Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitloginAsk HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?441 points by aryamaan 5 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 770 comments amrangaye 36 minutes ago | next [–] So many things - reminds me of the days when you'd throw together a quick shell or Perl script to solve a very particular itch. So I have a whole collection of apps, portals, demos, etc.Which is what leads to my issue: cognitive overload, and very high context switching costs especially as I'm usually on multiple work and "hobby" projects at a time, with multiple projects spread across term tabs, IDEs and Claude remote on phone.So I built a "Workshop" to tinker. It analyses all the projects I'm working on currently as git repos on disk, then builds project pages complete with summary and a full control and data planes including its own startup method, commits being made etc. It does some agent introspection so it's able to display all agents running on machine in unified view.But the "killer" feature for me is the "Pulse" - this contains human readable summary of what's happening with each project and agent in real time. So one use case is an "overnight view" - I set up architecture and design, assign the agent a goal, then wake up next morning to quickly scroll through the results. It also lets you track changes happening in real time ("We finished adding an export function for receipts, containing your company logo and signature" to summarize a feature across 10 commits).I also added other useful to me utils such as being able to append a ? To any command in its inbuilt terminal and it'll convert it from English to a cli command waiting for you to confirm, for example; a system load monitor; a network sniffer, sys admin tools etc. all written in Rust, which I've never written a line of :)Will put it online but need to clean it up first it's very specific to my use cases so not sure it'll be useful to others.replyyungbeto 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I've been making a lot of audio experiments for my own amusement. They all have some potential to drain your cpu, sorry!https://www.noisetable.xyz/ - a collection of chance-based audio 'channels' in a VCR inspired interfacehttps://concrete95.net/ - a musique concrète web app that's made to look like windows 95. Pulls random audio from freesound.org and loops a small section, you can also layer synth pads or melodic synth loops. I'm often able to get some really pleasant background ambience.https://windso.me - a sample-based step sequencer that doesn't let you choose the sample that's loaded, kinda fun, still needs a lot of work!replyburnto 5 days ago | parent | next [–] These are lovelyreplyyungbeto 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Thank you :)replymickelsen 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Nice, Noisetable is so relaxing. Reminds me a bit of those generative music apps from Brian Eno.replysunnygo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] noisetable is great, though would be great to have a warning that it uses flickering before starting the game. Or maybe add a check if visitor has motion reduced (prefers-reduced-motion css block?)replykokkis 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Whoah, I checked that https://concrete95.net/ sooooo coool! What the heck :DreplyBrokenCogs 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I get a security warning on firefox when visiting noisetable.xyzreplymichaelbuckbee 5 days ago | prev | next [–] The funniest thing I've made is a free utility called "Moniker" that contextually renames files based on their contents.Uses local AI models and I was able to snag this great domain name.https://finalfinalreallyfinaluntitleddocumentv3.com/But hands down the most useful thing I've made is HutchDB, which is a MCP service that you can call from any AI chat or Agent setup to store data for you.Literally from your AI you just say "save that to Hutch" and then it figures out:- The schema + fields - Builds nice webviews (Kanban, Timeline, Grid, Calendar) - Lets you share the output with peopleSo people use it for all kinds of things like time tracking ("every hour save a summary of my activities to Hutch"), for Agent to Human handoff ("Every day check social media for mentions of my company and save them to Hutch").I use it for things like recording all of our marketing activities and then having my AI compare those to signups for rough attribution, etc.Dead useful and at https://hutchdb.comreplyMystery-Machine 5 days ago | parent | next [–] I love it! A few questions that made me think: - how do you know that "people use it for all kinds of things"? I just read your privacy policy and I'm concerned about my AI agent possibly leaking some API key to Hutch and then you can read it. - how is this free? You're hosting on Vercel, one of the most expensive hosting providers. What happens when this goes semi-viral? How do I know you won't just pull the plug to cut costs or start charging $500/month? I don't want to sign up, invest my time, and then lose access. - I signed up and now I can't access privacy policy nor terms of service pages, because when I go to https://hutchdb.com/ I get redirected to https://hutchdb.com/dashboardreplymichaelbuckbee 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] This is all very fair criticisms. This thread asked: "What are tools you have made for yourself?" and that's genuinely what this is. I wanted it so I made it and then AI makes it so easy to just throw up a marketing page.I've a a handful of dev friends that have started to use it as well and give their feedback and it's been slowly growing as I've added sharing/invites.I would absolutely not recommend putting big production data into it currently.My vision for it was something more like how the #1 use of spreadsheets is actually people making lists and not actually people doing lots of calculations.Given the uptake today (thanks everybody!) and your feedback (thanks Mystery-Machine) I'm going to work at addressing your concerns.replyjazzpush2 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] You completely ignored every question related to costs/privacy.replymichaelbuckbee 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] I thought it was more implied, but let me be more explicit:- This is something I made for myself without a lot of commercial thought, so I still haven't thought through pricing + usage + limits + operational limits. In it's current wildly unoptimized state it's still very cheap to run.