Ideas Lab
Real problems people complain about online, pulled every morning and scored out of 100. Build, validate, or skip. How scoring works
- Ideas
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- 19h ago
Small marketing teams struggle to identify ad waste
Smaller marketing teams cannot easily pinpoint where their ad budgets are being wasted because existing tools like Northbeam, Triple Whale, and GA4 are too complex and expensive for them, leaving them without actionable insights.
X5mo agoToolOther
Companies need computer vision for facility tracking
Businesses want computer vision solutions for real-time tracking of assets or waste sorting in facilities, but require custom models trained on large datasets (20k+ images) and face deployment issues in real-world environments.
X6mo agoToolAI
Schedule SMS messages on iPhone without native support
iPhone lacks native SMS scheduling while Android users have it built-in. Users search for workarounds but must use third-party apps or wait. A cross-platform web tool could solve this gap for iPhone users needing reliable text scheduling. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolProductivityUS
Automated Pinterest board organization and discovery tool
Users struggle to manage sprawling Pinterest boards and rediscover saved content across multiple boards. A tool that auto-categorizes pins, suggests board consolidation, and surfaces forgotten saves could help power users reclaim their collections. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolProductivityUS
Find lost Android phone without Google Account access
Users need to locate Android devices when Find My Mobile isn't configured or isn't accessible (theft, borrowed phone, family member). A tool using IMEI lookup, carrier triangulation, or community crowdsourcing fills this gap. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolProductivityUS
Find lost iPhone without Apple ID or recovery mode
Users lose iPhones or need to track a device they don't own (child, employee phone). Apple's native Find My requires setup. A web tool leveraging IMEI lookup, carrier networks, or community crowdsourcing could help locate phones when official channels fail. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolProductivityUS
Automate recurring investment trades and portfolio rebalancing
Many investors manually execute recurring trades or portfolio rebalancing in Fidelity. A tool that automates scheduled buys, sells, and rebalancing rules without API access could save hours monthly for active traders managing multiple accounts. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolFinanceUS
Flight price monitoring & fare alert tool for Brazilian travelers
Rising fuel costs make airline ticket prices volatile and unpredictable. Brazilian travelers searching for passagens aéreas need real-time price tracking, alerts for price drops, and historical trend analysis to buy at optimal times. Existing tools are sparse or generic for regional routes. [Trending: "passagens aereas" with 200+ searches in BR]
Google Trends5mo agoToolTravelBR
Auto accident claim documentation & lawyer matching platform
People injured in car accidents struggle to document claims, gather evidence, and find qualified local attorneys. Current solutions are fragmented across legal directories and insurance portals. A tool combining injury documentation templates, evidence collection guidance, and attorney matching could serve this high-intent searcher base. [Trending: "auto accident lawyers" with 2000+ searches in US]
Google Trends5mo agoToolLegalUS
Multi-state tax refund tracking in one dashboard
Filers with returns in multiple states or prior years need to check refund status across different state tax agency portals. A centralized tracker that pulls status from state APIs would eliminate repetitive logins. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolFinanceUS
Multi-state tax refund aggregator with push notifications
Taxpayers filing in multiple states must manually check each state's tax portal for refund status. A unified tracker pulling real-time data from state revenue agencies and alerting users when refunds are processed reduces friction. [Google Search suggestion]
Google Trends5mo agoToolFinanceUS
Food discovery through video before ordering
Users struggle to discover compelling food options on traditional delivery apps. Video content showing actual food preparation and presentation could improve discovery and ordering decisions.
YC Graveyard2y agoToolE-Commerce
Gamified savings and financial incentives
Helping users build savings habits through games and weekly monetary rewards/incentives
YC Graveyard4y agoToolFinance
Augmented reality visualization tools for enterprise/retail
AR projection-based visualization could help businesses visualize space layouts, furniture placement, or product displays without expensive hardware.
YC Graveyard12y agoToolB2B
Zerobox – Sandbox any command with file, network, credential controls
I'm excited to introduce Zerobox, a cross-platform, single binary process sandboxing CLI written in Rust. It uses the sandboxing crates from the OpenAI Codex repo and adds additional functionalities like secret injection, SDK, etc.Watch the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZiPm9BOPCgZerobox follows the same sandboxing policy as Deno which is deny by default. The only operation that the command can run is reading files, all writes and network I/O are blocked by default. No VMs, no Docker, no remote servers.Want to block reads to /etc? zerobox --deny-read=/etc -- cat /etc/passwd cat: /etc/passwd: Operation not permitted How it works:Zerobox wraps any commands/programs, runs an MITM proxy and uses the native sandboxing solutions on each operating system (e.g BubbleWrap on Linux) to run the given process in a sandbox. The MITM proxy has two jobs: blocking network calls and injecting credentials at the network level.Think of it this way, I want to inject "Bearer OPENAI_API_KEY" but I don't want my sandboxed command to know about it, Zerobox does that by replacing "OPENAI_API_KEY" with a placeholder, then replaces it when the actual outbound network call is made, see this example: zerobox --secret OPENAI_API_KEY=$OPENAI_API_KEY --secret-host OPENAI_API_KEY=api.openai.com -- bun agent.ts Zerobox is different than other sandboxing solutions in the sense that it would allow you to easily sandbox any commands locally and it works the same on all platforms. I've been exploring different sandboxing solutions, including Firecracker VMs locally, and this is the closest I was able to get when it comes to sandboxing commands locally.The next thing I'm exploring is `zerobox claude` or `zerobox openclaw` which would wrap the entire agent and preload the correct policy profiles.I'd love to hear your feedback, especially if you are running AI Agents (e.g. OpenClaw), MCPs, AI
Hacker News5mo agoToolAI
Client took over development by vibe coding. What to do?
