Seems like every man and his dog is building an AI agent harness. And power to you (and your dog) if that's you.
But it would be refreshing to hear about some non AI related projects people are working on.
I don't think it qualifies as AI in the modern day and age but NLP in general. It's truly amazing how easy it is to spot troll farms online and no one is doing anything about it, be it individuals, private sector or even on national level, given that those should be considered a risk for national security.
Other project is to continue a bit stalled progress of a configuration language BCL - add functions, more structures and fix some hidden scoping issues. Making languages is an endless fun. https://github.com/wkhere/bcl
2. Writing a rich text editor library powered by pretext for cheap pagination
3. A layout engine that understands html/CSS subset for lightning fast pdf generation
Although AI is the main reason why I'm able to work on all these projects concurrently.
A little bit like ansible, but then totally not like ansible.
It generates SSH-Keys. It clones repositories, installs uv and rust. It removes Snap from my Ubuntu machines and installs firefox from the mozilla repositories.
Its always fun to see what games people are building - and some of the lesser known ones are amazing!
Hoping to release next Monday
This has been especially helpful when thinking about PR reviews, not just what changed, but what the change might impact indirectly.
It’s still early, and I am working on the cloud version which will include LLM interface to interact with graph and other team collaboration feature and github connection but I’d really appreciate feedback from others who might find this tool useful.
Github: https://github.com/devlensio/devlensOSS Landing page: https://devlens.io/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679021
18 points | 1 day ago | 37 comments
Not source-available yet because it's a bunch of hacks (particularly the Python) but maybe one day.
The backingtrack is what I'm actively improving right now. It's just a pad running now, but it will turn into a full track with bass/drums/piano/... and will feature a comprehensive chords based editor so you can add and save your own progressions with a logged in account.
Took some good ideas of Pascal and making it more modern. Minimal runtime, manual memory management, single (small) executable, no dependencies. Compiler itself is written in Swift and I am using QBE as a backend ATM.
https://github.com/prettydiff/aphorio
This project makes no use of AI.
My wife and I continue to work on Uruky, a EU-based Kagi alternative [2].
Since last month we finally got our production API Key for EUSP/STAAN (it was certainly the slowest and most complicated search provider to adopt, so far), and that brought us to 5 search providers you can choose from and sort as you prefer.
We already have got over 40 paying customers (excluding family and friends, we’re guessing these paying customers came from some privacy listings and HN comments) and have exited beta last month!
Customers seem to really enjoy the simple UI (search can be used without JS) and search personalization (from choosing the providers to the domain boosting and exclusion). We also have hashbangs (like "!g", "!d", or “!e”) when something doesn’t quite give you what you’d expect, though.
You can see the main differences between Kagi and Uruky in the linked page, but one huge difference is that with Uruky, after being a paying customer for 12 months, you get a copy of the source code!
One thing we’re struggling with is outreach because we want to do it ethically, and it’s hard to find communities or places to sponsor which are privacy-focused and don’t require €5k+ deals. Ideas are welcome! Because of bots there isn’t a free trial easily available, but if you’re a human and you’d like to try it for a couple of days for free, reach out with your account number and we’ll set that up!
Thanks.
P.S.: Because people have asked before, our tech stack is intentionally very "boring" (as in, it generates and serves the HTML + bits of JS to enhance settings and such), using Deno in the backend (for easier TypeScript), PostgreSQL for the DB, and Docker for easier deploying.
P.P.S.: Because this has been also brought up before, the name has no special meaning but we read it like "Euro-key" in English. Names are hard, and we’re aware it can remind people of Uruk and Uruk-hai. That’s OK.
P.P.P.S.: Another frequent question here is “how does it work?” When you search, we query the first search provider on your list, and if it yields less than X results (only Mojeek really gives us a total count, we have to try + estimate for the others), we try the second, and so on. We then merge the results in a round-robin fashion (first of first, first of second, second of first, second of second, and so on). There’s a bit of more nuanced logic to also properly rank the results with the pin/exclude/raise/lower preferences, because it works differently across providers and not all of them support that, for example.