- For the specific concern about API Key leakage there's not a lot I can do about that (that I'm aware of) as the logic of what gets sent is handled by the client AI. It is possible to pull down and audit both the tools + instructions that are published by the MCP server if there are concerns on that side.replymodelcroissant 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] dope!replynetcoyote 5 days ago | prev | next [–] Tools I’ve built for myself:- sandvault https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/sandvault/ runs agents in a separate macOS user account, hardened with sandbox-exec. It also supports headless browsing and iOS Simulator from inside the sandbox for testing web and iOS apps.- clodpod https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/clodpod/ agents run inside a macOS VM.- git-multi-hook https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/git-multi-hook/ git only allows one script per hook event; this is a dispatcher that discovers and runs every script in a hooks dir, in parallel, for both global and repo hooks.- TubeGate https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/tubegate/ Chrome extension to block YouTube videos based on keywords (like “sponsored”).- push10k https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/push10k/ iOS app to track my progress toward 10,000 push-ups.My blog is AI-coded: Zola static site, Sveltia CMS, Cloudflare Pages/Workers, with GitHub Actions handling builds and syndication. https://www.codeofhonor.comreplyElFitz 5 days ago | parent | next [–] Wait. You worked on Guild Wars, Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo?This place is incredible.replyTraubenfuchs 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Guild Wars was one of the most fun games ever. The crazy combinations of skills you could try in the random arena were so much fun.Guild Wars 2 and most other games are pure slop.replymschild 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] They did announce Guild Wars 3 last Friday btw. Not set to release until 2027.Also Guild Wars 1 has been receiving new content updates this year.replybdickason 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I just found your blog yesterday reading up on the stories of how Warcraft and Starcraft were made!! Have been hacking on small games and a tool to build 3d environments for a while and get very inspired by hearing stories from back in the day. Thanks for making everything public. I really enjoy your writing.replynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Thank you, glad you enjoyed the articles. I wish I had the motivation to write more!replybdickason 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] I'm sure it will flow when the time comes :PFor me.. the most interesting part of the whole Warcraft saga would be more discussions around the arguments/design decisions of.. "we should include ___."For example... War2 stuck with two races (and introduced alliances w/ other races like elves) instead of adding new races. How did you get to that decision? did you do any prototypes? Was it just a pure argument? What did you find in the process?That kind of behind the scenes design discussion is rarely surfaced (and often messy) but is as interesting (to me) as the technical decisions.replybdickason 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] One more idea.. You've worked across great companies and great games. If you were going back now to your former self striking out to ship your first commercial game, what are the 3-4 pieces of wisdom you wish you'd internalized back then?replycamillomiller 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Cool but mate, this is just not true:>>Some content-management software (CMS), like WordPress, requires using the same presentation layer that the CMS usesHeadless wordpress has been a thing for quite a while and it’s trivial for a use case like thisreplynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] You are correct, I will amend that. I do think that locks you out of a lot of the plugin ecosystem if using it as a static site generator, yeah?replycamillomiller 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] As a developer who deploys wordpress often, I can tell you that if you have the resources (experience and time) to setup a headless wordpress you probably don’t need 99% of plugins. The really important ones (ACF Pro, cookies-stuff, SEO etc) are compatible with headless. I regularly deploy non headless high impact wordpress sites with about 6 plugins max. Theme is custom developed as a skeleton starter plus custom fields. I feel you though, it’s imperfect but so far I haven’t found an alternative for client work especially that beats the WP ecosystemreplynetcoyote 3 days ago | root | parent | next [–] This sounds like it's worth a blog post. I'm sure lots of folks, including me, would be interested in the details of which plugins to maximize utility, and what the deploy process looks like. Cheers!replysomberi 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Thanks to Push10K now I am on my 160th day of streak and 13,135 pushups (or my own version of equivalents) so far. It is the best thing I did after feeling like Glutton after dinner last Christmas.replynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] That is awesome! Congratulations on completing so many — and such a big streak! Good luck on your journey to the 20k, and let me know if you need any features to make it work for you.replykeybored 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] > - git-multi-hook https://www.codeofhonor.com/projects/git-multi-hook/ git only allows one script per hook event; this is a dispatcher that discovers and runs every script in a hooks dir, in parallel, for both global and repo hooks.Newest Git supports hook events.replynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] You are correct: git 2.54 supports multiple hooks via a the git repo and global configuration files.Git-multi-hook predates that, but I