Ideas Lab
Real problems people complain about online, pulled every morning and scored out of 100. Build, validate, or skip. How scoring works
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- 11h ago
How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
I’ve spent roughly the last decade and some change as a software engineer, and recently decided to start a solo consultancy.I’m focused on helping SMEs sort out the messy back-office parts of the business: spreadsheet glue, brittle internal workflows, poor reporting, awkward integrations, backend/platform problems, and AI workflows that need to do real work rather than just look good in a demo.I’m not really interested in becoming a generic agency. I’d rather work with businesses that already feel operational pain and need someone technical to help untangle it properly.For those of you who’ve made this jump:* how did you get your first real project? * what kind of outreach actually worked? * did your first few clients come from network, content, cold outreach, partnerships, subcontracting, or somewhere else?Also, if anyone knows SMEs or operators dealing with this sort of mess, I’d be glad to chat.As a gesture of goodwill, I’m offering the first 5 clients 10 hours free to help get an initial project moving.You can find me over at https://crescita.cc
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
New audit: unpinned-tools
I've been thinking about this one recently in the context of trivy's [ongoing issues](https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/discussions/10425): it's good to hash-pin actions, but a lot of actions internally just fetch whatever "latest" version of a binary is available as a GitHub release. Consequently, even hash-pinned actions can be a vector for distributing malicious builds, since "latest" is always a mutable concept (and without immutable releases, previous tags may also be mutable). So, we should have an audit for this. Like with `cache-poisoning`, we'll probably want to use the coordinate API and start with a fixed set of well-known actions that are known to install binaries. Some good initial candidates: - `aquasecurity/trivy-action` - `taiki-e/install-action` Each of these will require slightly different coordinates/nuances. For example `trivy-action` has the `version:` input, but `version: latest` should still be flagged. In contrast `install-action` has no `version:` input, but the `tool:` input should have a `@version` suffix. Those are the relatively easy cases; it might also be nice to be able to flag actions like `astral-sh/setup-uv`, but the wrinkle with those is that they also support a `version-file` input and by policy zizmor doesn't attempt to parse files outside of workflows/actions/etc. for supporting information. So `setup-uv` and similar would be subject to higher false positive rates. There are also actions that never make sense to flag, like our own `zizmor-action`: `zizmor-action` has a `version:` input that defaults to `latest`, but under the hood `latest` is actually hash-pinned within the repo itself and is therefore immutable and changes only when the action itself changes. By way of example, here would be some steps that an audit here should flag: ```yaml - uses: aquasecurity/trivy-action@whatever # FLAG: no `version:` input - uses: taiki-e/install-action@whatever with: tool: cargo-hack # FLAG: no `@version` prefix - uses
GitHub7mo agoToolAI
How are you actively keeping your thinking sharp while using LLMs daily?
I've noticed AI tools have made me lazier. I used to think and reason through problems deeply, writing out my thoughts, going back and forth on items. With LLMs so easily available, I find myself having a conversation with Claude instead. I'm concerned that I'm not exercising my deep thinking muscles much.Anyone else feel this? And more specifically — what deliberate practices are you using to keep your reasoning sharp?
