alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
What are you working on? What have you been curious about lately?
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I spent few months to buil the alternative to Wireshark. Native macOS app, built with Cocoa (Sorry SwiftUI), on top of libwireshark, so you can see the packet details like Wireshark. Support TCP, UDP, DNS, HTTP2, ...
A iTunes inspired music app (uses an extension of DAAP) for classic Macintosh (Mac II and system 6 and newer currently only m68k, ppc coming soon) https://github.com/nburns/iRunes
And a extended DAAP compatible server than can convert other local music libraries (files/dlna/etc) for iRunes https://github.com/nburns/sharon-jones-and-the-daap-king
I'm still tinkering with my iOS/Android app.
It allows you to get a wake up call, like you would at a hotel, but from a real, friendly person somewhere around the world. If nobody is available to make your call, you'll get an automated call with a friendly recording.
All calls happen through the app so no phone numbers exchanged.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wake-up-call-service/id6741027... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.socurious....
Enjoying retirement. Amazed how fast I was able to just stop thinking about software. It's very liberating.
Onigiri [1] - https://github.com/ecliptik/onigiri
A calorie tracker for iPhone/Watch/iPad, no subscriptions, no ads, integrates with Apple Health and fully open source. Includes optional AI features, either using on-device Apple Intelligence or BYO with Anthropic, OpenAI and OpenAI compatible services (eg self-hosted).
Still tuning it, but over the last month I've used it to lose around 10lbs.
I'm planning to put it in Testflight to avoid the 7 day signing expiration and improve iCloud integration, but don't have any plans to put it in the App Store. Developed with Claude Code and Axiom skills [2].
I’m working on ProofLeague, an app for keeping workout promises with friends:
https://proofleague.com (iOS, web app and android)
You create a private league, set a weekly goal (workout 3x a week), and tap Start when you begin a workout. Friends get notified and then have 30 minutes to ask for a selfie. If nobody asks, the workout counts automatically. There’s no public feed or strangers involved, just a small group keeping each other honest.
My friends and I had been doing a version of this via text message for years, but this app has been great. I am in 4 "leagues", all of them get notified at once and then I only share my selfie once and it automatically goes to any group that asks. It's motivating and hilarious to see people working out.
It's free and would love for you guys to try it and set up a league with friends or family. Please send me any feedback at [email protected]
I've been working on https://plantkeeper.co/
It started as a tool to help me figure out if I need to protect my plants or water them down here in New Orleans since we don't really have freezing season, but also have super hot days or rain issues.
I've been working on BuildYard (https://buildyard.ai/) - where you can build your own portfolio for AI work. Each of us use AI in different ways for different reasons and understanding it would help in spreading it's advantages across the board.
I am building a new modern Terminal browser. A text based browser for the terminal. Full privacy, features. Ultra fast. For those who love to work in terminal but somehow are dissapointed with Lynx.
* Native and small. * Private by default. * Terminal-safe. * Agent-ready. A built-in MCP server exposes read-only tools (browser_open, browser_read, browser_list_links). * Configurable.
[0] [code] https://github.com/meerita/puma-browser
I am still far away of 1.0, but I've been using it every day since. It's open source, you can compile it and use it as you want.
Every week I try to finish more features.
Posted on the other thread too related to this
I’ve been making interactive learning resources for myself - with wasm and browser simulation based labs (browser only interactive courses served from GitHub pages) to teach me topics from beginner to advanced
LLMs and systems intersection - https://kernelspace.naigap.com
Distributed systems - https://byzantine.play.naigap.com
I'm working on a family organizer app Mana - The AI-Connected Home App for Households & Trusted Circles https://share.google/dCKfODeN7c1QhHhft
Working on an open-source alternative to Loom/Jam/Birdie/Screendesk
It captures the screen recording along with console logs, network requests, and session activity so you can get to the root cause faster
Building a replacement for firecracker.
Thinking ground up what AI agents would need rather than struggling later on with snapshotting live vms, or orchestration overhead etc.
rust-vmm proved really great for this.
It's a darkroom toy/simulator for photogs running in the browser on WebGPU. It's half film sim, half creative chaos and each run is different. Still pretty early.
I've been putting my applied math degree to work!
https://asunder.co/montegrid - Mainly working on a Monte Carlo Excel plugin that can run on Mac. Standard scientific computing shenanigans ... one benefit of everything being Javascript is that one can use Rust -> WASM everywhere :)
Also maintaining weaving software (https://asunder.co/bower) which has so many fun puzzles in discrete math and combinatorial optimization to think about.
Cool to see everyone else's projects!
Launched a suite of media inspection and encoding tools a few months ago, based on FFmpeg. Slowly getting more customers.
Constantly iterating through refinement and features. It's built on Rust + Tauri with a React frontend, in case anyone is curious.