updated it to use the new 2.54 config-based format.The significant advantage of git-multi-hook is that they all run in parallel. I run eight hooks on precommit, so parallelism is a big win.I will update the README to make note. Thanks!replykeybored 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] git-hook documentation says that hook events can be configured to run in parallel.replynetcoyote 3 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Here's what gemini says about running hooks in parallel:> Native Git traditionally executes hooks sequentially. However, you can achieve parallel execution by leveraging dedicated third-party hook managers or using built-in shell background processing.. and that's what git-multi-hook is: a third-party hook manager, that uses shell background processing :)replyrealitylabs 3 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Just out of curiousity, what are the 8 hooks you run?replynetcoyote 3 days ago | root | parent | next [–] The precommit checks I run are:- end-with-blank-line: normalize file endings- find-do-not-commit: do not commit files that include "DO NOT COMMIT"- lint-code: run if it exists- lint-nodejs: run lint if exists- lint-shellcheck: shellcheck all the files that have no extensions or end in that have a shell-shebang- lint-swift: run swiftlint- prevent-commit-secrets: run ripsecrets to avoid committing secrets and credentials- validate: run if it existsBy default all of the scripts check the files in the git staging area, but they can also be run standalone to check everything. You can find them here: https://github.com/webcoyote/git-multi-hook. Glad to take suggestions for more.replykeybored 3 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–] I see how it is.replySeriousM 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I would love to see the push10k on android playstore/fdroid. It looks so inviting and motivating that I searched for equivalent alternatives for android but found none! Would you, maybe, publish it there as well, pleeeease?replydebone 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Thanks for the push10k app, I didn't know I was looking for something like thisreplynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Glad you’re enjoying it. It started as a tool for my own motivation, and I’m so glad it’s helped you too :)reply55555 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I grew up playing Warcraft II. Thanks for all of those great times.replynetcoyote 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Glad you enjoyed playing. It was an amazing journey building the game, and I’m grateful so many folks appreciated the experience we created.replyJordan-117 5 days ago | prev | next [–] Gemini has been indispensable for helping me move from Windows to Linux. I'm reasonably proficient, but moving to a brand-new OS brought so many random questions and weird edge cases that I never would have had the confidence, patience, or time to tackle it alone, even with pretty strong Google fu. It's been so nice to have instant access to answers for my specific problems, without judgment or having to wait on a reply.At the same time, I moved from Chrome back to Firefox, and Gemini was great at finding equivalents for my most-used extensions -- and, when none existed, to write my own. It's also been really useful for customization/"ricing".More recently, I got into Quod Libet as a primary music library manager, and both Gemini and Claude have been fantastic at helping me build custom plugins that make it do exactly what I want it to. Scripts to automagically download tracks with metadata and synced lyrics, a lyrics sidebar that highlights lines as you listen and lets you click to jump to a specific line, a bookmark button that lets you mark your favorite section of a track for easy browsing later. Next chance I get is something that enables lyrics search across the entire library (a feature I was already able to build for the Stremio desktop player -- it's so cool to be able to search for a line in a TV episode or movie and jump straight to it).replyjoe_the_user 5 days ago | parent | next [–] ChatGPT has helped me with innumerable little technical things and feels indispensable at this point.I can't help thinking that this is a combination of Google sucking more and more and various problems of daily getting so hard need something like a script to solve them. (Recent challenge - "what affordable campgrounds are near the Pacific Create trail and open now").replysufficientsoup 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I similarly used it to finally facilitate a switch to Arch to a couple months ago. Not technically a tool, but it was very convenient to take the Arch wiki, and personalize it by saying "My hardware is X and my use case is Y, can you filter out the 90% of things from here that aren't relevant to me?"replyozim 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] instant access to answers for my specific problems, without judgmentFor me that’s killer feature, even if we don’t achieve AGI at least we got good enough „something that will google it for me”.It is great both ways as an expert in my niche I don’t have to waste time on reading through entry level fluff. As non expert in other fields I don’t get to be scolded for asking entry level questions so RTFM and LMGTFY will sink in history fortunately.replyBalgair 5 days ago | prev | next [–] It's dumb, but....I made a scraper that searches through all the news and finds anything 'war' related. It then summarizes it and give me that new in the Star Wars crawl with music.replyuserbinator 5 days ago | parent | next [–] If you upload those to YouTube, you might find yourself an audience.replyproperbrew 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Can... Can I have this as well?replyfoobarian 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] How soon until we can just share a prompt://make-me-a-react-app-showing-a-summary-of-war-news-as-a-star-wars-crawl ? :-DreplyAlecSchueler 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] You can already share Claude artifacts this way.replycrazygringo 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Please, please share this. I want to see this so badly.replykordlessagain 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Not the author, but I had a good vibe coding go at it: https://force.nuts.servicesCode: https://github.com/kordless/force-newsreplyandai 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] It wants me to login. 