Ideas Lab

Visual data chart generation tool using GPT

Many users need an easy way to generate charts and data visualizations from natural language prompts. Current AI models struggle with intuitive chart creation. A solo developer could build a GPT-powered interface focused on accurate, customizable chart generation from text. [Trending: "chart gpt" with 2000+ searches in IN]

Google Trends19d agoToolAIIN

WallHop – 12ft.io is gone, so I built a replacement

Hi HN, I'm Josh. WallHop is a free paywall bypass: paste an article URL (or prefix any URL with wallhop.io/) and you get the readable article without the paywall popup, ads or clutter. No signup, no extension.I built it after 12ft.io went away. The News Media Alliance took it down in July 2025 and I missed having something I could hit from my phone.How it works: it started as a fork of everywall/ladder (GPL-3.0) and I've modified it heavily since. Instead of relying on one trick, it chains several bypass methods per request and falls back to archive.is when they all fail, so one site blocking one technique doesn't break it.Things that might be interesting:- iOS Shortcut: on iPhone, tap Share > WallHop from any article in Safari or another app. This is how I use it 95% of the time. - It works on Medium member-only posts, which 12ft never handled. - Bookmarklet for desktop, plus /raw/<url> and /api/<url> endpoints if you want to script it.I've tested it against most major news outlets and a bunch of local papers. It won't work everywhere. There are SOME server-side paywalls that are out of reach, and I'd rather say that up front. If you find a site that breaks, I'd love the link, and I can likely figure out a way to bypass it!

Hacker News20d agoToolAI

Do you want a router that has DD-WRT pre-installed?

I sometimes run across comments where someone says they want an open-source router. I wonder if this is a viable idea for someone to start as a small company. What makes me hesitant is that, first, it looks like this already exists in several wireless and non-wireless routers (like the GL.iNet Flint or OpenWrt One), and second, I assume hackers would just make their own.I have been flashing DD-WRT to my routers for many years. My current setup is an Archer C9 that connects via cable to an Archer C8, which then wirelessly bridges to an R7000. All of them run DD-WRT. If I had "fun money," I would buy a low-power SFF PC with dual NICs, run OPNsense or OpenWrt, and use the wireless routers strictly as access points. Since I don't have that much to spend, I look for older DD-WRT friendly routers, usually under $30, on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, and flash them myself.I see that Ubiquiti and MikroTik make quality routers with proprietary OSes for around $65 new. Protectli and Netgate offer pfSense routers starting at $259.00. The GL.iNet Flint 2 is $169.00, and the OpenWrt One is $89.According to ResellBot (because eBay now requires a login to see sold listings with prices), the sold "DD-WRT Routers" generally go for under $160. These include the WRT3200ACM, Netgear AC1750, Linksys EA9300, and Linksys R7350.When I asked an AI how I would go about judging interest, building, raising funds, and manufacturing, it seems doable but expensive (said $125,000 minimum in total made up of $30,000 for regulatory approval, engineering and protoyping $10,000+) and time-consuming just to get to a "golden prototype" for demos.So if I were a "hacker" and wanted an open-source router, depending on my funds, I would either:1. Flash DD-WRT to an existing router (used or new).2. Buy one with it already installed, like the OpenWrt One or a Protectli device.3. Get an SFF PC and build my own.I remember when some comments about DropBox said it

Hacker News20d agoToolAI

48FL score

Help solo devs create AI-powered custom browser games easily

Developers want accessible tools to generate AI-driven interactive browser games without complex setups. Current solutions are fragmented or require large teams. [Trending: "ai games" with 200+ searches in US]

Google Trends20d agoToolAIUS

I Put an AI Agent on a Nokia 110

I was using this mobile to reduce my screentime. Recently got the idea to put ai agent in it. Started with installing android, but failed as it has only 48MB RAM. Then reverse-engineered for few days and finally able use AI Agent in this and automated few actions.Thanks

Hacker News22d agoToolAI

45FL score

Carrier-Explode: iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy carrier settings decoded

Showing off carrier-explode, one of my side projects that continuously archives carrier settings for all major phone brands.carrier-explode also contains decoders and explanations for all the common baseband configurations, etc.There’s still quite a bit of work to be done in checking my assumptions, but the tool has already been proven useful for a few enthusiast groups.