It's all local, no server, no database, etc. Mobile and desktop friendly.
I did build it with the help of AI, but no AI inside the actual thing.
Players are survivors of a global disaster that has unleashed mysterious, deadly storms. For three hours, they investigate the origin of the storms and make fateful decisions about their future as individuals and as a community.
We received Immersive Arts funding, which means we can run it in Edinburgh later this year. Here's an excerpt from our 2025 grant application about exactly what those are:
--
Our “storm sensors” are novel spatial computers designed for outdoor usage over long distances. They will house ePaper displays, LoRa (long range) radios, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS chips in a 3D-printed enclosure to provide a low-tech way to augment the reality of the park. These computers will be cheaper, more rugged, longer-lived, and more capable than smartphones, deployable to locations with zero cellular service and no battery charging options.
The sensors will be mounted on top of camera tripods for deployment. Runners will carry them through the park, then position and aim them in the correct direction, as co-ordinated by “operators” using walkie talkies. This will let players feel like they are really setting up important equipment, scanning historical sites for clues (like surveyors), and establishing laser communication links. Lacking colourful touchscreens, the sensors will be less distracting for runners, helping them focus on their surroundings. Essentially, they are a highly tactile and deeply realistic way of immersing players in a post-apocalyptic setting, since such devices – not smartphones – are the most likely to be used.
https://github.com/bradphelan/nuke-engine/blob/trunk/USERGUI...
After a day of hating on CMake generator expressions I just wanted a proof of concept that something better is possible.
An example build is https://github.com/bradphelan/nuke-engine/blob/trunk/example...
It can reduce the number of db round-trips a lot, especially when using Supabase+RLS (or other systems that require frequent setting of configuration values that are basically fire-and-forget).
Meet Bpdbi, a library with first-class pipelining, which provides a Postgres db driver (that's binary only, as the legacy text-based protocol is no longer needed, it just takes up space) and exposes an API that's more close to Jdbi's that to JDBC's (developer friendly).
It has an extensive benchmark that shows it's on par or faster compared to other db connectivity stacks.
The idea came after I finished a permanent piece for a museum using MaxMsp and python. I always had this thought in the back of my mind that "I could express this so much easier in a few lines of code.."
here's the language spec: https://github.com/audion-lang/audion/blob/main/docs/LANGUAG...
I really liked how objects came out, I don't think it needs any more since I can do object composition.
There are some nice functions to generate rhythms and melodies with combinatorics, see src/sequences.rs and melodies.rs
Its a WIP but you can use it now to create music with whatever you want: hardware/daws/supercollider
supercollider is tightly integrated but not required. I havent had time to develop userland libraries yet but I'm working on it
A bunch of square panels with a grid pattern to mount hold on, with the panels hanging on french cleats (with a locking system, #TODO) so the panels are easily removable so I can hang something like planters on the wall as well with the same french cleats.
No AI, a bit of computers to draw things out in CAD, but otherwise just manual building stuff.
The algorithms needed to slice up a Ghidra database into relocatable sections, and especially to recover relocations through analysis are really tricky to get right. My MIPS analyzer in particular is an eldritch horror due to several factors combining into a huge mess (branch delay slots, split HI16/LO16 relocations, code flow analysis, register graph dependency...).
The entire endeavor requires an unusual level of exacting precision to work and will produce some really exotic undefined behavior when it fails, but when it works you feel like a mechanic in a Mad Max universe, stripping programs for parts and building unholy chimeras from them, some examples I've linked in the readme. It has also led to a poster presentation to the SURE workshop at ACM CCS 2025 in Taiwan as a hobbyist, an absolutely insane story.
https://apps.apple.com/si/app/fast-slow-fasting-tracker/id67...
Hyper Vector is dropping on Catalog next week!
Also making an app / web app for memorizing Korean words, takes inspiration from Anki and Duolingo. Words go through 4 stages: 1) matching up pairs 2) Multiple choice answer 3) Writing word through blocks 4) Free-form writing.