99% of the requests are gonna be for "War", could you just cache it?Wait, it would be easier for me to clone the whole thing and change one feature... What strange times we live in.replykordlessagain 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Sure, whatever you like. All of it is open source, including the crawler: https://github.com/deepbluedynamics/grubcrawlerAlmost everything I build will run locally or on Google Cloud in serverless mode.The README on the repo for the app is has been updated with instructions for you. You will need Docker.replytty456 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] The force is with you, my friendreplydddw 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Love thisreplydddw 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] You should totally buy a domain for it and call it internet-artreplyalsetmusic 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] This might be the best thing I've read about in quite a while. I'm extremely impressed with the quality of the concept. Well done.replywizenheimer 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I shipped a QA harness for Claude Code. Instead of clicking through flows by hand, it reads your code diffs, identifies the affected UI flows, and tests them in real browserPlus after each run you get screen recordings with console logs, network requests, HARs, and Playwright traces so you can inspect exactly what the agent did :)https://github.com/wizenheimer/canaryP.S. I attempted to do a Show HN but got flagged for some reasonreplypred_ 5 days ago | parent | next [–] > got flagged for some reasonFrom a quick look at your profile, the majority of your submissions have been Show HNs. HN only allows some fraction of your submissions to be Show HNs (imagine if the front page was nothing but), so eventually they will just be auto-flagged.replywizenheimer 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Ahh, got it. I didn't realize HN did that. Thanks for letting me know! That probably explains it :)replyschmookeeg 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Oh, that looks lovely. A much more coherent version of the scraps I've been assembling for myself. Kudos, I'll be giving it a whirl :)replyRantenki 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I wrote a pen-plotter GUI and gcode sender in Rust. By hand. Like an animal.I am the only user. Sometimes it's the process that matters, and exercising your brain is important too. I get that there is a lot of existential dread around AI taking our jerbs, and excluding humans from the process of creative work, but... you can still just write code, just for the personal satisfaction.https://github.com/armyofevilrobots/bap-eguireplyefortis 5 days ago | parent | next [–] This is going to be one my next projects for experimenting with the Web Serial API. I got an old Ioline plotter that refuses to die. Any advise or tips for where to start with the SVG to Gcode conversion?replyRantenki 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] I used svg2polylines to load the SVG into line segments, interpolating any splines into something easier to use for a plotter. Feel free to take a look at the core/project/import.rs in the project I linked. You might also want to look at the core/post.rs which does the gcode generation.replyduckerduck 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Nice I am designing/building a pen plotter myself at the moment and was surprised by the lack of good software. Will give this a try!replynha1 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I was going to ask what is a pen plotter. Apparently this is like a printer but it uses a real pen to draw. Neat.replyottonormal 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] thank you! I will give it a try with my penplotter. I tried to vibe something like that in the past, but the outcome wasn't at all what I expected.replymelvinroest 5 days ago | prev | next [–] A voice memo app, quite like the actual voice memo app from Apple. The thing is: now I can put my voice memo's on iCloud put Claude Code on it and make my transcripts into structured notes that my app then also displays.So basically a way to just go on an hour long walk with myself, spit everything from the top of my dome stream of consciousness style, and then have Claude structure whatever I said.It's nice to have something that structures my thoughts by just thinking out loud.I vibecoded it (it's approaching 20K lines including tests). It works quite well but there are some bugs, so will have to do some actual engineering. But the UX is working quite well.replycui 29 minutes ago | parent | next [–] This is really useful. Thanks for sharing.replyprometheus76 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Relatedly, I have recently started walking and talking, and I just use lightweight gamer headphones that have a mic. I just record it with a generic voice recorder app, then I use a local instantiation of whisper to transcribe it when I get home. I throw the transcript and the recording into a database and then I can search the whole thing, or have AI look for interesting patterns in my thoughts.replyderwiki 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] I love it!But I have to ask: why not just advanced voice mode in ChatGPT or Claude?replyjascination 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] FWIW - In the Claude app (on android) when in transcript mode, it has a hard limit of 10 minutes. If you transcribe longer than that, it crashes and you lose everything you've said.To make matters worse, they've recently gotten rid of the timer, so you have NFI how long you've been speaking for.I use it for therapy-based stream-of-consciousnesses + venting and then have my project set up to understand the schema therapy work I've done with my psychologist and give me insights / draw threads between things from my past and now, and losing 10 whole minutes of talking and processing is SO FRUSTRATING!replyhsuduebc2 5 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–] It seems clunky