Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)

As far as what I'm focusing on this weekend:

1. Right now, working on standing up an MCP server in Java. Not using the Spring Boot support at the moment, but rather setting up embedded Tomcat and doing it the more "low level" way just for didactic purposes. I'm sure I'll use Spring Boot once I get deeper into all of this.

2. Plowing through the "AI Agents in Action" book. I'm just wrapping up the section on AutoGen and about to move into crew.ai stuff.

3. Reading a book on Software Product Line Engineering.

4. I have an older project that's Grails based that I let linger without any attention for a really long time. I'm working on updating it to run on the latest Grails and Java versions and also writing some automated smoke tests.

Unifi Video was replaced by Unifi Protect some time in 2020. I wasn't sure how to self-host Protect, so I never migrated to it. I've recently reached a situation where some phones can no longer install the Unifi Video app. These phones are now relegated to using the rough-on-mobile UI. The Unifi Video web UI has also never worked well in Firefox for me.

In the past few months, I've finally started working on a basic replacement NVR that works for me: https://github.com/AlbinoDrought/creamy-nvr

Like many video projects, it's a glorified ffmpeg wrapper :)

Cool - is it easy to tell which batteries have a problem when you need to replace some?

Inspired by MathAcademy, I'm developing:

1) a note-taking workflow in Obsidian (you take bite-sized notes about a topic, then connect "prerequisite" notes in Obsidian's canvas editor)

2) a tool that uploads each note and graph data to a database

3) a webapp that presents those notes algorithmically using spaced repetition. This enables you to allow others to "traverse" your note graph in a guided and self-paced manner.

You can add "challenge presets" to each note so that your mastery of each piece of knowledge can be tested with simple flashcards, multiple choice, free response, or some visual/actionable task to force active recall. An algorithm uses your success rate and spaced repetition data to introduce & drill more advanced notes into your long term memory.

Here's some more reading I was inspired by:

https://www.mathacademy.com/pedagogy

https://www.justinmath.com/individualized-spaced-repetition-...

Even if there are a lot of imperfections and flaws about this project (like the sheer difficulty of curating a good knowledge graph to begin with), I'm hoping to make my note-taking in Obsidian more structured and thorough, replace my Anki routine, and make any of my notes into an automated + algorithmic course. If someone has another similar project (combining note-taking with hierarchal, topological knowledge graphs with spaced repetition and testing all in one platform) I would love to hear more about your approaches. Quick shoutout to one person I've seen who is doing something similar: https://x.com/JeffreyBiles/status/1926639544666816774

Dude those benchmarks are nice great job