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock
I wrote this after the case of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, was compelled to unlock her computer with her fingerprint. This resulted in access to her Desktop Signal on her computer, revealing sources and their conversations.https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/washington-post-raid-pro...Edit: I've a lot more details about the legality and precedence on the apps landing page https://paniclock.github.io/
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Stage – Putting humans back in control of code review
Hey HN! We're Charles and Dean, and we're building Stage: a code review tool that guides you through reading a PR step by step, instead of piecing together a giant diff.Here's a demo video: https://www.tella.tv/video/stage-demo-1pph. You can play around with some example PRs here: https://stagereview.app/explore.Teams are moving faster than ever with AI these days, but more and more engineers are merging changes that they don't really understand. The bottleneck isn't writing code anymore, it's reviewing it.We're two engineers who got frustrated with GitHub's UI for code review. As coding agents took off, we saw our PR backlog pile up faster than we could handle. Not only that, the PRs themselves were getting larger and harder to understand, and we found ourselves spending most of our time trying to build a mental model of what a PR was actually doing.We built Stage to make reviewing a PR feel more like reading chapters of a book, not an unorganized set of paragraphs. We use it every day now, not just to review each other's code but also our own, and at this point we can't really imagine going back to the old GitHub UI.What Stage does: when a PR is opened, Stage groups the changes into small, logical "chapters". These chapters get ordered in the way that makes most sense to read. For each chapter, Stage tells you what changed and specific things to double check. Once you review all the chapters, you're done reviewing the PR.You can sign in to Stage with your GitHub account and everything is synced seamlessly (commenting, approving etc.) so it fits into the workflows you're already used to.What we're not building: a code review bot like CodeRabbit or Greptile. These tools are great for catching bugs (and we use them ourselves!) but at the end of the day humans are responsible for what gets shipped. It's clear that reviewing code hasn't scaled the sam
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Linux?
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Ryzen-AI-Open-Source-Demo AMD Has Open-Source Ryzen AI Demo Code - But Only For Windows
GitHub3y agoToolAI
I quit my job over weaponized robots to start my own venture
Two weeks ago, I quit my job at a robotics company. I was working with high-end hardware (Boston Dynamics, Unitree), but I found out they were planning to mount teleoperated weapons on the robotic platforms for a demo. I’m not willing to go there, so I resigned without another offer.I’ve decided this is the right time to go back to entrepreneurship. We're at an incredible moment for embodied intelligence, but I feel the tools and workflows we use to interact, monitor, and control these platforms are still lagging behind.I'm currently exploring a couple of projects around how we build, test, and interact with robots. As part of my customer discovery phase, I'm trying to gather raw data on how roboticists and developers actually work day to day and what their main pain points are regarding control interfaces.I put together a very short survey (3 mins) to validate some ideas. If you work in robotics, embedded systems, or just tinker with hardware, your input would be incredibly valuable:Survey link: https://forms.gle/3Nm76wkeT5CMt23c8I'm also open to discussing the ethical lines in modern robotics or anything related to ROS2 / HRI in the thread. Thanks for reading!
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
AI tools too expensive and slow for practical repetitive task automation
AI agents like Claude Cowork incur high token costs, hit subscription limits, and run slowly for repetitive tasks, leading users to complete them manually instead.
X6mo agoToolAI
Uncensored AI roleplay chat app alternative to Chai and Character.ai
Users want an AI chat app equivalent to Chai for roleplay/conversations but excluding Character.ai's limitations or censorship.
X6mo agoToolAI
ChatGPT Free Alternative Aggregator & Comparison
Curated comparison platform for free/open-source AI chat tools with features, limits, speed tests, and use-case recommendations to help users find best fit. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends6mo agoToolAIUS
Continual Learning with .md
I have a proposal that addresses long-term memory problems for LLMs when new data arrives continuously (cheaply!). The program involves no code, but two Markdown files.For retrieval, there is a semantic filesystem that makes it easy for LLMs to search using shell commands.It is currently a scrappy v1, but it works better than anything I have tried.Curious for any feedback!
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Marky – A lightweight Markdown viewer for agentic coding
Hey HN,In this age of agentic coding I've found myself spending a lot of time reviewing markdown files. Whether it's plans or documentation that I've asked my agent to generate for me, it seems that I spend more time reading markdown than code.I've tried a few different solutions to make it easier to read such as Obsidian however I've found their Vault system to be quite limiting for this use case and I've found TUI solutions to not quite be as friendly to read as I've wanted so I made Marky.Marky is a lightweight desktop application that makes it incredibly easy to read and track your markdown files. It also has a helpful cli so you can just run marky FILENAME and have the app open to the md file that you pointed it at. I've been using the daily over the past week and I really enjoy it so I figured I'd share it.Here's a video if you want to check out a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGBxt8uOVjc.I have plans to add more features such as incorporating agentic tools such as claude code and codex into the UI as well as developing a local git diff reviewer to allow me to do local code review before pushing up to git.I'd love to hear your thoughts and any feature suggestions you may have :)
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Superior Local NER Model for Precise Entity Extraction
Developers are seeking a robust Named Entity Recognition (NER) model that outperforms spaCy, runs locally, and provides accurate span boundaries for entity extraction.