Hacker News21d agoToolAI

58FL score

Let your AI agents paint big arrows, boxes and text on your screen

Hacker News21d agoToolAI

45FL score

AI usage detection tool for creative contest submissions

Contests face challenges detecting AI-generated submissions. An affordable, easy AI content detection tool could help organizers vet entries, ensuring fair judging and preventing disqualification controversies. [Trending: "why did nikon disqualify the small world in motion contest winner over ai use" with 500+ searches in GB]

Google Trends21d agoToolAIGB

Proton Drive for Linux

Hello everyone, I wanted to share this small project that I have. It's born out of a necessity that I had, because Proton doesn't ship a Linux version of the drive yet (it's apparently coming out later this year but who knows?) and all the current solutions are hacky and wonky at best. But for the time being I really needed to mount my Proton drive on my Linux machine the way I mounted it on my Mac, so I (and my faithful AI slave) did this small utility that allows you to mount your Proton Drive in a FUSE FS like if it is a local folder.It's fully written in Go because Proton's drive SDK and API libs are all in Go, and there's a community project on top of the reverse engineered proton API there too. I am not a Go developer, I know the foundations, so of course I used AI quite a lot, I am not super proud of it, but I am using it daily and testing it myself for a few months before releasing here.Hope you like it, feedbacks are welcome, just please be mindful of the person on the other side :)

Hacker News23d agoToolAI

Pocketty – iPhone SSH terminal that pings you when an agent is blocked

Hello~! pocketty is an SSH terminal for iPhone and iPad, made for herdr. herdr keeps your agent panes alive on your computer and knows the state of each one: working, needs you, or done.I made this in anger/desperation for the latter half of my recent paternity leave. Nap traps are sweet, but there's only so much doom-scrolling and movie-watching I can handle... In any event, I've been using it for the last couple months and no longer have to be my desk anymore to be productive. Now the nap-traps are still productive (when i want them to be) !How it works:- The app talks to your computer directly over plain SSH. Tailscale is the easy way to reach it from anywhere but any SSH host you can reach works.- A small Rust daemon on the host watches herdr. When a pane needs you, it seals the alert to your phone's key with HPKE (X25519, ChaCha20-Poly1305). A stateless relay (pocketty's) on Cloudflare Workers passes the sealed bytes to APNs (Apple Push Notification servers), and a notification extension opens them on the phone. The relay can't read them and keeps nothing.- Your SSH key is made in the Secure Enclave and can't be exported.- The terminal uses libghostty-vt for state and draws with wgpu on Metal, so full-screen TUIs look like they do on your desk, albeit narrower.- Diffs for each agent turn, a file browser, and previews of `localhost` dev servers your agent starts, all through the same SSH connection. No port forwarding to set up.herdr and the daemon are optional. Without them, it's a normal SSH client.There's no account to set up and no analytics or tracking in the app. The app runs a 14-day free trial, with full feature access. Then, if you're as happy as I am with it, then it can be yours forever with a one-time purchase: $99 for the first two weeks (launch promo) then $129 after that.Happy to answer anything about the sealed push setup or running libghostty on iOS.

Hacker News22d agoToolAI

Edi Life OS – self-hosted life dashboard with an MCP server for AI

Hacker News22d agoToolAI

62FL score

Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI

Hacker News22d agoToolAI

70FL score

What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?

DHH's "AI shed" idea got me thinking about getting a small $5–10/month VPS.I'm a Linux guy and have on many points of my life have a personal server. So I like the idea of having something always on, but I’m not sure the maintenance is worth it when most things can just run on my laptop.That said, I tend to do things myself and only later realize I could have automated or delegated them, so I may have a blind spot here.If you have a cheap VPS or mini PC, what actually ended up being useful long-term? Anything that saved enough time or replaced enough subscriptions to justify keeping it around?

Hacker News24d agoToolAI

55FL score

AI use case tracking tool

Users experimenting with AI need a dedicated tool to log, organize, and track different AI tools and their specific use cases over time.

X23d agoToolAI

72FL score

Alarm app for when AI like Claude finishes processing

Users running long AI tasks need a notification or alarm app that alerts them (e.g., wakes them up) specifically when Claude or similar tools complete their work.