I've created various open-source and commercial tools in the multimedia space over the last 10+ years and wanted to put it all together into something more premium with an IDE-like experience.
Most recently I added a /playground area to experiment with the inspection tools via a WASM build, which I thought was a neat way for users to try the app before downloading the full version.
Happy to answer any questions!
An agent harness that is kind of like airflow for agent tasks.
I thought open claw was cool but could never use something so insecure.
Each run is in a container. One network bridge out so everything from tool calls to model communication goes over the bridge.
Each run has a capability token and the host checks grants for the tools attempting to be called.
Core super thin and everything from credentials handling to model communication is a package.
Finally got it alpha and have some useful jobs set up like it triggering jobs on an alert channel in slack. Debugging it with tools like GitHub kube and our work mcp and the dropping a comment on every alert with the cause.
Still closed source but hoping to change that after some more testing.
A prolog to c compiler
I got depressed from my grievance with my abusive mother and started reading the compiler dragon book along with artificial intelligence by steve.
It’s not as cool as most of the other projects, but I have a little app (Ato on AppStore - https://apps.apple.com/app/ato/id6757285141) for basically tracking all walks/bike rides I’ve ever been and visualize it on a single map. I’ve had the app for a couple of years, but redid it with “hexes”, instead of just routes. It has a bit of coop, competition and ranking feeling to it nowadays as well.
I started the original project as an excuse to learn SwiftUI, then been using it as an excuse to test all the frontier models and etc. to see how much better we’re getting at AI-coding. Kinda fun to see a couple dozen weekly users semi-competing with each other. Obviously nothing big, but the feeling you get seeing someone else use your app is very nice.
Working on https://radius.to/ - a Meetup.com alternative of sorts - with fairer organiser pricing for smaller groups.
I posted a Show HN [1] here a while back, got tons of great feedback, and have been slowly improving it since, with no real marketing. Another Show HN is probably (definitely) overdue!
Current focus is shipping a "Meet people doing X" feature - i.e. "I'm going for a cycle today in Richmond Park - who wants to join" (independent from groups) so I'm excited for that. There are some UI examples of how that will look on the landing page.
I wanted to know if I could fully describe an online survey using a simple, readable, parseable language.
There are numerous UI form builders. And Xlsform for ODK and KoboToolbox but nothing I could find that is easy for humans and machines to grok. So I wrote a DSL in Ruby to see if it could be done. The language is mostly described at https://srp.solutions and some example usage and implementation at https://srpsurveys.com/
I have been working on couple of open source projects related to package intelligence and AI tooling.
https://secchi.dev Secchi is Open Source Package Intelligence | python based
https://tuffcli.dev tuff is Capability lifecycle manager for coding agents | rust based
Both would be very helpful to be part of developer tooling. I built package intelligence when I need to monitor the downloads of my other personal project packages from package manager.
I have learned a lot over in terms of rust language, design patterns in rust, also how the ecosystem of AI capabilities within projects use cases and needs
That sounds interesting, give star to repo :D
I'm slowly working on a spacecraft design webapp: https://vesperastro.com. Think PCPartPicker for spacecraft.
You can build out and trade hardware in the master equipment list and immediately visualize how any changes impact mass, power, propellant, and link margins, or break power or data interface compatibility. You can also play around with orbit and operating modes to optimize things like orbit average power.
I'm hoping it can be useful in rapidly iterating early stage spacecraft designs and weighing system-level trade studies across CONOPS and hardware. Its still very much a work in progress so I'm always open to feedback.
I'm working on a browser IDLE game made with Go. I've never touched Go before. The game core it's 80% done and it was pretty easy to code but I have no idea what I'm doing in with the transport/http layer.
At this rate I'll have it finished by the end of the next decade.
I'm working on my typed, fast data frame language Ibex: https://github.com/bobjansen/Ibex
It is usable stand alone but also through an R package:
https://bobjansen.net/faster-than-data-table-introducing-ibe...
It performs better than data.table in my benchmarking on a wide array of tasks and is competitive with Polars on low core counts.
I got laid off recently and finally decided to dedicate some time to learn Rust, I started to work on an an idea I've head for a while, to create a game server to play Thai chess inspired by lichess.org, in fact, I plan to use several of their assets.
I'll use Rust for the backend even though it's probably an over kill, but it's the best way to learn for me, doing something with the language. I have some of the front end move logic and board done, I plan to start working on the API soon, after I finish a Rust book I'm reading. Here's some of the code if anybody is interested: https://github.com/thaichess-org.
https://pendragon.foxtrotcommunications.net/
A legit attempt at making an AI financial advisor for everyday Americans. Most Americans can't afford a human CFP which can cost thousands of dollars a year. We offer a great AI driven alternative for less than $300/yr.