X6mo agoToolAI
AI-powered workflow automation for repetitive business tasks
Non-technical teams struggle to automate repetitive processes (data entry, email routing, report generation). An AI-assisted tool that watches user actions and suggests automations could reduce manual work by 30%+. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends6mo agoToolAIUS
How do you maintain flow when vibe coding?
It's been a year now since I made Claude Code my daily driver, but I feel exhausted by all the context switching from managing 2-3 agents at a time. I know some people advocate for letting agents run wild, but in my experience that leads to subtle bugs that compound and reviews become 100x more painful.What have you done to retain some semblance of flow, stay organized, and limit spinner staring?
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Ithihāsas – a character explorer for Hindu epics, built in a few hours
Hi HN!I’ve always found it hard to explore the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa online. Most content is either long-form or scattered, and understanding a character like Karna or Bhishma usually means opening multiple tabs.I built https://www.ithihasas.in/ to solve that. It is a simple character explorer that lets you navigate the epics through people and their relationships instead of reading everything linearly.This was also an experiment with Claude CLI. I was able to put together the first version in a couple of hours. It helped a lot with generating structured content and speeding up development, but UX and data consistency still needed manual work.Would love feedback on the UX and whether this way of exploring mythology works for you.
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
Notes app with background AI idea implementation
Users want a notes app where they input thoughts or ideas, and AI automatically starts developing or implementing them in the background without manual setup.
X9mo agoToolAI
AI-induced attention deficit from multi-session management
Heavy AI users suffer constant distraction and inability to focus deeply due to managing multiple Claude sessions, numerous terminal/browser tabs, and rapid AI news cycles causing excessive task-switching.
X7mo agoToolAI
Plain – The full-stack Python framework designed for humans and agents
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI
SmallDocs – Markdown without the frustrations
Hi HN, I’d like to introduce you to SmallDocs (https://sdocs.dev). SDocs is a CLI + webapp to instantly and 100% privately elegantly preview and share markdown files. (Code: https://github.com/espressoplease/SDocs)The more we work with command line based agents the more `.md` files are part of our daily lives. Their output is great for agents to produce, but a little bit frustrating for humans: Markdown files are slightly annoying to read/preview and fiddly to share/receive. SDocs was built to resolve these pain points.If you `sdoc path/to/file.md` (after `npm i -g sdocs-dev`) it instantly opens in the browser for you to preview (with our hopefully-nice-to-look-at default styling) and you can immediately share the url.The `.md` files our agents produce contain some of the most sensitive information we have (about codebases, unresolved bugs, production logs, etc.). For this reason 100% privacy is an essential component of SDocs.To achieve this SDoc urls contain your markdown document's content in compressed base64 in the url fragment (the bit after the `#`):https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this is the contents of your document)...The cool thing about the url fragment is that it is never sent to the server (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F...: "The fragment is not sent to the server when the URI is requested; it is processed by the client").The sdocs.dev webapp is purely a client side decoding and rendering engine for the content stored in the url fragment. This means the contents of your document stays with you and those you choose to share it with, the SDocs server doesn't access it. (Feel free to inspect/get your agent to inspect our code to confirm this!)Because `.md` files might play a big role in the future of work, SDocs wants to push the boundaries of styling and rendering interesting content in markd
Hacker News6mo agoToolAI