate is the multiplayer part (server, WebSockets, state sync, hosting), so that's the only part we've built: a browser SDK plus a hosted relay. Deploy a game, get one link, and everyone who opens it is in the same room.
Quickest way to see it: open any game on https://antics.gg/games in two tabs.
So, I'm building a compatibility layer; something that works with everything - including your own vibe-coded personal CRM.
It's already helping - even something as simple as correlating calendar events with new connections so that you always know where you met someone.
https://tend2thrive.com if you're curious; It's live, so DM me if you'd like an account rather than just hitting the waitlist.
Done a lot of analysis, sliced and diced data different ways, and then realized I need a website.
Ended up building https://climbable.day - hopefully a helpful resource for fellow Mountaineers from Seattle and around. 500 summits, 20 years of weather data, then went all in and added
- Wildfire smoke map overlays from official sources - Road closures from WSDOT - Information about approaches to most of the summits, sourced from Peak Beggar and Mountaineers - Database of known incidents from AAC - Compare your plan A, plan B, plan C, that type of thing
Site gained traction in the local community, and I have about a couple hundred users that seem to be using it on a weekly basis. It's free, and I intended to keep it such. It's a personal project, not something I plan to make money on. If you're in PNW and find it helpful, I'd be happy to hear what ideas you have. If you're not in Seattle but would like me to extend it to cover your neck of the woods, let me know.
For example, here's my recent trip with few friends https://www.mountaineers.org/activities/trip-reports/interme... - 2 nights out, roped glacier travel, scrambling, rock climbing, a good mix of planning and stamina was required. And for all I know this is a low end of mountaineering.
You send it your events via email, online, in-app, or text message even, and it puts it into your calendar for you, letting you know if there’s conflicts and keeping track of who is assigned to what, not just who’s attending or not. My goal is to have it proactively notify you when there’s potential issues like rain, traffic, or something else.
You can connect it to ChatGPT, Claude, or other agent through MCP so you don’t even have to use the built-in AI. And there’s an API, SDK and CLI for those who want to tinker and build custom displays or interactions.
There’s an always-free version to get started and try it out. You can find it at https://mavolife.com
https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.
https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.
https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".
Took a long break earlier this year to recharge, but now I'm back at it again, mostly working on Feedbun, about to launch it as an early alpha. :)
As a small way of standing up to them I created https://rigove.co.uk/ (rightmove without htm - the hidden toll machine ;)
If you change rightmove to rigove while browsing a property for sale you get a page which shows where else that property is listed.
It is only a few days old so it is currently more miss than hit but I plan to reach out to estate agents to increase coverage as quick as I can.
I've also been slowly chipping away at a Jagged Alliance 2-like game in Godot. Nothing to share yet but if anyone else is also frustrated that there hasn't been a good video game since Jagged Alliance 2 and you want to work on it reach out to me through the contact in my profile.
I got depressed from my grievance with my abusive mother and started reading the compiler dragon book along with artificial intelligence by steve.
It has a few potentially interesting side effects:
- enterprises can plug their preferred LLM into the SaaS they use.
- self hosters can extend their rigs into the web.
- simple SaaS products can offer LLM integrations without their entire pricing model being upended by LLM hosting and infrastructure.
- we can all live like Ender in Xenocide and have a personal AI that has context on everything we are doing.
- have a no op provider for people who are anti llm.
This year, I am creating a nodejs MUD, well closer to a MUSH actually.
* Everything is an Entity with Attributes * A player is an Entity with its client property set * There's a handful of built-in commands, but the important ones are @eval and @set-attribute * The soft-code language is ... JavaScript. * It uses the vm module from nodejs[0] to execute stuff. * It has separate clients (so far) for Discord, Slack, and local console. It's easy to add more and will be easier after I do this one refactor.
