Recently I made Vocast (https://github.com/cnrmurphy/vocast) - a cli driven tool that uses local TTS models to convert articles to "podcasts" and expose them via RSS feed. I wanted a way to listen to articles without having to pay for an app. I convert the article on my PC (which gets added to a managed library), run a web server, run Tailscale on both PC and phone, then I can use a podcast app to access my library. Nice way to consume some articles while out for a walk or anything else and has worked reasonably well for me so far.
Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
181–190 of 913 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#182I've always wanted my own VW diagnostic tool suite, and between tooling that was released in public on GitHub (https://github.com/kartoffelpflanze/ODIS-project-explorer) and my own research from years ago, it always seemed straightforward but too tedious to execute on. Claude did a great job making something useful, https://github.com/bri3d/mcd-diag-rs , and now I don't have to find a Windows machine or remember a specific diagnostic cable to replace my brake pads.
I also build a ton of household glue stuff; I was never really passionate enough about the whole "homeserver" thing to spend the effort in going beyond basic video recording for my security system, but now I have all of my local-only home automation stuff wired together, mostly into HomeKit, and have been able to ditch a ton of cloud services.
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#183[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#184I built a database.
The team behind Gel got acquired by Vercel and I already experienced falling in love with a dead database (RIP RethinkDB) so I decided to fork the concept to a TypeScript port with Svelte as the UI instead of React.
It'll live at disc.sh in a few months. Early dogfooding is promising.
EDIT: Also forgot that I removed React from GraphiQL in favor of Svelte too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044888
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#185A pile of various tools:
A self hosted web archiving tool with support for extendible processing pipelines (eg. extract article -> translate -> summarize -> generate tags, download video -> split audio track -> transcribe -> summarize), which led me to make a managed chromium browser with extensions and warc support for archiving, and a RSS feed synthesizer (take random article listing page that doesn't have RSS and generate a feed for it) so that I can plug it into my archiver. An active learning loop for a model to clean up articles by removing junk like native ads and sponsored blocks.
A tabbed terminal with project management features like launching the database, app server, and claude code in different tabs with one click, and split browser/terminal panes (eg. opening a browser automatically at the correct URL when the terminal reads http://localhost:4000/).
A modular MCP server with a MCP proxy and OAuth2 dcr so that I can easily add new random ideas for MCP servers in a few minutes with Claude and deploy them such that it's available to Claude by refreshing the tool list.
A small tool to render Claude conversations so that I can link to them from my obsidian vault with something like convo://claude-code/-home-jfim-projects-foo/
And overall just deploying docker containers for my self hosted setup
Most of it is on GitHub, in various states of readiness.
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#186[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#187I've always wanted my own VW diagnostic tool suite, and between tooling that was released in public on GitHub ( https://github.com/kartoffelpflanze/ODIS-project-explorer ) and my own research from years ago, it always seemed straightforward but too tedious to execute on. Claude did a great job making something useful, https://github.com/bri3d/mcd-diag-rs , and now I don't have to find a Windows machine or remember a…
elaborate on the home automation pls
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#188Built a tool to help design cs/science inspired jewelry in CAD. I wrote a DSL to describe the jewelry, and had an LLM write the interpreter to generate a CAD file using cadquery (note to self: LLM suck at 3d reasoning). I would not have had the time to do this without AI. Also used AI to design an online store (I'm not a front end dev). It's amazing to see my wife (non-technical background) tweak the web-site using c…
Dope af, looks great.
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#189I'm building an app that generates lifting mesocycles and tracks every set and rep. Each week, it uses feedback from the previous workouts to adjust training volume and intensity. It's replacing an app I currently pay $25/month for.
Re: Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
#190A weight lifting app. I’ve paid for, and used, others over the years, but I always wanted to customize them in some way just for me. So, I just decided to create one the other day (used antigravity CLI) and I’m hosting it on Vercel as a PWA. I’m enjoying it so far and see a lot of potential with making hyper-personal software moving forward.