X23d agoToolAI

55FL score

NanoMuse – An open-source AI agent for your phone and computer

Hacker News24d agoToolAI

65FL score

My Apple ID is locked for a week, Apple is a single point of failure

My Apple ID was locked by Apple Oct 3rd. I got an automated email stating that I will receive further instructions for account recovery Oct 10th, a week of pain. There is zero human escalation path, no phone number to call, the iforget link leads to same message as email and no further escalation.Because my Apple ID is frozen, the App Store is completely bricked. I can’t update any apps. Living in Japan, almost all of my critical banking and payment apps (like Rakuten Pay) enforce hard version checks for security. The app refuses to launch, needing update. A locked Apple ID effectively cut off my access to my money and daily transactions.My temporary workaround was digging out an old Android phone to use as a backup for my payment apps (of course these apps are only allowed on one device so now I need to carry two phones). But it made me realize how scary my setup was. If Apple decides to lock account, entire day-to-day life stops, and no one to talk to about it. Going forward I am definitely not storing any important government ID like driver license, payments cards, my number card (similar to SSN in US) on Apple devices.How are you guys decoupling your digital lives from a single OS ecosystem? What does your personal "cold standby" look like to handle this risk?My personal computing infrastructure was all in Apple ecosystem. But this incident made me realize, Apple is SPOF, I need to diversify away from Apple and be also part of non-Apple environment.

Hacker News24d agoToolAI

62FL score

AstroHelm – Use your phone camera to aim a telescope or telephoto lens

Hello HN!As an amateur astronomer living in New York City, finding objects in the night sky has always been a huge challenge. I thought about using the smartphone's gyroscope and magnetometer, but the accuracy left a lot to be desired.Then I learned about plate solving: given a picture of the sky, we can determine exactly where in the sky the camera was pointing by identifying the star pattern. This was a much better fit - as long as the phone and the optics are rigidly connected, we can repeatedly photograph the sky and determine the pointing direction with very high accuracy.A lot of work was done to design an algorithm that works reliably with smartphone cameras, which have limited light sensitivity and wider field of view which includes buildings and trees. I experimented a lot with machine learning, and to my surprise, traditional CV methods actually performed better at extracting stars from the image.The result is AstroHelm, an iOS and Android app that helps figure out where your telescope or camera is pointing, and guides you to the object of your choice. Just follow an arrow on screen, and the object will land right in your eyepiece or viewfinder. Everything happens on device, and no internet connection is required.AstroHelm is free to use and comes with beginner-friendly objects selected for each night. Optional one time purchases unlock more objects and advanced features, such as interoperability with other astronomy software. I am also proud to partner with astronomy clubs and organizations to offer free licenses for outreach.I hope AstroHelm can make it a little easier to discover the wonders of the night sky, and I look forward to your feedback!

Hacker News26d agoToolAI

Agent.reviews – Where AI agents read and write reviews on tools

Hi HN!I’m Louis, Co-Founder of Armature (YC P26), where we help teams make their product discoverable and usable by coding agents. We already measured 50k+ agent sessions and realized that over and over agents would encounter the exact same limitations on different tasks using the same tool. So we wondered why these weren’t fixed. And the answer is simple: the feedback loop just doesn’t exist between agents and software vendors but also between different agents. Humans can share their experience on platforms like https://g2.com and https://trustpilot.com, but agents have nowhere to.So we created: https://agent.reviews: the G2 for agents.It works with a set of skills and an npm CLI (@armature-tech/agent-reviews) connecting agents to our API endpoints. Anyone can ask their agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc.) to install it, and agents will naturally check reviews before picking a tool and post their own after using one.As usual, privacy was our main concern, so we added 3 layers before a review gets posted: Deterministic rules filtering secrets, PII, URLs, etc. A Jev classifier trained to detect any leak after the first check A small LLM checking each review to make sure nothing was missedWe've been sharing this project around for a few weeks now and gathered thousands of reviews already. There are already interesting ones, for example:- A Claude Code agent noticed that the Stripe SDK systematically crashed when the API key was missing on the health check page (while it’s this page’s role to actually return an “API key missing” error)- 2 agents mentioned that Prisma required a DATABASE_URL variable even when it wasn’t connecting to any database. They both put fake URLs as a workaround, and it worked.We truly think the agent experience needs the same community effect user experience has, so everyone benefits from it: agents can pick the tools that are best optimized for them and software companies can improve their product ba

Hacker News23d agoToolAI