Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

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

#221

Post by warthog »

Banker (banker.so): An AI spreadsheet that excels at spreadsheet understanding (pun intended).

There are some AI spreadsheet products out there mostly as plugins along with MS Copilot. However my experience with them showed that they are bad at understanding spreadsheets.

The reason is that sheets are 2D data models. Because LLMs are trained on 1D data models (simply text), translation of 2D data models to formats an LLM can consume is a big context engineering task.

I read and implemented some of the algos mentioned in SpreadsheetLLM paper released by Microsoft. Ironic, isn't it?

Got it to a nice working state. Give it a go - if you need more tokens, let me know!

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

#222

Post by ksr »

I'm pursuing my vision of "music-i18n": Open source music software that works for microtonal music and worldwide musical cultures.

It's not a from-scratch effort, quite the contrary: I'm trying to tie in existing music standards (MIDI, MusicXML, SMuFL, MEI, etc.) and ensure that FOSS systems (MuseScore, Verovio, smaller components) implement enough of those standards to support music-i18n.

Sometimes, this also includes extending the standards themselves when they are not fully capable of representing some non-mainstream musical aspect. For example, MusicXML lacks the ability of representing multiple accidentals per note (whereas MEI does), which is a must for microtonality.

I started down this path around 2018, as a music player who got interested in arranging Arabic songs in a "Real Book" style. It opened a giant rabbit hole that I'm still far from having fully explored.

Now and then, I collaborate with other devs who are interested in adjacent topics. I would love to hear from some of you here!

As an entry point, I recommend checking out the "progress report" I wrote last October: https://blog.karimratib.me/2024/10/01/music-grimoire-progres... - I'm currently drafting this year's update. My main demo is at https://blog.karimratib.me/demos/musicxml/

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

#223

Post by khazit »

I’m still working on Simple Observability:

https://simpleobservability.com

I built it because I needed two things:

- A super easy-to-install monitoring tool that doesn’t require bash scripts or config files

- A mobile-friendly, UX-first interface where I can check everything from my phone

It’s now pretty feature complete. I can see a full picture of all the servers and VPS I run straight from my phone.

Setup is one command, no config files, and everything else happens in the UI. There’s a catalog of predefined alert rules, and creating new ones is easier than anything else I’ve used.

There’s a free tier if anyone wants to try it!

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

#224

Post by ibaikov »

cjflog wrote: post #10

Currently a one-man side project: https://laboratory.love Last year PlasticList discovered that 86% of food products they tested contain plastic chemicals—including 100% of baby food tested. The EU just lowered their "safe" BPA limit by 20,000x. Meanwhile, the FDA allows levels 100x higher than what Europe considers safe. This seemed like a solvable problem. Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent testing of s…

This is great. I thought about a different model even before plasticlist: make a subscription and test various products, but people will have a number of upvotes based on their sub streak. They vote for food to test, and then you show results to everyone subbed. Kind of like what examined does, but they do deep dives into medical topics for subs. I think this model will work better than the one you currently have. Awesome project anyways!

It is extremely weird to me that countries don't do that on taxpayers money and show the results publicly, this is what they should do.

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

#225

Post by liu3hao »

Hi HN, I am working on Circuitscript, a language based on python to describe electronic schematics/circuits: https://circuitscript.net/

Recently, I have released a simple IDE (called the Bench) to try Circuitscript online: https://bench.circuitscript.net/

The next steps are to create more schematics with Circuitscript as examples to test the limitations of the language and to generate PCB designs with KiCAD. The Circuitscript tool (currently only the desktop cli tool) is able to generate KiCAD netlists and this can be imported into PCBnew.

The motivation for creating Circuitscript is to describe schematics in terms of code rather than graphical UIs after using different CAD packages extensively (Allegro, Altium, KiCAD) in the past. I wanted to spend more time thinking about the schematic design itself rather than fiddling around with GUIs.

The main language goals are to be easy to write and reason, generated graphical schematics should be displayed according to how the designer wishes so (because this is also part of the design process) and to encourage code reuse.

Please check it out and I look forward to your feedback, especially from electronics designers/hobbyists. Thanks!

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

#226

Post by om42 »

oidar wrote: post #27
cjflog wrote: post #10

Currently a one-man side project: https://laboratory.love Last year PlasticList discovered that 86% of food products they tested contain plastic chemicals—including 100% of baby food tested. The EU just lowered their "safe" BPA limit by 20,000x. Meanwhile, the FDA allows levels 100x higher than what Europe considers safe. This seemed like a solvable problem. Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent testing of s…

Looking at the tofu reports, I really don't know what to make of them. Is there a way to give more meaning to them for the average person? Also, I'd love to see a sort by "almost funded" option.

Second this, it would be useful to have a "EU safe" label or similar to help me understand if 635.8 DEHP is a good thing or bad.

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

#227

Post by CamperBob2 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #196

Just an old hobbyist these days. I'm finishing up the written manual portion of a "breadboard helper" for playing with (learning) electronics. The current "helper" I am finishing up gives you instructions (and an explanation) for wiring up over a dozen transistor logic circuits with the aid of a small PCB + breadboard [1]. Inspired by Forrest Mims III, Don Lancaster and the "75 in 1" style electronic project kits my…

Very cool! Where's the loopstick antenna, CdS cell, and meter, though? :)

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

#230

Post by jacquesm »

cperciva wrote: post #187
jacquesm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the ETA?

Target is 2025-12-02 00:00 UTC. Given that this is a major release, there are fairly wide error bars on that; it could be as much as 3 weeks earlier if the first release candidate turns out to be perfect, and of course it could be later if things go badly (but I very much hope to get it out by the end of 2025).

That's a massive job. Much good luck, and a lack of gremlins!
Post reply on HN