I'm still working on https://openaltfinder.com; a directory to help people discover open-source projects. Added quite a bit of new features over the last month, including a new weekly newsletter, and a way for people to find beginner friendly issues: https://openaltfinder.com/contribute
It's been tough, for some reason both Google and Bing completely erased my site from their indexes.
Another thing I'm working on: https://getpinnd.com - A small social network for map makers.
I’m working on https://fittingme.ai, a product-page widget for fashion e-commerce.
It answers two questions that are usually handled together inside the fitting room: “How might this look on me?” and “Which size should I order?”
The virtual try-on renders the garment using a shopper’s photograph. The size recommendation component estimates the users measures, use the brand’s size chart estimated measurements and suggests a size plus a fallback.
The merchant integrates both through two widgets.
I'm backporting the modern 2026 WebKit framework to work with Safari 7 on OS X Mavericks, from 2013.
With the updated frameworks in place, this ancient browser becomes able to access the modern web again! Even webapps like Figma work!
https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/WebKit
(As I make clear in the Readme, Claude wrote this code, a project like this would never be feasible otherwise. My main job has been to decide on larger infrastructure questions and find bugs and make them reproducible.)
Working with agents generates a lot of markdown input and output. So I'm working on viva, a tool to help author and review docs.
You tell it what kind of doc you want, attach any necessary links/files/repo paths/etc, then it asks you clarifying questions until it has the data it needs. Then it authors a doc and give you a review interface. You can approve, request more info, request changes, make direct edits, etc. Then submit and makes edits until and represents until you approve all sections.
I am working on Cangjie Workbook. I am trying to create the best in class tool for learning Cangjie. It's a Chinese input method based on decomposing characters into sub parts (not necessarily related to how they are written). It has a high learning curve, but it is a lot of fun to type with and helps you remember characters. It is a tool that I use myself. I already have a couple of users that have been giving me feedback. You can use a subset for free and without any login credentials. The complete product is available for a small monthly fee. Any feedback is welcome!
Today I resumed working on my open source browser extension to export chats from Microsoft Teams web client, after a two week long mandatory break due to busy dayjob activities. Now tackling the issues opened by users. Reached to more than 75000 users in less than a year, which makes me happy that its a useful thing.
Website is: https://teamschatexporter.com/
Marginalia Search as usual.
Recently went on an optimization bender that saw the index now become almost completely bottle-necked by CPU in the ranking calculations step. Pretty neat. Faster ranking means better results as queries run on a timeout.
Also working on making the search results more relevant by fixing jank.
Also working on some more commercial features, like the ability to monitor queries (e.g. for backlinks or brand mentions) and get an email when there are new results. Unsure if there's much demand for that, but I want the feature, so I'm buying it even if it doesn't make me yacht money.
An overhaul of my original PlayStation bare-metal programming tutorial repo: https://github.com/spicyjpeg/ps1-bare-metal
It was never really meant to be an SDK of sorts that other PS1 homebrew projects would pull as a submodule and depend on, but since it more or less became one I am likely going to split off the examples from the "core" (headers, CMake build scripts and tools). I have also been asked to add more examples, particularly on how to play sounds through the SPU and access the CD-ROM drive, and may cover I/O on some PS1-based arcade systems in the future.
I am working on a CLI tool that will build a static web page for a small brick and mortar store. The software is FOSS and could be useful for the small store that has a lot of foot traffic, but is under served by many of the big tech offerings. The idea is that foot traffic can be increased by using a QR code placed on a banner outside the store directing them to the website that can display sales and types of items that the store offers. Pleases check out the build log for details of my progress.
I left my job a few months ago and have been building https://oristudio.pages.dev. It’s an origami design workspace that runs in the browser. Super niche but I’ve been really loving just working on a passion project I can use for my hobby.
Just released USBSID-Pico v1.5 an improved pcb without jumpers. USBSID-Pico is a RaspberryPi Pico/PicoW (RP2040) & Pico2/Pico2W (RP2350) based board for interfacing one or two MOS SID chips and/or hardware SID emulators over (WEB)USB with your computer, phone, ASID supporting player or USB midi controller. https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico
A visually grounded AI tutoring application: https://knowable.ca Been working full-time on it for a few months, I'm trying to make the concept of an AI tutor better than just a chatbox.
Working on https://localhero.ai, automating i18n translations for product teams (runs as a GitHub Action, translates new strings on PRs matching your brand voice and glossary).