for me. The dictating it self had weird bugs, like sometimes it decided to not work at all and the conversation mode is not very usefull for OP case if I am undestanding it correctly.replymelvinroest 5 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–] I talk/walk for hours and want all audio files and transcripts in one place, full control.replycamillomiller 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Basically the entire business model of Plaudreplymelvinroest 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] I am curious to check them out! I hadn’t heard of them. Marketing stuff takes time as I have noticed with aliceindataland.com [1]. Maybe I should do a show HN. I will think about it.To be fair, vibecoding this memo app in Swift didn’t take too long. There were some tricks to it, using xcodegen helped a lot so that I don’t need to use the Xcode project.It’s fun to see Swift code. I used to do some Objective-C back in the day.[1] another thing I made. It’s a sequel to the Alice in Wonderland stories. It’s also a SQL course. I vibe engineered it, meaning I looked at the code and used AI-assisted development.Except for the story though that’s almost all fully me. LLMs aren’t great storytellers. The same is true for the lesson scaffolding, that’s almost only me.replyxlii 5 days ago | prev | next [–] Many, really, but there are few I'm especially proud of:- https://github.com/exlee/pikchr_pl - DiagramIDE (diagram amiga-style workbench where you can script Pikchr diagrams using TCL, Prolog, Pikchr or - recently mruby). Note: you need to navigate to actual crate for description. There are binaries built in case someone wants to try it.- https://svg.axk.sh - semi manual SVG fitter so that I can easier vectorize AI-generated pseudovector images (who doesn't like 30kb SVG versus 1.8mb PNG?!)- https://github.com/exlee/rik - this one makes me laugh every time I use it - it's an AI harness with text editor as an UI (i.e. it reacts to comment strings) - I gave it personality so it makes wacky comments but other than that it's very constrained agent (limited edition ;))These are not vibe coded but AI made it much easier to slide through major friction points (e.g. for SVG fitter I really didn't want to reinvent fitting algorithms)replyrpdillon 5 days ago | parent | next [–] These are really cool - I've been meaning to return to my pikchr-in-wasm IDE experiment. I only ever built a PoC, and that was before AI coding. I should pick it back up and polish it a bit, but after seeing your DiagramIDE, I might just use that.This whole thread is turning HN into my favorite app store. Good stuff.replyxlii 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Thank you. If you encounter any bugs don't hesitate to fill in a bug report. Love getting feedback from the actual (i.e. non-myself) users :)replyalphaBetaGamma 5 days ago | prev | next [–] Built 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 claude code.End result: an online store where we sell jewelry pieces that actually are lambda-diagrams (Tromp diagrams) that compute Graham's number, or of the Y-combinator (well, technically it's just a fixed point operator, one beta reduction away from the Y-combinator. But Y-combinator was not aesthetically pleasing from a jewelry point of view)store: Built 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 claude code.End result: an online store where we sell jewelry pieces that actually are lambda-diagrams (Tromp diagrams) that compute Graham's number, or of the Y-combinator (well, technically it's just a fixed point operator, one beta reduction away from the Y-combinator. But Y-combinator was not aesthetically pleasing from a jewelry point of view)store: https://studio-galois.comreplyqiqitori 5 days ago | parent | next [–] I've found that Gemini Pro is surprisingly good at 3d reasoning. To back that claim up, I've had it create:A WebGl program that takes input like X123 Y123 Z123 via WebSerial every 100 ms and builds an object out of the resulting path. Required some performance optimizations (just had to tell it what to do). Also asked it to make the corners nicer and it did. (To be fair, I'd already asked a lesser model and put some things in the prompt to nudge it the right way.)Various OpenSCAD models. E.g., remote control holder with 5 slots, staggered heights, slight slant because it looks cool, and the slots all have different depths. One shot. It implemented the slant/tilt using a shearing matrix. 100 points.reply8note 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] > note to self: LLM suck at 3d reasoningone trick on 3d reasoning: get it to draw all the different orientations, and you pick which one to useit save a lot of time vs trying to tell it to rotate around Y and it actually rotates around XreplyalphaBetaGamma 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Thanks. Good idea.What I often ended up doing is asking it to draw 3 labeled arrows X,Y,Z. So I could tell it to orient along the XY labeled arrows (which are in reality YZ, but whatever).replyNoumenon72 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Surprised there is no self-similarity in the Recursion Earrings.replyphyzix5761 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Jewelry looks beautiful. Have you managed to make any sales?replyalphaBetaGamma 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Thank you.We have not really started advertising, but my wife is (very) often complimented on the jewelry when she wears it and that has led to a few sales.replyNetOpWibby 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Dope af, looks great.replyasciimoo 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I'm working on a self-hosted search service called Hister (https://hister.org/ - https://github.com/asciimoo/hister) with the goal to reduce dependence on online search engines and AI answers.Hister is a full text indexer for websites and local files which automatically saves all the visited pages rendered by your browser. It provides a flexible web (and terminal) search interface with offline result previews & detailed query language to explore collected content or quickly fall back to traditional search engines.It can provide a privacy-respecting search experience for serving "recall" type searches where users retrieve previously