Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026) • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by sbrother » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:50 AM UTC

luigi_123 wrote: post #348

* This is my first time actually posting anything on HN. I've been making a DSL for writing sheet music specifically for drums as raw text, inspired by ABC Notation (but of course just for drums). Now writing this I noticed that it's kind of complicated to explain and having a landing page would make my life so much easier. But the gist of it is, you write notation that looks like this: https://gist.github.com/Luigi1…

Oh dude, I love this. I've been working on an interactive music thingy (https://trebel.la, it's sort of gamified but more designed to structure practice sessions for serious classical musicians) and struggling with the ABC vs. MusicXML choice.

Like most people in the space I'm using ABC for LLM generation (e.g. generating sightreading exercises and etudes) but MusicXML for processing and rendering the output. Would be nice to have something somewhere in between the over-simplified ABC and overly verbose MusicXML.

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

#482

Post by azriel91 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:54 AM UTC

Working on a GraphViz replacement (again):

Site: https://azriel.im/disposition

Repo: https://github.com/azriel91/disposition

It's written in Rust, has stable node positions, is stylable (and has default styling, dark mode styles), among other things.

The hardest part is calculating coordinates for edges:

- ranking nodes / positioning them when edges connect nodes of different nesting levels

- ensure edges don't overlap with nodes to not obscure content

- ensure edges don't overlap with each other

It's about 60% of what my version of "complete" looks like. Remaining parts:

- edge labels (might need a rewrite of how edge paths are calculated.

- images in nodes

- generating diagrams for different screen sizes

- LSP support (?)

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

#483

Post by kukkeliskuu » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:55 AM UTC

Continuing USM tools, set of tools for better service management based on Unified Service Management (USM) model. The basic idea is better to define your services as data, instead of documentation.

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

#484

Post by anuramat » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:55 AM UTC

vicode -- TUI coding agent written in Rust, with tabs/subagents running in worktrees on top of fuse-overlayfs: create/fork tabs to work on multiple features/implementations, while subagents work in parallel without conflicts; additional lowerdir with bindfs mounts lets agents share the compilation cache, so that `cargo check` doesn't take minutes

since it's all just mounts, vicode works as a worktree manager as well: select a vicode tab (which sets cwd to the corresponding worktree with OSC7), open a new terminal tab/window, and run claude/codex inside

disclaimer: unstable, linux-only (mac build WIP, no overlayfs), some modules were vibecoded (grep for `SLOP`)

https://github.com/anuramat/vicode

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

#485

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:56 AM UTC

Working on my language. Recently implemented shapes for objects, like in Self and V8. Reviewing and polishing up the code before publication.

Also working on a handheld computer project. Did improvised thumb typing tests with paper and a stack of notebooks to determine my typing area. Next step is ordering some switches to see what they feel like.

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

#486

Post by montecarl » Mon, May 11, 2026, 3:56 AM UTC

I had a raspberry pi 3a+ and the old raspberry pi touchscreen laying around. So I'm writing a custom dashboard for it using Rust/Slint[1]. It directly uses opengl without any display manager/window system. It mostly talks to home assistant. Right now, when I start a 3d print, it automatically switches to a view with live camera of the printer and some stats. I can monitor the status of my washer/dryer so I know when they are done (using cheap TP-Link Tapo smart plugs[2]). My favorite thing it does, is if any motion is detected on my Ring cameras, it just automatically pulls up that live feed. Took a little work to get decent playback performance but the pi 3a+ has hardware h264 decoding.

Its nice, overall, to have a little dedicated touchscreen on my desk that I can easily tweak to display whatever I want. Its silent and low power.

[1] https://slint.dev/

[2] https://a.co/d/044MIM3t

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

#487

Post by manoji » Mon, May 11, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

I am working on trentdb . An in process single node database query engine inspired heavily by duckdb . Its primarily for me to understand databases in depth . Its completely written by codex and in java . Why Java? Its the language I am most familiar with . I just finished adding support for running all TPC-H queries.

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

#488

Post by vinhnx » Mon, May 11, 2026, 4:05 AM UTC

I've been building VT Code (https://github.com/vinhnx/vtcode), an open-source coding agent with code understanding and robust shell safety. Supports multiple LLM providers with automatic failover and efficient context management. Written in Rust.

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

#489

Post by technotony » Mon, May 11, 2026, 4:05 AM UTC

Agent engineer master. Currently it's a skill builder to generate custom production grade skills for agents but my goal is to build it into a system that non engineers can use to build and deploy agents with just prompting. https://agentengineermaster.com/

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

#490

Post by bmalicoat » Mon, May 11, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

Learning how to make custom PCBs and 3d printing. I really like Radio Taiso (daily calisthenics synced with music), so I made a dedicated speaker (https://www.taisospkr.com). It was fun to add new tools to my tool belt (ESP32, remote firmware updates, embedded website, streamlined wifi setup). Already have a new project based on a very similar architecture that I'm super excited about! Making PCBs and hardware has never been easier as a solo developer.