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

Building a knowledge graph where AI/ML is used to classify nodes (entity type). Next step is to extract data deterministically. https://github.com/pixlie/PixlieAI

There is a crawler to chase given objective and crawl/store web page results. We use Claude Haiku and Brave Search API (own API keys) and we will support local models soon.

Potential use-cases are lead generation, competitor search, product tracking, contracts search.

Watch out for DMCAs. They're, ah, not very fond of third-party development.

Best wishes,

The former developer of Bizarre Insights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2yQXDFVRPQ

An entirely open-source, peer-based accounting package intended for accountants and end users who like the way that certain popular accounting software used to be, with control placed in the user's hands whether they want to run it locally like a desktop app, cloud-based, or some combination thereof. (You can insert a few buzzwords like "blockchain" if that appeals to you.)

After spending a few years developing it for internal purposes, a customer decided to contribute a significant amount to its ongoing, open-source development, plus additional closed-source commercial add-on modules for their own use: making the accounting software useful for very specific industries.

Currently it's piloted running payroll & profit/loss/balance sheet for a handful of small businesses, with the rest of the usual modules (accounts payable, invoicing, quoting, etc.) slated for release this year.

Technology stack is currently Python plus Preact; "severless" architecture where each node maintains a replica of the data involved and can replicate it to other nodes. User interfaces is either CLI or web-based, with an eye towards eventually replicating the desktop user experience of popular accounting packages of times past. We are taking a hard look at shifting from Python to Rust simply as we rely heavily on third-party packages, and Rust is where a lot of the active development in that space is going.

The most fun I had was finding a module written in Perl and Postscript, porting the Perl part to Python, and realising the existing Postscript was excellent and needed no improvement. (Our team now has more Postscript competency than we ever planned to have.)

If you're interested, see my profile for an email and put "HN" in the subject.

I'm working on a new Event Sourcing database that elevates the WAL into a first class application concept like a message queue. So instead of standing up a postgresql instance and a kafka instance and a bunch of custom event sourcing plumbing, you stand up this database and publish all your application events as messages. For the database part you just define the mappings from event to table row and you get read models and snapshots for free.

The real key here is how migrations over time are handled seamlessly and effortlessly. Never again do you have to meet with half a dozen teams to see what a field does and if you still need it - you can identify all the logic affecting the field and all the history of every change on the field and create a mapping. Then deploy and the system migrated data on the fly as needed.

Still in stealth mode and private github but the launch is coming.

I wrote a small business preventive maintenance and calibration tracker (https://pmcal.net) as a side project.

A few manufacturing companies that I have a close relationship with are using it and love it, but I have kind of hit a wall with other growth avenues (Google Ads, organic promotion on the web).

I have been thinking of marketing directly to ISO 9001 auditors, because “can you get email reminders” is a question they have asked at multiple companies I have worked at. I feel like cold mailing them something branded (e.g. notepads) might work, but I am not sure how much money I want to spend on it if it doesn’t and it’s also a bit nerve-wracking to put myself out there like that.