visited content, but falls short in "discovery" type searches (yet).replySyneRyder 5 days ago | parent | next [–] This was the first AI project I ended up working on as well, except I approached from building a meta-search first. I only added support for a local index recently (via SQLite FTS 5). But I haven't shared my project, whereas you have a truly fantastic webpage for yours. Plus going the extra distance with a terminal interface and MCP server too.Much kudos. I hope more people discover how powerful even a local search index of previously visited content can be. And I hope more people can build large indexes as well, so we're not just relying on Brave & Mojeek & Marginalia (and EUSP) to rescue us for the fallback discovery searches.reply0xCE0 6 hours ago | prev | next [–] If the answers in this thread reflects the state of the art what "the advent of AI" as of 2026/6 has brought, I have to say that I am not amused. If we have this all-potential tool that can create anything, the potential is clearly capped by either people's ambition/imagination or the capabilities of coding agents... And please do not understand me wrong, I am just stating that I feel/think that the real-world examples of achievements should be something "next-level" stuff...replyingvay7 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I shred guitar in the evenings to focus on technique, but a hectic day job means I get almost no time to twiddle knobs on my amp sim chasing the right tone. So I built a tool where I just prompt "Brian May Solo Bohemian Rhapsody" — the LLM fills a small JSON contract and feeds to a script that generates the XML, and I load it straight into the plugin. Two minutes and I feel like I'm tearing it up at Wembley '85 :)...almost.The pattern generalized is LLM finds the presets,i can even upload a file to make it zone in, the code validates and loads into the plugin. Also using this contract/adapter approach for Terraform, game engine presets, CI pipelines, etc.Wrote about it here: https://vishsubramanian.me/lm-guitar-tone-generator-polychro...replysailfast 5 days ago | parent | next [–] This is really cool!Seems like the key to the prompt it seems is the knowledge of how these tones were created in the first place (your system prompts for the 80s) which requires some actual tone knowledge and leaves all the fiddly bits to the LLM.As someone relatively new to guitar this is intimidating, but also a fun rabbit hole. Additional “expert” prompts for different archetypes and genres could be fun.replyingvay7 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] thanks.Frankly — the system prompt is the sauce. The LLM has encyclopedic knowledge of every amp, cab, and pedal ever made which still blows my mind, but without guardrails it'll confidently tell you to boost mids on a JCM800 (which is how you disappear in a loud mix i've noticed). That era cheat sheet is all the working knowledge over the years of spectacularly failing to get the right tones.Once someone does that encoding work for a genre, it's reusable forever I think. I'm pretty comfortable with late-80s/early-90s rock well enough to write the specs. But you're right — a "modern metal" prompt, a shoegaze one (which my teenager wants), a funkone,etc - that's the next layer. tone_system.md just needs to be updated. I plan to expand this to more plugins. Contributions welcome.replysailfast 3 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Amazing! Even though they’re “just prompts” that knowledge is still important and valuable. Very cool. Unfortunately I’m just a guitar newb trying to figure out what pickups are doing things to my tone so you probably don’t want me in there :)replyBrokenCogs 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Very cool! I was thinking of doing this. One question, what made you choose polychrome dsp over something like neuraldsp?replyingvay7 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] No real reason really.In fact its on my list next. I was working on a track in logic that i was mostly sourcing the polychrome presets and i plan to add the same functionality to all my other plugins. The Gojira archetype is one i have my eyes on firstreplyDonaldFisk 5 days ago | prev | next [–] The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was in 1956, before I was born. AI itself is even older than that (e.g. William Grey Walter's robots, Elmer and Elsie in 1948), but it was called cybernetics back then. I've been doing symbolic AI, on and off, since the 1980s.I assume, though, you mean LLMs. I haven't used them first hand, but I have fairly recently implemented a multi-layer artificial neural network in C, mostly as a learning exercise, but as I had previously built a speech spectrogram in Lisp, I thought I'd try to use it to recognize phonemes, with one hidden layer. The Lisp communicated with the ANN via a Unix pipe. It worked reasonably well for just vowels, but when I added other sounds (e.g. l, r, s, z), its performance deteriorated. I think the C is bug free, but I don't know an easy way to train the ANN. I've tried adding to the training set, adding an extra layer, changing the number of neurons in the hidden layer. The usual debugging skills don't seem to help there.replykingkongjaffa 5 days ago | parent | next [–] > I haven't used them first handWhy not? Given your background surely you would be curious.replyDonaldFisk 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] I'm interested in how they work, but building anything like them, given the hardware I have, would be impractical. I've seen others use them, including to answer some questions I had, but the answers they gave were obvious, unhelpful, or wrong.Even if they become more reliable, I like to understand and work things out for myself, rather than just be given the answer.replychangadera 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] > I assume, though, you mean LLMs. I haven't used them first handWow, kudos. Honestly.replyvtbassmatt 5 days ago | prev | next [–] Mostly games-adjacent hobby tools, it turns out.