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Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#491

Post by r_singh »

Hey. I’m building https://www.unwrangle.com to make it easier to scrape data from ecommerce and other sites that are hard to scrape.

It’s like Apify but my goal is to make it easier to use

Currently, I have APIs and scrapers that work with platforms like Google Maps, Yelp and Amazon. The APIs are useful to get data immediately and scrapers to extract information from many URLs.

The plan is to add more general purpose APIs like an HTML API, Markdown API and eventually features to build your own api and scrapers with AI.

There’s a lot of tools in the space nowadays but imo they are all flaky. My intention with unwrangle is to offer a way to scrape any site that just works without the need for any config or complicated pricing. The project is at a little over $1000 MRR. Marketing it has been and continues to be a big challenge. I’m bootstrapping solo and hoping to reach 5-10k MRR in the following months. Plan for that is to consistently improve offering and conduct marketing experiments.

What I find interesting about it: I’m offering easy ways to scrape sites on which antibot is really hard to bypass like Twitter, paywalled sites, LinkedIn, etc. The ability to build crawlers without writing any code is kinda cool. User who would normally not have used web data are scheduling scraping jobs and using the data for analysis. For the HTML API I’m thinking of doing an interesting spin on what others like ScrapingBee are doing and abstracting the needless config like premium proxy etc. and just effectively offering a higher # of requests. Also for the build your own scraper, offering users a way to create a parser with a prompt and use it in a single browser session to collect data from many pages saves hassle compared to a synchronous API approach

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#492

Post by s16h »

My wife and I are building Spruce, a Slack app that autocorrects typos in your messages: https://spruce.so/

The motivation behind this was twofold. Firstly, we're both the type of people who often edit our Slack messages (or any other messages like WhatsApp) to correct mistakes. Secondly, my wife is a PMM at a tech company, but she can't code. I've been telling her that anyone can create a decent product with the help of LLMs and tools like Replit, but she usually just rolls her eyes. So, on a flight from London to SF, I suggested we build Spruce. The idea was that she would take the lead and rely on LLMs (ChatGPT + Ollama for when the wonderful Delta internet wasn't working), and she could also treat me as a [more intelligent] LLM. After ~12 hours and a few small arguments, Spruce was born. :)

Some random learnings, top of mind:

1. A non-technical person, even with current LLMs (GPT 4.5), can't go from idea to shipped product without at least some help from a technical person.

2. I now make even more typos because my habit is to type as fast as possible, often without even pressing the space bar. Spruce autocorrects everything in Slack, but when I'm using other products, I feel incomplete.

3. Although I'm practically a native English speaker, it's still my second language. I've added a feature to Spruce, just for myself for now, that DMs me if I make really obvious grammar/English mistakes in my messages. I decided to do this after one of my colleagues, who is very English, said "for prosperity" instead of "for posterity" in several messages, and another said "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes." It's been a very cool development, at least for me! It's fun because a) it has a nice tone, and b) it's not verbose and only nudges you on major mistakes, and only up to twice a day. Anyway, feel free to give it a try: https://spruce.so/

P.S. This Slack app necessarily needs the permissions it has because it needs to be able to read and edit your messages everywhere (e.g., public channels, private channels, DMs, etc.). Don't install it if that freaks you out. However, it's easy to remove Slack apps, so there's no harm in giving it a try.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#493

Post by BigglesB »

joegibbs wrote: post #236

I've been working on a kind of strategy game called Fall of an Empire ( https://fallofanempiregame.com ), it's a bit like a mix between Crusader Kings, Total War, Mount and Blade type games (just the overworld, not the battles), but rather than expanding you're trying to prevent an empire from collapsing. It's a ton of work, especially with the number of systems - you've got combat, resource management, settlement de…

This looks fantastic! Love the premise & well done for what looks like an incredible solo effort. I was tech lead on Ozymandias & have another minified 4X in the works at the mo & putting out feelers with publishers etc. Sounds like you plan to self publish this one but I’d love to chat & see if there’s any way I can help with your launch, whether just through advice or via introductions etc. You can reach me at biggles (at) bravobravo.games though I may end up finding a way to contact you directly first :-)

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#494

Post by levmiseri »

Trying to expand on a quirky travel website populated by AI content. Working on adding countries, regions, areas (e.g. ski resorts), etc.: https://meoweler.com

The quality of the generated content is surprisingly good, but there are many stereotypes and mistakes that I'm fixing in the next mass generation pass.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#495

Post by elric »

I haven't been working on much at all lately, struggling from bore-out at work. 8 hours of boredom a day is surprisingly exhausting, and it's spilling over into the rest of my life. Starting a new gig next month, hopefully things will pick up again.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#496

Post by Narciss »

tunesmith wrote: post #344

I have this creative writing website where writing friends can write branching fiction novels together. Sorta like choose-your-own-adventure, but more literary - third person past tense, actual characters and narrative arcs. Configurable number of choices at the bottom of every chapter, and as you're reading, if the choice label doesn't link to a chapter yet, you can write it. It's been floating around since 1996 or…

Love this! Please release it, perfect is the enemy of good

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

#497

Post by kshantanu94 »

elric wrote: post #495

I haven't been working on much at all lately, struggling from bore-out at work. 8 hours of boredom a day is surprisingly exhausting, and it's spilling over into the rest of my life. Starting a new gig next month, hopefully things will pick up again.

I felt that
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