i am working on a really cool word game that has a TUI graphical style, it looks like a roguelike but has a bit more going on. i also seem to have figured out a way to do automated "fun factor" testing and get bugs/frs that sound like real player feedback, as a little bonus treat. doesn't seem like anybody is attempting that kind of thing with agents, might try to codify it. trying to spend a lot longer thinking about a game's systems/meta and developing slowly vs. hypersprinting which is fun but exhausting.
Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
61–70 of 827 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#62I'm making an online guidance solver for KSA (https://ahwoo.com/app/100000/kitten-space-agency). It will allow you to control a KSA rocket from the command line for a variety of maneuvers (launch, rendezvous, etc). It uses successive convexification to turn the full nonlinear problem into a sequence of convex problems with linear constraints and quadratic objective.
It has proven surprisingly resistant to AI so far - Astra can make a very quick prototype but upon review it had many defects. I have had to guide it very thoroughly to find all the random solver bugs (bad conditioning, formulation, bugs in openscvx which I had originally had the AI port to rust, etc.) preventing well-behaved solves. But I think (hope?) I have turned the corner on these.
This will enable some very interesting further experiments: full mission planning, Falcon-9-style ascent with split control, vehicle swarms, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#63Recently got genomic DNA purification automated for yeast (plus have automated library prep for nanopore+ a promethion)! As part of the DNA purification task, I had to journey up to Healdsburg to buy some lysis enzyme (thank god for winemakers, 100x cheaper than the biotech grade stuff), and noticed catalogs of different yeast strains with all their flavor profiles and stuff characterized.
I'm thinking about buying all the strains and pushing them through my automated sequencing pipeline, and building a yeast genotype -> flavor converter. Then, I think it'd be neat if you could have someone try a bunch of wines to get their favorite, and then genetically engineer a yeast strain specifically for their favorite flavors. Think that could be neat.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#64https://solanda.federa.social
A new UI library made with zero dependencies (native web components). I just made it public as I actually use it for my personal projects since past year.
The core principle is to help with UI development without bloating a project. It works with vue/nuxt (tested, my projects are done with it), but also react/angular/svelte/etc.
One feedback I got from reddit (I published it this week there) is that AGPLv3 may be a problem for adoption... still not sure if should I use MIT.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#65Haven’t started, still in the planning phase, but I want to build a Tamagotchi for readers. I’m calling it Tome & Tail: a little black dragon living in a pixel-art library on an ESP32-S3 with a small round AMOLED screen.
You’d start a reading session and the dragon would read alongside you. What you read would influence its appearance and habits; lots of sci-fi might give it starry wings, for example. It won’t die if you go a week without reading.
The plan is to keep it playable offline, with optional syncing to Booklary, the reading tracker I’m building. I’m leaning toward C++, which I never used, so it’ll be a learning experience.
Currently waiting for the Waveshare board to arrive so I can start development, and looking for an artist to commission the pixel art. Used GPT to design a concept[1], which I’ll use as examples to the artist.
This will be my first ESP32 project, so getting the dragon blinking on screen is the first milestone.
[1]: https://i.cpimg.sh/57EC5380-0FF7-4646-A943-971350FF98D2.png
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#66https://studio-galois.com/
My wife and I are working on a math/science/CS-inspired jewelry: pieces that stand on their own aesthetically but have a hidden meaning.
We currently have two styles: lambda calculus based pieces (we depict the Tromp diagram) where we have Y-Combinator earrings (well, strictly speaking they are one beta reduction away from Y-combinator. Aesthetic oblige) and a pendant depicting a lambda expression computing Graham's number. The other style is quantum computing circuits, based on quantum computing research my brother (a physics professor) is doing: a pendant that is actually a non-local controlled-NOT gate.
I wrote a tiny DSL to describe the jewelry pieces, and an interpreter to produce CAD files. We then either 3D print them or have them produced by lost-wax.
We have our pieces in consignent in a jewelry store, and are working to put them in a museum store.
Marketing is the hardest part. Ideas are welcome.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#67I’m working on a 52-part series about retention.
Each week I research one part of retention, teach it, and apply it to two real-world products I built.
I’ve published five lectures so far, and think the series should be useful to anyone here building a product: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFp5nmjrQeug
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#68Iterating through and evaluating possible approaches for shrinking the binary size of a tree-sitter based Vi/Vim compatible tags generator I am developing without affecting the developer experience for adding support for newer languages[1]. A couple of approaches have already been tried and failed to live up to the expectations on developer experience [2][3]. Next in line is to look into bundling only the tree-walking code for all supported languages with tree-tags and allow the user to configure the grammars to download separately from the main binary, possibly using the `wasm` feature which allows native library to run wasm compiled grammars.
[1] https://github.com/jha-naman/treetags
[2] https://github.com/jha-naman/treetags/pull/62
Tried to use a generator for automating the bulk of the scanner for a language from `grammar.json` file of a tree-sitter grammar. A runtime engine uses the scanner for a forward only walk on the scanned code and calls the hooks to generate tags.
[3] https://github.com/jha-naman/treetags/pull/56
A complicated mess of a generator that takes a few declarative inputs and tries to generate code for spitting out tags for a given language.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#69Don, a work companion.
Don helps you set goals.
Don reminds you to take breaks.
Don checks in how you fell.
Don judges you when you go off track.
Don celebrates you when you get stuff done.
Re: Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
#70I open sourced kavla, the SQL canvas I'm working on: https://github.com/aleda145/kavla
README is very bare bones, needs a video or a picture too. The website should tell you some more things: https://kavla.dev (and now the demo does not require a login (also need to remake the demo to fit the new self hosted version))
It's still lacking an analytics agent for the local version though. I've explored using codex CLI, but it feels like its extensive system prompt cripples the agent a lot vs Kimi 2.7 that I've been using in the cloud version.
I think it would also be nice to lean into the fully local LLM setup too, especially for data that shouldn't leave the device.