Exploring effective (hype-free) usage of AI in customer communications. https://enchant.com
Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#262I'm attempting to work on a "spiritual successor" to Dramatica Story Expert, a crazy story theory/brainstorming program of days gone by. Technically, Dramatica is still around, but they never made a 64-bit version for Macs, and both the Mac and Windows version have been tenaciously clinging to the trailing edge of technology for decades. (The Mac version somehow never got retina fonts. I'm not sure how you even do that.)
I started my program in Swift and SwiftUI, although for various reasons I'm starting to look at Dart and Flutter (in part because being multiplatform would be beneficial, and in part because I am getting the distinct feeling this program is more ambitious than where SwiftUI is at currently). It isn't a direct port of Dramatica by any stretch, instead drawing on what I've learned writing my own novels, getting taught by master fiction writers, and being part of writing workshops. But no other program that I've seen uses Dramatica's neatest concepts, other than Subtxt, a web-based, AI-focused app which has recently been anointed Dramatica's official successor. (It's a neat concept, but it's very expensive compared to the original Dramatica or any other extant "fiction plotting" program. Also, there's a space for non-AI software here, I suspect: there are a lot of creatives who are adamantly opposed to it in any form whatsoever.)
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#263An experimental mesh network protocol, that is still very much pre alpha and missing some features.
The big thing I wanted to try is automatic global routing via MQTT.
Everything is globally routable. You can roam around between gateway nodes, as long as all the gateways are on the same MQTT server.
And there's a JavaScript implementation that connects directly to MQTT. So you can make a sensor, go to the web app, type the sensor's channel key, and see the data, without needing to create any accounts or activate or provision anything.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#264Financial independence tracker. https://jch.app
Redesigning investment holdings for wider screens and leaning on hotwired turbo frames. Thankful for once-campfire as a reference for how to structure the backend. The lazy loading attribute works great with css media queries to display more on larger viewports.
Enjoying learning modern css in general. App uses tailwind, but did experiment with just css on the homepage. Letting the design emerge organically from using it daily, prototype with tailwind, then slim it back down with plain css.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#265Currently a one-man side project: https://laboratory.love Last year, PlasticList found plastic chemicals in 86% of tested foods—including 100% of baby foods they tested. Around the same time, the EU lowered its “safe” BPA limit by 20,000×, while the FDA still allows levels roughly 100× higher than Europe’s new standard. That seemed solvable. Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent lab testing of the specific p…
this looks so cool! I wish it told me if the levels found for tested products were good/bad - I have no prior reference so the numbers meant nothing to me
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#266Making rent as an open source developer.
Attracting new monthly sponsors and people willing to buy me the occasional pizza with my crappy HTML skills.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#267Working on my website that can heatmap cities based on your lifestyle preferences. https://theretowhere.com It currently supports complex heatmaps based on travel time (e.g. close to work + close to friends + far from police precincts), and has a browser extension to display your heatmap over popular listing sites like Zillow. I'm thinking of making it into an API to allow websites to integrate with it directly.
Absolutely stellar! I've been looking for something like this for ages. Any chance you'll have some pre- defined options like grocery stores, libraries, airport, etc?
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#268Working on Puter ( https://github.com/heyPuter/puter/ ), the Open-source Internet Computer! Building desktop environment in the cloud with built in cloud storage, AI, processing, app ecosystem and much more!
Lovely interface. This is quite impressive. I can't seem to get a terminal running though. Can I actually execute scripts here? I opened code and created a hello.py, terminal did not come up in Code either.
Thank you so much! We are working on a Linux emulator that would allow you to run most programs. It's currently a bit behind but coming out soon :)
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#269I am working on making ultra-low cost freeze-dried enzymes for synthetic biology. For example, 1 PCR reaction (a common reaction used to amplify DNA) costs about $1 each, and we're doing tons every day. Since it is $1, nobody really tries to do anything about it - even if you do 20 PCRs in one day, eh it's not that expensive vs everything else you're doing in lab. But that calculus changes once you start scaling up w…
That sounds really cool. I wouldn't agree you can't make money off this, you can make money off anything, just find people who need this and it seems you did find it.
Anyhow good luck. Would love to follow if you do anything with this in the future. Do you have a blog or anything?
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
#270Working on my website that can heatmap cities based on your lifestyle preferences. https://theretowhere.com It currently supports complex heatmaps based on travel time (e.g. close to work + close to friends + far from police precincts), and has a browser extension to display your heatmap over popular listing sites like Zillow. I'm thinking of making it into an API to allow websites to integrate with it directly.
Living in hongkong for a few months, and absolutely love exploring the different neighborhoods. I’d love something like this or walkscore but for local guides to contribute.