I’ve worked on a project for one year now, a marketplace web application for one of my clients. It involves a web shop frontend, integration with suppliers, payment platforms, product management, stock syncing, and much more. I built the project from scratch with open source components, guided other developers on the project, and was leading all the technical decisions.Last year I started using LLM’s for cumbersome tasks, and since the beginning of this year I started working with Claude Code to implement features. Still, I always need to think about the implementation, and actively direct and correct the bot. As many of you will know, it can speed up development, but I still need to use my more than ten years of experience as a developer. I thought the project for my client would be safe.This changed when they started developing some of their own, much smaller and simpler projects on an AI-powered no-code platform. They immediately concluded this also must be applied to the marketplace project that will run their core business. I tried to convince them with good arguments that this wouldn’t be a good idea, but failed. Since I am not the owner of the code, and don’t want to be a gatekeeper, I instructed them how to participate in the development with their coding agents.The additions they made to the codebase in only a week are huge, around 10,000 lines of code. To be honest, most of the features they introduced are functional, but the performance of the application has suffered already. What I am most concerned about is the maintainability of the project and how we will get this live. Before, I had a clear mental model of how everything was built, and I added human readable documentation where needed. They still want me to participate in the project and work on the most critical parts of the application, DevOps and other parts they and their coding agents will not succeed in themselves.It seems some people are possessed by the promises of AI-tools, and do not have
Hacker News5mo agoToolAI
Distributed data centers in our basements
This is likely a bit unrealistic, but why can't we make a half rack server to go in someones basement that can also heat up their hot water and use the basement floor as a heat sink as well?It seems like a lot of the blight of data centers is the energy to remove the heat. By distributing them into cool basements and even connecting them into the home heating system we could reduce that making them more efficient.
Hacker News5mo agoToolOther
Dull – Instagram Without Reels, YouTube Without Shorts (iOS)
I kept deleting and redownloading Instagram because I couldn't stop watching Reels but needed the app for DMs. Tried screen time limits, just overrode them. So I built this.Dull loads Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and X and filters out short-form content with a mix of CSS and JS injection. MutationObserver handles anything that lazy-loads after the page renders, which is most of the annoying stuff since these platforms love to load content dynamically.The ongoing work is maintaining the filters. Platforms change their DOM all the time, Instagram obfuscates class names, YouTube restructures how Shorts appear in the feed, etc. It's a cat-and-mouse thing that never really ends.Also has grayscale mode, time limits, and usage tracking.Happy to answer questions.
Hacker News5mo agoToolAI
Real-time dashboard for Claude Code agent teams
This project (Agents Observe) started as an exploration into building automation harnesses around claude code. I needed a way to see exactly what teams of agents were doing in realtime and to filter and search their output.A few interesting learnings from building and using this:- Claude code hooks are blocking - performance degrades rapidly if you have a lot of plugins that use hooks- Hooks provide a lot more useful info than OTEL data- Claude's jsonl files provide the full picture- Lifecycle management of MCP processes started by plugins is a bit kludgy at bestThe biggest takeaway is how much of a difference it made in claude performance when I switched to background (fire and forget) hooks and removed all other plugins. It's easy to forget how many claude plugins I've installed and how they effect performance.The Agents Observe plugin uses docker to start the API and dashboard service. This is a pattern I'd love to see used more often for security (think Axios hack) reasons. The tricky bit was handling process management across multiple claude instances - the solution was to have the server track active connections then auto shut itself down when not in use. Then the plugin spins it back up when a new session is started.This tool has been incredibly useful for my own daily workflow. Enjoy!
Hacker News5mo agoToolAI
Baton – A desktop app for developing with AI agents
Hi,I built this because running multiple Claude Code agents across multiple IDE and terminal windows was getting messy. Like many, I went from working at one thing at the time, to multiple, and it was all changing quite fast.I needed one place to see all my agents and worktrees, seamlessly switch between them, monitor their status and once their done, review their changes. I also wanted to quickly spin up new agents in isolated worktrees whenever an idea came to mind.I've been building Baton from within Baton for a while now, which has been a pretty fun loop. Would love to hear what you think!
Hacker News5mo agoToolAI