Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#341

Post by ksri » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

I am working on a way to edit google docs using markdown. Many tools exist to convert google docs to markdown and to import markdown to google docs - but none of them make in place edits. The core logic is to convert the google docs to md. The user then edits the md. Then diff the markdown files, and apply the changes back to the source google docs. This way, features not represented in markdown do not get overwritten.

Lots of effort has gone into testing against real world docs. Its beta quality right now.

https://github.com/think41/extrasuite

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#342

Post by turadg » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:27 AM UTC

Git worktrees are awesome but they broke my workflow in a couple ways:

Resuming work. I used to `j ` then `gco `. Now if I do that I get an error about the branch being checked out already in another worktree. I realized the branch names are pretty unique across repos so I made ` jbr ` that works from anywhere.

Jumping within repo. The other kink was when I wanted to focus on a particular package I’d do `j ` and it would usually be unique enough to jump to the one in my current checkout. But now I have dozens of concurrent checkouts and have to pick, even though I’m already in the repo. So `jd ` does like autojump or zoxide but only within the current checkout.

To power those shell functions I made a “where” extension for Git.

https://github.com/turadg/git-where

It’s working out nicely!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#343

Post by dustinlakin » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

Working on a rogue-like discord activity game (soon to be multiplayer) that connects to Cloudflare durable object web sockets.

It takes my favorite elements from games like: WoW character min-max design and rotation Diablo 2/POE for item and crafting inspiration Slay the spire dungeon flow/fights.

It is uses pixel art I commissioned a decade ago that I am looking to finish a game with.

Looking for some early feedback! https://crux.lakin.dev/

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#344

Post by washedup » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

Been working on a paper that's my attempt to add a meaningful update to macroeconomic theory, specifically around the effects of high-entropy outputs (waste, heat, harmful byproducts) as diminishing GDP and general population health. Working on some studies backed up with data to support. If anyone here is interested in economic theory, I could use your feedback.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#345

Post by nithinbekal » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

A Ruby-inspired typed programming language called Sapphire: https://github.com/sapphire-project/sapphire

I was reading the fantastic Crafting Interpreters book, and been wondering what it would be like to design a language from scratch. I really enjoy using Sorbet with Ruby, so wanted to design a small language with Ruby's object model, and a gradual type system.

Despite not knowing much programming language theory, I was able to make a surprising amount of progress over a couple of weekends using Claude Code, including building a simple version manager for the language - https://github.com/sapphire-project/facet

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#346

Post by tonfreed » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

I'm working on moving as much as possible to self hosted options. Have forgejo, Authentik and Nextcloud set up so far. Slowly finding alternatives for things, I think my next goal is Nostr

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#347

Post by AlexCoventry » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

I have a transformer attention mechanism which seems to be more data-efficient than the usual dot product, and I'm trying to write a performant backwards kernel for it.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#348

Post by charliewallace » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC

Check out https://www.steampunkclock.com - a concept inspired by a drawing toy called a spirograph. I originally coded it in c# over 10 years ago, but was able to port to the web via mostly vibe coding, and even go 3D! Brass, copper, rusty steel, gears and more gears! Really Quite Prodigious my dear chap! Drag to rotate, with zoom etc. I used google antigravity mainly for this recent work. Hope you like it. from Charlie Wallace of Carlsbad CA.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#349

Post by phyzix5761 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

spudlyo wrote: post #33

I'm writing an essay about how I use an ancient text editor, GNU Emacs, along with gptel, Gemini, some local models, yt-dlp, and patreon-dl to help me me study an ancient language, Latin. I want to show how I liberate poorly aligned, pixelated PDF image scans of century-old Latin textbooks from the Internet Archive and transform them into glorious Org mode documents while preserving important typographic details, nic…

Emacs is ancient? I use it every day. And they just came out with a new major update.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

#350

Post by msolomentsev » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 2:41 AM UTC

I've been writing a 'book' (more of an extended blog post that I'd like to put out for free) attempting to explain quantum computing to a layman-ish audience.

I sort of got inspired to do this after seeing so many QC PR posts on HN, and finding the educational material in this space to be either too academic, too narrow in scope, or totally facile. I think given the incredible hype (and potential promise) of this industry, there should be on-ramps for technically minded people to get an understanding of what's going on. I don't think you should need to be a quantum physicist to be able to follow the field (I am only an electrical engineer).

My book tries to cover the computational theory, the actual hardware implementations, and the potential applications of quantum computers. More than that, I want to be unbiased and stray away from what I feel is misleading hype. It's been a work in progress for about 6 months now, with a lot of time spent gaining fluency in the field. But the end is in sight! :)