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Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

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641–650 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#641

As a side project, I've been working on a RAG/MCP/agent service with workflows, for security: https://mappedsky.com/seizu/ This primarily builds on top of cartography ( https://docs.cartography.dev/ ), which I'm a contributor to, which pulls infrastructure, SaaS, etc info into a Neo4j database, makes edges, and has a standardize ontology, so you can do attack path analysis, vulnerability assessment, inventory, etc. S…

Super cool, and thanks for your contributions to Cartography :)

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#643
I just released a small app called Fogpane: https://asok.github.io/fog-website/index.html?lang=en

The concept is intentionally simple: you open a photo, it gets covered by a layer of fog, and you use your finger to wipe the fog away and reveal the image underneath – a bit like drawing on a fogged-up window.

I’ve always wanted to publish something on the App Store, so I decided to use this as an experiment: how far can I get while letting AI write the entire app?

For full transparency, essentially all of the code was written by AI. I guided it, described what I wanted, tested the results, reported bugs, and made product/design decisions, but I didn’t really write the implementation myself.

For an app this small, I was surprised by how far this approach got me. It wasn’t completely hands-off – there was plenty of iteration, especially around making the fog and water droplets feel somewhat realistic – but it went from an idea to an actual app in the store.

I’m a software developer myself, which made the experiment particularly interesting. In many cases I understood what the AI was doing, but deliberately tried not to take over and write the code myself.

I installed Codex around three weeks ago. It’s hard to estimate exactly how much time I’ve spent on the app since then, but it’s probably been a couple dozen hours rather than hundreds.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#644

I've been working on a Persian classical poetry archive with LLM-generated translation. As a poetry enthusiast but a non-speaker of Persian, I wanted to read Rumi, Hafiz, and Bedil, but found myself jumping between ChatGPT and Google Translate. I sourced my data from Ganjoor, which was luckily available via their public API. Then I quickly put together a website with bring-your-own-key translation feature. For now, t…

get a few personal gmail accounts's gemini API key, and you have 1000s of free LLM calls to flash-lite models, which are more than upto this task. one time run, and save it to your db.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#645

I'm working on Dictatorship Simulator. A deckbuilder where, instead of directly attacking your enemy, you manipulate a political simulation to do it for you. You start out on the fringe, and slowly work your way up, fighting an increasingly worried and panicky government - as well as your own. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4564800/Dictatorship_Simu...

I'm clearly signing up for this. It reminds me of a game that I loved in the it's, Balance of Power. Equally, I still love Democracy 3. Good luck, I'm definitely sharing.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#646
I'm building a house. I contracted out the structural shell and exterior, then all the internal work I'm doing myself. Except for plumbing, I don't want to be responsible for creating a swimming pool. In my country there is no such thing as "permits", you can do any work on your own house without certifications. If I had gas I'd contract that out too.

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-ish finish" you mainly just need a good eye for detail.

An important lesson I learnt is the phrase "paint covers a multitude of sins" is wrong, as paint does not cover it, your mistakes will still be visible just in a different colour. Joint compound/plaster does though :D

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#648
RapidCAM.app is still taking up all my time. It is a 2.5D, parametric CAD/CAM program for CNC and laser with flat or 4th axis. Open source, free, run completely in browser.

This is a passion project that I want for my own use but am happy if other's find it useful and very open to feedback and collaboration.

The file system is open and very well defined so that AI can write files. There is an AI Assistant dialog that helps you to write prompts and then takes the AI file and runs the file through a solver and checks.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#649
I'm working on my guitar practice app, Captrice[1]. Last week, I added an interactive metronome tutorial[2] in the app to help onboard beginners (quite a challenge). This week I'm planning to implement the long pending "device sync" functionality - currently it's a local-only webapp (it's all static pages; no backend server). So for the past couple of days, I've been learning and evaluating the existing sync solutions.

The app has been my long term side project for more than 2 years now. I've been playing guitar for more than 20 years, mostly as a hobbyist. It started as a personal project and I've got immense value out of it in terms of speed building and consistency of practice. I believe other guitar players can find it useful too.

A few months back I got a burst of inspiration to pursue it more seriously. After my last contract ended, I've been primarily working on it. Eventually I may go back to contract work again but for now I'm excited to spend dedicated time on it! Do give it a try, or share it with guitar players in your circle.

[1]: https://www.captrice.io/

[2]: https://app.captrice.io/metronome-101

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

#650
post #589

Rated Analysis, rating relative chess analysis: https://rated-analysis.pickle-dev.com/ 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 anal…

Very interesting to see the above and below based on your own rating. A great add will be to show two columns: what players like me play here and the actual best counter after that move. An auto reply for the move i make will make this super useful and less cluttered than the usual tools.
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