(Edit: forgotten in first edition) A cookbook to store the recipes my family likes to cook so I can eventually break up with Pinterest: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/CookbookA data extraction pipeline and search engine for a new card game called Mood Swings: https://moodswingsdata.github.io and https://moodswingsdata.github.io/feelings.An app to let my friends and me build a Magic: the Gathering cube iteratively together: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/popcorn-cubeA custom wiki engine for a family of podcasts I enjoy: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/totalus-wikiumA systemd log viewer for the web: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/djournalreplykigiri 5 days ago | parent | next [–] https://github.com/vtbassmatt/djournal is not public ? I'm using https://github.com/ralsina/grafito but I'm not super happy with itreplyvtbassmatt 2 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Oops, I forgot this one wasn't public. Sorry! Auth was implemented using a library I don't know much about, so I figured better safe than sorry.replyjvvw 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Games stuff for me too - geoguessr in my case. It'd never have been worth putting in the time to build them without AI but so easy with AI.replySchlagbohrer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] For storing receipes I like Mealie, and I didn't have to code it myself.replyyakshaving_jgt 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Did you take down djournal? It returns a 404 now.replyshibel 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I need to finish off that blog post.With Tailscale, you can basically point a domain to the FQDN of a machine you’re sharing with people and the domain will simply work for them (and only them)[1]. But for it to work without them having to know or specify the specific application port, you have to grant them access to 443 (and 80) in your Tailscale ACL for that specific host.So yeah, now immich.familydomain.com works without family members having to remember the specific port. BUT, serveradmin.familydomain.com (another app on the same host) will ALSO be accessible to them (from a networking POV). We opened port 443/80 for that host after all.I took a few hours with Claude back in January (?) and we wrote a tiny Go authorization gateway which basically consults both Tailscale’s public API and Tailscale’s and returns the appropriate response to Caddy based on the requesting user’s actual allowed ports.So now I can share different apps (subdomains) with different people without forfeiting access controls, all driven by Tailscale’s policy file.(I hope I didn’t mess up the crux of it, pretty late here)Edit: why not (something like) Authentik? Quoting from the draft: I contemplated this for a bit but one thing I kept thinking about is: _They're already logged in to Tailscale_ Why do I need to install and configure another full-blown app dedicated to doing something Tailscale already did? Why have the users go through two hops of authentication?” [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4PDUXB_fgreplysfifs 5 days ago | parent | next [–] I found cloudflare zero trust excellent for this and it works perfectly well on the free tier (I do use cloudflare as my registrar)replydizhn 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Pangolin would have been a better direct fit than Authentik. It does come with an embedded idP nowadays but can also use Authentik. Another tool to keep an eye on is Netbird which is like a tailscale like mesh but has proxy support for whatever app you want to share with or without authentication.replyabeyer 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] authentik is also an oidc provider... couldn't it also be the way they auth to tailscale too?replyshibel 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–] Maybe…I really didn’t want to have to install another app just because I’m sharing though. My line of thinking was/is:If tomorrow I decide not to share with anyone, I don’t want to have to reconfigure stuff. I simply edit the Tailscale policy file, and (maybe) spin down my server.replythatmf 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I vibe coded myself a simple little Home Screen-installable webapp that tells me when my first meeting is the next day (I am in a lot of meetings, and they're constantly in flux). That way, I don't need to be logged into anything work-related on my phone, or even mentally engage in that world. I just want to know when I need to wake up. All it shows me is the time, and I can tap on it if I want to see the title. It adjusts the font and color according to how early the meeting is (earlier than 8a gets Nosifer).Could I have done this myself? Of course. Would I have tho? Prob not.This kind of simple, hyper-specific bespoke utility is the perfect thing for vibe coding IMO.replyjhogendorn 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I built https://beachcomber.sh after one day getting huge lag and asking claude to investigate found that one of the factors was thousands of resources purely for giving my prompt, tmux statusline, nvim statusline, claude statusline the same identical information.I probably would not have bothered to allocate time to this pre ai, the juice wasnt really worth the squeeze. But I approached it with an initial amusing naivete about it being 'super simple'. As is almost always the case with software theres a reasonable amount of hidden complexity. But I have been using it as a sort of learning proving ground for how to work with agentic development. For example I got to a point where claude wouldnt implement properly and would argue with me about changes because it would read the current/old docs in the repo and get confused about reality. So right now I'm experimenting with 'canonical specs' that can only be changed modally with gates and a defined cascade from canon, to code, to docs in that order. Otherwise you end up in a weird thrash about the docs and the code disagree and which one will the agent decide to change for consistency?Anyway, its been interesting and its v0.6 and at a point where Ive not hit a sharp edge dogfooding for a while and some beta testers would be valuable. Right now you have to manually wire it into your stack, once some others have kicked the tyres hard enough I will make some pr's to the popular tools to consider integrating it.replyneonglow 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I built a browser extension that stops animated images such as GIFs by default.I've always found it annoying that browsers autoplay animated images, and there still isn't a built-in way to control that behavior.The extension shows the first frame and adds a play/stop button directly on the image.What started as a personal utility ended up being published on the Firefox and Chrome extension stores. It's still a small project, but it solved a problem I had every day.Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gif-control/Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gif-control/nhoihin...Bug reports and feedback are very welcome.Disclaimer: I previously posted a Show HN about it, but it didn't get traction [1].[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48208916replyxerox13ster 5 days ago | parent | next [–] > I've always found it annoying that browsers autoplay animated images, and there still isn't a built-in way to control that behavior.When I first started daily driving Linux in 2011, this was the default behavior of konqueror, Firefox, librewolf, and opera.I would have to set a flag in the software to get it to autoplay videos and gifs. They would just load with a warning message in the render space that said click to load auto play video.Not surprised that it’s gone.replyfc417fc802 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [–] Nice, this means ebay will be usable for me again. A while back they started permitting videos instead of pictures for the thumbnails of certain products and I pretty much stopped browsing the site. As if online retails websites weren't bad enough already.> I previously posted a Show HN about it, but it didn't get tractionFYI your linked submission is marked as dead. Not sure if that's a problem with your account or not. You should email the HN mods.replyrockmeamedee 5 days ago | prev | next [–] https://github.com/amedeedaboville/mish A mosh clone that uses QUIC as the transport layer so it can do both “unreliable datagrams” like UDP and also a TCP-like reliable stream, so it has scrollback buffer.Also QUIC means the crypto is handled for me, no need to trust the LLM to hand roll its own crypto.Cool Rust libraries enable this like alacritty for the terminal, and being able to have russh (rust implementation of ssh) means it works even if ssh isn’t installed (eg on windows which og mosh never supported).Claude tested this thing forwards and backwards: e2e tests, simulated (foundationDB like) tests for the network and for tokio async thread ordering, 12 different fuzzing targets, even some light model checking on the protocol itself. Each fuzzing round found bugs.Except for a few “it may have bugs, I have only proven it correct” scenarios I’d say it’s looking like it’ll be as trustworthy as (maybe more than?) the original. I’m really happy with it.replyhackernudes 4 days ago | parent | next [–] I have been thinking of this for a few years! Nice, I will check it out.replylinsomniac 5 days ago | prev | next [–] I've redesigned my workstation OS using NixOS and Claude Code and it's been a huge success.I like the ideals of NixOS: reproducible setup from a git repo, ability to boot into a past config if you mess things up. But it's a big job learning and implementing that configuration manually. I've been playing with NixOS for ~2 years and like it but never really got that close to a full workstation setup.When Ubuntu 26.04 came out I really needed to upgrade my 22.04 workstation and decided I'd really give NixOS a try before going with 26.04.This time I decided to entirely configure it via Claude Code. I've been entirely running on it for a week and there's nothing I'm missing. I even took a stepping-stone approach where I first installed it on my old laptop, left my current workstation in place (in case the experiment failed), and then did a reinstall of my current workstation. NixOS made setting up the second machine trivial. Now, if my normal workstation were to have a hardware failure, I can just grab my /etc/nixos and rebuild and I'm back in business. Which is important since my workstation is now out of warranty and 6 years old.One win is that I had been using LunarVim and AstroVim, and liked the "batteries included" approach, but they were hard to upgrade and while I was trying to do as little customization as possible, I still needed to do some and that was tricky in their configs. I used Claude Code to build a neovim setup with just my desired features, and it's now a single ~700 line neovim.nix file with everything in it. It's fully featured including LSPs+TreeSitter, etc.replykarl_gluck 5 days ago | parent | next [–] I’d love to give NixOS a try on an old ThinkPad. I’m pretty comfortable with Claude; is it as simple as ask and go, or do you have any suggestions for getting started?replylinsomniac 4 days ago | root | parent | next [–] That's exactly what I did, an old ThinkPad t470s.I installed NixOS, and then I copied /etc/nixos down to my main workstation where I had claude code working, and used it to modify the configs. I'd then rsync them to the other machine and run the "nixos-rebuild" there.I don't recall exactly how I did the initial copies, because SSH wasn't set up there. Probably would be best to just ask claude what needs to be done to enable SSH, it's only like a 1 line change.Some of the first things I asked it to do were: - Switch to flakes and tracking the latest software. - Switch to using Sway for window manager. - Various user account setup things: Configure zsh with atuin and zoxide, enable sudo, allow my SSH key for login, set up some aliases and the software I need. - Install claude code (I gave it the "installing" URL) once I got tired of copying back and forth. - Set up Home Manager and SOPS and put my secrets in SOPS, set up a variety of my scripts and symlinks. - Configure vim to my liking (done entirely in English prose). Those are the top things that come to mind. Honestly, it went pretty smoothly. The only real issue I had to speak of was that I'm running bleeding edge, and the moment I decided to unplug my desktop monitors from the Ubuntu machine and connect them to NixOS I had it do a package update at the same time. This hit a Gnome+Wayland bug which left me at a black screen. A nice thing about NixOS is you can just reboot and at the grub menu select an old