Ideas Lab
Real problems people complain about online, pulled every morning and scored out of 100. Build, validate, or skip. How scoring works
- Ideas
- 4,820
- BUILD
- 702
- Sources
- 8
- Last sync
- 4h ago
I built a navigation app that displays weather along the route
Hello HN,I live in northern part of USA where winters are snowy. Whenever I took long trips, I always wondered what the weather along the route is going to be. For those who live in northern USA, you know weather can change frequently, so when you're traveling matters a lot, not just the route.To solve this problem for myself, I built https://navimodo.com/. NaviModo calculates the route, and then checks weather along the route based on your start time, and displays weather along the route. Change start time, and the whole thing is recalculated.I am not expecting any commercialization for this, just wanted to scratch an itch, and just did it. I have ideas for adding additional features (suggestions for when to take breaks based on bad weather, auto-suggestion of start time to avoid bad weather, etc.,) but will add more as time goes by.Any feedback is welcome!
Hacker News6mo agoToolDesign & Creative
Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
Last week SWYX nerd-sniped me into building an Open-source Dropbox.Here is Locker: the ultimate open-source Google Drive/box/Dropbox alternative - Provider agnostic (S3, R2, vercel blob, local) - BYOB (Bring your own bucket) - Virtual file system - QMD Search plugin
Hacker News6mo agoToolDesign & Creative
Low-learning-curve 3D modeling tool for non-professionals
Blender has a steep learning curve; designers, product managers, and hobbyists need simpler 3D tools for basic modeling (mockups, visualizations). Demand exists for web-based or simplified desktop 3D editor with templates. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends6mo agoToolDesign & CreativeUS
Modo – I built an open-source alternative to Kiro, Cursor, and Windsurf
Hacker News6mo agoToolDesign & Creative
ZBrush 3D software has numerous unaddressed UX and functionality flaws
Professional 3D artists struggle with inconsistent scaling, import/export nightmares, lack of pivots, subscription-gated tools, and basic workflow blockers in ZBrush.
X7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
I built a DNS resolver from scratch in Rust – no DNS libraries
I built a DNS resolver that lets me use https://frontend.numa instead of localhost:5173 — auto-generated TLS certs, WebSocket passthrough, path routing. No mkcert, no nginx, no /etc/hosts.
Hacker News7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
Barriers to entry for non-technical creators in image editing
Accessible, browser-based image editing for casual creators who don't have Photoshop skills or budget. The market has matured with demand for lightweight design tools, and AI image generation/editing has made this more tractable for solo builders.
YC Graveyard19y agoToolDesign & Creative
Renters and decorators need AI room design visualization before purchase
People planning room changes need to visualize furniture layouts and color schemes before buying. AR-based design tools exist but are fragmented, expensive (Interior AI, Spacejoy), or require professional consultation. A simpler, cheaper AI tool could generate multiple design options from room photos. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends7mo agoToolDesign & CreativeUS
Finding niche artists for commercial commissions
Content creators struggle to find artists skilled in specific illustration styles (e.g., Sonic ASYM) who offer commercial usage rights for paid commissions, requiring NDA and backgrounds.
X7mo agoOtherDesign & Creative
Gridland: make terminal apps that also run in the browser
Hi everyone,Gridland is a runtime + ShadCN UI registry that makes it possible to build terminal apps that run in the browser as well as the native terminal. This is useful for demoing TUIs so that users know what they're getting before they are invested enough to install them. And, tbh, it's also just super fun!Gridland is the successor to Ink Web (ink-web.dev) which is the same concept, but using Ink + xterm.js. After building Ink Web, we continued experimenting and found that using OpenTUI and a canvas renderer performed better with less flickering and nearly instant load times.We're excited to continue iterating on this. I expect a lot of criticism from the "why does this need to exist" angle, and tbh, it probably doesn't - it's really mostly just for fun, but we still think the demo use case mentioned previously has potential.- Chris + Jess
Hacker News7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
AI room design visualization tool for interior planning
Renters and budget-conscious homeowners need affordable interior design visualization. Expensive design services and fragmented apps leave a gap for AI-powered mockups from photos. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends6mo agoToolDesign & CreativeUS
Gemini can now natively embed video, so I built sub-second video search
Gemini Embedding 2 can project raw video directly into a 768-dimensional vector space alongside text. No transcription, no frame captioning, no intermediate text. A query like "green car cutting me off" is directly comparable to a 30-second video clip at the vector level.I used this to build a CLI that indexes hours of footage into ChromaDB, then searches it with natural language and auto-trims the matching clip. Demo video on the GitHub README. Indexing costs ~$2.50/hr of footage. Still-frame detection skips idle chunks, so security camera / sentry mode footage is much cheaper.
Hacker News7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
Integrating 3D models into web applications is cumbersome
Web developers struggle with the complexity of embedding and handling 3D models on websites, making it hard to create interactive experiences efficiently.
X7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
[Multiple languages] properties are generated as nullable/optional, despite required/nullable usage in OAS schema
Kiota ignores the usage of `required`/`nullable` in OAS schemas. C# properties are always generated as nullable. This results in unneeded noisy squiggles, as shown [here](https://github.com/microsoft/kiota/issues/3846#issuecomment-1844249797). NSwag does a better job, by performing the following translation (using the `/GenerateNullableReferenceTypes:true` switch): - OAS non-required + nullable: C# nullable - OAS required + nullable: C# nullable - OAS non-required + non-nullable: C# non-nullable, unless combined with the `/GenerateOptionalPropertiesAsNullable:true` switch - OAS required + non-nullable: C# non-nullable Additionally, NSwag adds `[Newtonsoft.Json.JsonProperty(Required = ..., , NullValueHandling = ...)]` on the generated properties, which results in client-side serialization errors (thus avoiding a server roundtrip on invalid input). Example component schema ```json "exampleComponent": { "required": [ "requiredNonNullableReferenceType", "requiredNullableReferenceType", "requiredNullableValueType", "requiredValueType" ], "type": "object", "properties": { "nonNullableReferenceType": { "type": "string" }, "requiredNonNullableReferenceType": { "type": "string" }, "nullableReferenceType": { "type": "string", "nullable": true }, "requiredNullableReferenceType": { "type": "string", "nullable": true }, "valueType": { "type": "integer", "format": "int32" }, "requiredValueType": { "type": "integer", "format": "int32" }, "nullableValueType": { "type": "integer", "format": "int32", "nullable": true }, "requiredNullableValueType": { "type": "integer", "format": "int32", "nullable": true } }, "additionalProperties": false } ```
GitHub2y agoToolDesign & Creative
Designers spend hours translating vague creative ideas into polished, production-ready UI mockups
Product designers and teams struggle with the tedious gap between conceptual ideas and implementable designs. The current workflow requires multiple tools (Figma, design systems, documentation), manual iteration, and back-and-forth communication with developers about specs and consistency. This delays product launches and frustrates both designers who want faster experimentation and developers waiting for clear, coded-ready assets.
Product Hunt7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
Design systems are too complex for designers
Building and maintaining design systems is overly complicated and time-intensive for design teams.
X7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?
We're at ~15 people and things that used to "just work" are starting to crack. Decisions that everyone used to know about are getting lost. New hires take forever to ramp up. Different teams are building on different assumptions. For those who've been through this stage, what actually broke first? And what did you do about it?
Hacker News7mo agoToolDesign & Creative
AI video storyboarding tool
Reverie is a GenAI-powered video storyboarding tool. Helps video creators plan scenes, generate visual references, and organize their narrative before shooting. Reduces the gap between creative vision and production.
X7mo agoToolDesign & Creative