Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#1

Post by abelgvidal » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

He's 13 years old. He wanted to track his own ant colonies — growth, feeding, humidity, and other metrics. He built the whole app himself with some help from AI tools; I just helped him deploy it to a server. Would love to hear your feedback!

Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker
formicarium.es

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#2

Post by echoangle » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

Not closely related to the app itself, but how does the worker count graph work? Do you count them visually and put in the data? Or how do you know how many ants you have?

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#3

Post by ljcoco » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 8:27 PM UTC

super impressive

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#4

Post by Chu4eeno » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #2

Not closely related to the app itself, but how does the worker count graph work? Do you count them visually and put in the data? Or how do you know how many ants you have?

from the screenshots it looks like manual data entry

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#5

Post by ge96 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:36 PM UTC

Damn... I just got that, Formic queen in Enders Game... ants

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#6

Post by skeater15 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

Any web devs that could me this style of UI?

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#7

Post by selfawareMammal » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#8

Post by matheusmoreira » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

ge96 wrote: post #5

Damn... I just got that, Formic queen in Enders Game... ants

See also: formic acid, so named because it occurs in ants.

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#9

Post by dewey » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

skeater15 wrote: post #6

Any web devs that could me this style of UI?

Claude Code or other AI agents produce that by default, usually also this hue of orange.

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#10

Post by echoangle » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

Chu4eeno wrote: post #4

echoangle wrote: post #2

Not closely related to the app itself, but how does the worker count graph work? Do you count them visually and put in the data? Or how do you know how many ants you have?

from the screenshots it looks like manual data entry

But do people really count 2400 ants manually?