It's testable here: https://game.tolearnkorean.com/
Feedback is very welcome.
This time it's in Godot and i want to add more interactive stuff in the virutal version, rather than just redraw the rooms with some lights synced with Home Assistant.
Now you tell some idea of what you want and AI gives you a better thing than what you originally imagined. Then you go into a rabbit hole... simulate productivity, sales, customer, cash flow, materials for the building, make it curvy, make it pop up in 3D, populate it with NPCs, give your NPCs wages and background, write a dialogue with the ghosts of Christmas. It ends up being a game in itself.
It's good fun. It costs me $20 and I can do it and deploy it from my phone.
But actual app does not matter, the main take away for me is: it is easy and fast to write bloatware (esp. with AI), but not that easy to distill to what is really needed. And what looked like a weekend project, a couple of hours max (with help of AI), now lingers for 2+ weeks on-and-off on evenings (of manual effort).
No AI at all just plain old Java, JavaFX, Lucene and enough code to bring them together. I would love to get feedback if you try it!
It should be as powerful as a spreadsheet for self-tracking, but the daily usability should be more on par with a habit tracker app.
The website and waiting list for anyone interested: https://dailyselftrack.com/
I'm building this mostly to scratch my own itch.
A newsfeed for Substack posts from the past 24h. Its helping me discover writers other than just what the algorithm gives me.
https://dhuan.github.io/mock/latest/examples.html
^Command line utility that lets you build APIs with just one command.
^JSON/YAML manipulation with AWK style approach.
I started looking into AT Protocol recently and find it very interesting, so I started collecting a list of decentralized products built on top of AT that are alternatives to mainstream (popular) products.
https://gitlab.com/ot-tools/ot-tools
i’m currently avoiding committing/releasing a bunch of changes i did last week because people are actually using the library already (the curse of writing something useful lol)
1. A point-and-click adventure game: making it with incredibly heavy technical constraints "just because"
2. A coding puzzle game of rapidly escalating difficulty
3. Part of #2 had me needing to craft some JSON Path queries and I felt like there wasn't anything nice to build and test them with, so I built this tool for it (inspired by the amazing regex101): https://jsonpath101.com/
4. A website where I write about text-based browser games
https://trianguloy.github.io/githubPages/SplitBill/splitBill...
The UI is horrible, but I really liked doing the coding. I'm also aware of other similar sites, but this one contains the features I need.
I've been working (on and off for over a decade) on a way to manage my unwieldy photo and video collection. I experimented with so many tools before but ultimately nothing ticked all my boxes so I wrote my own. Admittedly lots of niche stuff like proper support for UTC time, stereo photos and partial dates and things like 100% offline face detection and custom tag hierarchies and querying without a database. Each time I add a new feature I'm having a blast :)
Notifactor (Android App)
A lightweight native Android app that intercepts notifications on the device and triggers actions based on configurable rules.
The app uses Android's NotificationListenerService API. Once granted notification access it receives a callback for every notification posted on the device. It then checks each notification against configured rules and runs the configured action.
Why would you want this?
I don't know why you would want this but I can tell you why I made it: to make it easier to control some functions on Android devices used by people I often help using them in some way. My mother's Android TV (which I use to communicate with her through Linphone), phone and tablet sometimes stop doing the right thing. I live about 1300 km to the north of where she lives so I can't just hop on my bike to fix things. Thus far I relied on a set of Termux scripts on these devices to keep a reverse ssh tunnel open to an endpoint on my server but this has a number of drawbacks: the tunnel is not always there when I need it due to WiFi dropouts and other similar problems and the constant connection uses battery power on the phone and tablet. If only I could cause the tunnel to be created when I need it and brought down when it is not needed... Well, that is possible using Notifactor by sending a notification on a specific channel (ntfy refers to these as topics) whereupon Notifactor runs a Termux script which manages the tunnel (etc.).