Each time an soft-code command or function or what have you executes, it creates a new context to isolate the soft-code from the rest of the application and uses Proxy objects to isolate the database Entity from the soft-code Entity. As an example, this is the look command (placed on the global registry object):
if (!me.location) {
me.send("You are nowhere.");
} else {
me.send("**" + me.location.name + "**");
const contents = me.location.contents;
if (!contents?.length) {
me.send("You see nothing here.");
} else {
me.emit("You see:\\n" + contents.map(thing => "* " + thing.name).join("\\n"));
}
}
The MUSH outputs markdown for everything, so each client can format it however it likes.
I know the security is not nearly close to perfect, but it's mostly a proof of concept that I will make public one day. I did do a few things, like disable eval and Function and Promise but there's probably plenty of ways to get around it.
Originally inspired by the stream deck, but I wanted a more dynamic interface and less hardware restrictions. For example you can use your phone as the controller.
Now it can do a whole lot more. Including mouse, keyboard, media controls. Supports custom buttons types and things like sliders and color pickers. Dynamically switches layout based on foreground app, and can also control which app is in the foreground from the controller itself. Having a lot of fun so there are a bunch more features in the hopper like deeper app integration, and an eink version.
Its a web app/PWA, so no app store needed.
Meanwhile, I decided to revive my Rust liblinux project. Rust has come a long way since 2019, notably the inline assembly macro has been stabilized. I will learn Rust this time!
It's been really fun to build with. Agents can create parametric procedures so e.g. stick framing becomes a simple function call for the next agent, building a flywheel. There is full agent-human parity in every surface, so there is a human UI for the procedures too.
Every operation is yaml, so agents pick it up pretty quickly. Agents can also file feature requests when they reach for a tool that doesn't exist. You can export to 3d printing files, video walk-through, step files, get a BOM and a cut plan, view your project in life-size with AR. There is a notion-like interface for authoring build guides... a lot going on. If you're a woodworker/software engineer you might enjoy it.
You can add the MCP to your agent of choice, send a picture, description, sketch or whatever; say "build this with Sawdust"
https://sawdust.diy
I wanted to build a bed frame recently and imagined software where I could choose lumber from a list and visually assemble the bed frame in the software how I see fit, choose stains, flourishes - then go order the wood and have it cut. At that point it's like taking home an IKEA bed, except of way higher quality materials and to your exact design spec.
So
> Real SKUs, a real BOM you can send to any lumberyard; understand exactly what you need down to the last nail.
Is especially interesting, it sounds like you could basically do that with this software.
Turning the woodworking process into code to be automated by an LLM is pretty ambitious, and is the part I am most skeptical about. Of course, if you get that right (plus adoption) it would be unbelievably huge.
And you can customize it beyond the existing design by asking an agent to modify it, e.g. "let's use walnut 4x4s and 2x4 slats", "I don't like how the corners come together, can we make it more like traditional joinery?" Also, staining is a supported procedure (it's very useful for e.g. coloring geodesic dome struts by strut type), you can just ask the agent to stain the pieces with whichever color you like, I'm sure you could even use a named stain you want to use like "Minwax Dark Oak" and get something pretty close.
Impressive stuff. Actually more impressive than I even imagined.
“Fits in my SUV” you are a mad man! Love everything about this site. I might actually do it now haha - no more excuses.
I also suspect there’s a fairly finite number of sane join primitives, you can have rabbets, dados, dominos, dovetails, pocket screws, etc. These could be experimented with digitally against an existing design. And your tool availability could determine what you can do.
And of course cut order and assembly is just a DAG and can be generated from geometric constraints of the actual design.
https://shopspec.io/app
Feel free to reach out! Email in profile.
This was all pre AI. Super impressive that you’ve made something awesome. I’ll try it out tonight
I keep seeing this word. Every time, I have to look it up; I marvel at the fact that we have such a cool word describing a complex but interesting topic; and apparently forget it again. And then I never find a situation where I can use it.
If this does what I think it does (and I confess I’m a goddamn idiot still when it comes to anything involving ‘agentic’) this is honestly pretty damn amazing.