Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

451–460 of 1001 posts

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

#452
I am working on a guitar practice app[1]. It's a metronome that captures speed and duration as you practice. This data can then be visualized. It's designed to be used on a desktop/laptop as there are keyboard shortcuts for easily controlling the metronome while playing the instrument, but otherwise it works quite well in mobile browsers too.

It started as a personal project a few months back. Since then, I have been using it myself, alongside building the functionality I need. Lately I have been working on polishing it up in order to put it out there for others.

Based on my usage so far, I've come to realize some good second order effects too -

1. having a list of exercises helps me quickly pick something meaningful to practice rather than noodling for most of the time.

2. At the end of a practice session, the total duration is just 15-20 mins yet it feels like quality practice. So now, even if I have just 20-30 mins of free time, I am motivated to squeeze in a quick practice session. Turns out, this is a game changer (at least for myself).

Feature wise, I'm quite happy with the current state of it although I have some ideas for premium features (if it generates enough interest). In the coming weeks, I am planning to switch gears a bit and focus more on marketing/promotion. I also need to play more, because ironically, my practice time has reduced in the last few weeks in the pursuit of "launching" it! Also, I've set a goal to publish one new exercise in the library every week until the end of this year.

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

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

#453
We’ve been building a new social-enabled git collaboration platform on top of Bluesky’s AT Protocol: https://tangled.sh

You can read an intro here: https://blog.tangled.sh/intro (it’s publicly available now, not invite-only).

In short, at the core of Tangled is what we call “knots”; they’re lightweight, headless servers that serve up your git repository, and the contents viewed and collaborated upon via the “app view” at tangled.sh. All social data (issues, comments, PRs, other repo metadata) is stored “on-proto”—in your AT Protocol PDS.

We don’t just plan to reimplement GitHub, but rethink and improve on the status quo. For instance, we plan to make stacked PRs and stacked diff-based reviews first-class citizens of the platform.

Right now, our pull request feature is rather simplistic but very useful still: you paste your git diff output, and “resubmit” for a new round of review (if necessary). You can see an example here: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core/pulls/14

We’re fully open source: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core and are actively building. Come check it out!

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

#454
I have a startup idea and I’m curious what others think.

Setting up AI agents is way too complicated. I am constantly being sent to GitHub pages with installation instructions that require way too many dependencies, API connections, and more. We’re talking hours of setup and config.

So what if there was an open-source marketplace where you could just search, find an agent, click deploy, get launched into an already configured agent, and just have it do its thing? Essentially a marketplace discoverablity, automated deployment infrastructure and an interface to manage your agents.

I’d also probably create some kind of open-source solution, probably a custom Docker container, so developers can easily build agents and wrap them in a container and upload them for deployment.

Thoughts? Does anything like this already exist?

P.S. No, I don’t want to build or use another crappy AI agent builder. I want to deploy open-source agents already built by actual developers.

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

#455
I'm working on DeskPal. The project still needs a lot of polishing, so it's in private for now. Here is a part of its README. # DESKPAL

## What is DeskPal? DeskPal stands for Desktop Companion - exactly as it sounds: A companion for your desktop.

It's a gadget that will: - Display your media info (From Spotify, etc. - more sources to be added) - Display time - Connect to your phone and display notifications (TBD) - Function as a StreamDeck-like device (TBD)

All of these features should work right out of the box, without installing any new apps on phone or computer: - You can use it with your company laptop, or even with no computer at all - An app may be needed to configure some settings (like StreamDeck macros - TBD)

## Hardware & Software Inside DeskPal is an ESP32S3 MCU that supports both WiFi and BLE. The current configuration has 16MB Flash memory and 8MB of SRAM.

DeskPal runs on Zephyr RTOS, a RTOS that is heavily supported by many vendors. Using Zephyr allows us to leverage a vast ecosystem of hardware drivers and enables easy porting of this project to other MCUs if needed.

DeskPal's software architecture allows adding dynamic apps so that we can install or remove functionality without firmware updates.

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

#456
I started a small company selling accessories that I design, 3d print, and build for old 16mm film cameras. I recently released a crystal synchronized motor for Arri cameras, which allows you to record sound and have it sync up properly later, that has actually been selling pretty well. My next goal is to get into CNC machining with metal and actually build a modern 16mm film camera.

For my day job I am currently working for an online education company. I have been learning about the concepts behind knowledge tracing and using knowledge components to get a fine grained perspective on what types of skills someone has acquired throughout their learning path. It is hard because our company hasn't really had any sort of basis to start from, so I have been reading a lot of research papers and trying to understand, from sort of first principles, how to approach this problem. It has been a fun challenge.

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

#457
I built https://emojithis.com, which automatically adds emojis to text. Although it’s essentially an AI wrapper, with meaningful UX and some useful touches, there’s something surprisingly useful in there. My friends and I use it a lot, and the people who try it tend to come back!

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

#458
3D Drone Wargame.

(https://horus.sh)

I'm developing a wargame-like 3D simulator designed to train AI drones into elite stealth pilots. By integrating reinforcement learning techniques and utilizing real-life local landscape data, the simulator offers highly realistic mission scenarios.

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

#460
Working on a text client for the web: https://youtu.be/Q_w6_zDwNWM

JavaScript works, scrolling - but layout is still being figured out! Also missing are form controls, etc etc.

It's meant to just be text (no images, etc) and to work in your terminal. It's NOT meant to alter/condense the layout to something like "reader mode" - just to be a faithful "GUI -> TUI" rendering in the terminal.

Like Lynx, but upgraded for the modern web. So maybe I'll call it Jaguar, but probably not! The idea is that other options like Brow.sh may be overcomplicated, hard to maintain, focused on a kind of graphical fidelity. Whereas this is more BBS style text only, but still usable. Minimum viable text, so to speak.

Leave your email if you want to know when it's ready to try out: https://tally.so/r/wbzYzo

Post reply on HN