Shipped "bring your own translations" feature this month, built together with a customer who wanted Localhero for the workflow and review layer but writes some translations themselves. Otherwise smaller improvements and marketing. Better Lingui support, for example: projects using explicit IDs keep the source text in the source locale's msgstr instead of the msgid, which our CLI got wrong before. Also wrote some blog posts, a comparison of GitHub Actions for i18n and a guide to auto-translating gettext .po files in CI (Django, Phoenix, LinguiJS). Content is slow going but it seems to be how people find us via perplixity/gemini/chatgpt.
On the side, https://infrabase.ai (AI infrastructure tools directory) grew ~16% MoM. I leaned further into the agent angle: added a public query API plus llms.txt/agents.md/etc so agents can query the directory directly, and exported the full dataset to a public GitHub repo. Starting to get som traction and people wanting collaborations.
I am building this:
It is the most comprehensive collection of benchmarks of the safety, ethics, and values of LLMs. I also aggregate sparse safety benchmark scores into a global ranking by optimizing the global ranking to maximize correlation with individual benchmarks.
Akariq has taken most of my time [0]. I sell travel eSIM plans for 190+ countries, no app or account needed! Since last time, many HN readers have tried it with very positive reviews. I reply to each and every customer who reach out to me and also implemented some feedback they gave.
On July 24 2026, all major eSIM providers including Akariq faced disruptions. However, Akariq was able to serve all customers even during the downtime either by switching to backup resources or issuing replacement eSIMs free of cost. Some customers of major providers like Airalo experienced serious down time. I wrote more about the incident here and what I am striving to be better in terms of automation etc [1].
One review from a customer in China [2] made all my effort worth it. They said that they were able to use Akariq to access Gmail, WhatsApp etc around the GFW. It even worked smoothly in areas like Beihai and Weizhou island apart from the cities. Tethering with their laptop was helpful too.
[1] https://akariq.com/en/blog/akariq-backup-esim-service-interr...
I got laid off on the recent job cut wave industry wide, so I just started working on cars, it's been really fun to know deeper how something with higher physical consequences work, today I was looking on another old beat up car from marketplace, might work on my father's F150 next week, and got back to the industry this monday with another Tech Consultant job, so, been having a nice time
A graph-based code editor https://miralume.dev
A modern game engine that can play the Classic Fallout 1/2 games on modern systems (including mac, linux, iOS, Android). Hoping to bring these games to a wider audience.
For the last couple of months I was working daily, and intensely, on Meltdown. The project started in 2024, but I retook it recently and improved/extended it a lot.
This is an AI Harness + Platform, made in Python and Tkinter.
It has a lot of advanced features, arguments, commands, shortcuts.
Lots of widgets and the markdown parser were done from scratch.
It has a powerful API to create conversational sessions interactively.
You can learn about it on a blog post I made:
https://github.com/madprops/blog/blob/main/docs/meltdown/mel...
I just hacked together https://www.firstbranch.ai in a few days, conversational intelligence for congress hearings.
I was talking about healthcare price transparency with a friend. He pointed me to a hearing in congress and I was surprised by how much I learned from one of the witnesses' testimonies so I built a "serendipity engine" for congress hearings.
A few things actually.
I’ve been working up reimplementations of Nikoli puzzles to host on my personal blog, the goal is to work through the maths and then explain how it’s relevant or helps create a fun games. Nikoli is the magazine that helped create sudoku and made it famous - they have a lot of other pen and paper puzzles that are really fun to play.
I’ve also got two other open source tools I’ve built to help me work daily:
https://tajd.github.io/cofferdam/ which is a rust based cli tool I wrote to parse the ast of codebase and enforce architectural preferences - eg don’t reimplement design system for components down to DRY
https://tajd.github.io/projektor/ Is an ai native project management tool where I can plan work on the train and then have my agents pick it up autonomously. Bootstrapped it quickly but then have been incrementally adding more functionality to it. It’s like self hosted jira on cloudflare but much faster and has more agentic development tools. I added tooling around being able to autonomously work through epics, manage quality and fix identified bugs - https://tajd.github.io/projektor/agents/playbooks/epic-goal/. The goal being deliver useful features and then to ultimately surface the number of bugs identified by agents and users so that I can see the health of the project and figure out if I need to write more code myself or improve feature descriptions to reduce discovered bugs. I don’t think this is new at all but it’s reliable and done well, I hope.
I'm working to make one of the biggest free and privacy-friendly tool websites. A lot of them are things I want and need all the time.
I've been working on a general repository linter. The idea is to declaratively define a set of rules/conventions for your repo, (for things that language-specific linters don't cover), covering things from directory structure, required files, file staleness/freshness, file size, rules for binary files, rules around use of invisible Unicode, etc. - which can be checked deterministically. Many/most large repos have a set of hand-authored scripts for doing these kinds of checks, the tool I'm building basically packages these in a fast, reusable and extensible tool, with some niceties added.
https://alint.org/
https://alint.org/blog/why-alint/