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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- 19h ago
Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway
Introducing Posthorn, a self hosted email gateway. One docker container (or Go binary) between every self hosted app on your VPS and your transactional email provider. Set up Posthorn once, point your apps to it, done.I was trying to deploy Ghost on a DigitalOcean droplet and found that DO and many different VPS services have started to block the default SMTP ports to try to combat the various types of abuse they get. To actually configure my app, I had to hack together a Postfix relay.In another project, I had a static site which had a contact form, but my free Formspree account was occasionally hitting usage limits and I desperately wanted some of the anti-spam features they had gated behind their paid accounts so I put together a caddy module to catch HTTP POSTs and bounce them to my provider.I kept bumping into these same email issues. Many of the services I wanted to host (Gitea, Mastodon, Umami, Comentario) ran into the same limitations. This felt like a really common issue that had no good solution.Posthorn is what I built to solve this. It's a small Go binary (or 10 MB docker image) that sits between your self hosted apps and your transactional email provider of choice (shipping with support for Postmark, Resend, Mailgun, Amazon SES or an outbound SMTP relay). It also accepts POSTs from HTML forms to support static site needs while adding security layers such as honeypot fields, origin checks and IP rate limiting. There's also a JSON HTTP API that supports Bearer auth for backend scripts or cron jobs that just want a /send endpoint.I now use this personally in multiple scenarios and I've spent a lot of time beating this up and testing against what I can validate. I'd love to hear how this might be useful for you, what breaks and any feedback you might have. It's open source under Apache 2.0 and I'd love contributions. I'm planning to support and grow this for the long haul.Code: https://github.com/craigm
Hacker News3mo agoToolAI
How do you prepare to tech interview? Any tip and tricks?
Hey, I’m working as developer 8 years, and I changed company a couple times, and it was just luck every time, I ruined 90% of tech interviews, but in regular work I can do a lot of things, like invent some solutions, learn new things very quickly, but in interviews I’m absolute loser What can you advise me? How can I better pass job interviews?
Hacker News3mo agoToolDev
I made an emergency page for my family
I have a bad memory and can't memorize some important numbers, so I created this project.I've always been concerned about being without my phone (getting robbed - which is common in Brazil - running out of battery, having it break, etc.), so I decided to create a page that sends SMS messages (LLM-summarized) and emails with more detailed information such as geolocation, IP address, and the full message.It’s a simple page that allows sending one or more messages, with recipients being myself and other people - for example, in case I or they need help or need to communicate something important.The source code is available at https://github.com/skhaz/dokku/tree/main/apps/help
Hacker News3mo agoToolAI
Managing smart code snippets efficiently for developers
Developers experience daily pain at work from lacking organized, smart code snippets, making coding repetitive and inefficient.
X3mo agoToolDev
Learners struggle to find structured YouTube learning paths
Individuals seeking to learn new skills face difficulty discovering organized, step-by-step YouTube playlists tailored to their goals, leading to inefficient self-study.
X3mo agoToolEducation
Gaining distribution for open source projects without paid placements
Open source repo maintainers struggle to increase stars and reach users because they lack distribution channels beyond personal efforts and avoid paying for media placements.
X3mo agoToolDev
Setting up domain email services taking excessive time
Indie builders and developers waste entire days on technical setup like adding domains to email services with no progress, delaying project launches.
X4mo agoToolProductivity
Open source repositories are forgotten and abandoned
Developers and maintainers lose track of promising open-source projects that become neglected, missing opportunities for revival and collaboration.
X3mo agoToolDev
Email inboxes cause anxiety and disorganization
Professionals suffer from inbox anxiety due to overwhelming, unstructured email management and seek a more conversational, team-like interface for handling emails.
X3mo agoToolProductivity
Website owners can't identify why first-time visitors bounce
Businesses and founders lack insights into the specific reasons first-time website visitors leave without converting, hindering optimization efforts.
X3mo agoToolMarketing & Sales
Job seekers forget to follow up on saved job links
Job seekers save interesting job postings in bookmarks, browser tabs, and messaging apps but frequently forget to apply later, missing out on opportunities.
X3mo agoToolHR & Career
Lack of visibility and feedback when building startups in silence
Founders who build in silence fail multiple startups because nobody knows they exist, resulting in no feedback, support, or early customers.
X3mo agoOtherVC & Startups
Finding relevant opportunities on X without endless scrolling
Users struggle to discover business, reply, or networking opportunities on X because it requires manually scrolling the entire feed, leading to inefficiency and missed chances.
X6mo agoToolProductivity
Tax Deadline & Extension Tracker
Help freelancers and small business owners track multiple tax deadlines, extension dates, and filing requirements in one place. Automatic reminders prevent missed deadlines and penalties. [Trending: "tax filing deadline" with 200+ searches in US]
Google Trends3mo agoToolFinanceUS
Insurance Fraud Detection & Reporting Tool
Help insurance agents and adjusters identify suspicious claims using pattern recognition (staged accidents, repeat claimants, geographic hotspots). Streamline fraud reporting and investigation workflow. [Trending: "insurance fraud" with 200+ searches in GB]
Google Trends3mo agoToolFinanceGB
Commercial Real Estate Transaction Friction
Commercial real estate transactions are fragmented across brokers, lawyers, CPAs, and lenders with no unified workflow. Deal coordination, document management, and timeline tracking remain manual and error-prone.
YC Graveyard5y agoToolReal Estate and Construction
Pablo – a Chrome extension that copies UI from any website
Pablo is a Chrome extension that copies the HTML and CSS behind any element you hover.It captures computed styles, fonts (with @font-face and Google Fonts links), CSS keyframes, and animation props from GSAP and Framer Motion. The output is structured so it pastes cleanly into Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex when you want to rebuild a component in your own stack.Manifest v3, no host permissions, no backend. Free.https://usepablo.devHappy to answer questions about how the extraction works, and would love to hear about sites where the output breaks.
Hacker News3mo agoToolAI
Minicor (YC P26) – Windows desktop automations at scale
Hey we’re Faiz and Saheed and we built Minicor so AI companies who need to integrate to desktop systems with no API can quickly build scalable desktop RPAs. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0GHZIJ1cwEdit: RPA is an acronym for Robotic Process Automation - things like triggering mouse clicks and key strokes to perform tasks programmatically. Sorry if this wasn't clear!We were working on non-RPA integrations when a customer promised to sign a deal in 2 days if we could unblock a sale of theirs that involved integrating with a clinic’s Windows based medical record system. We didn’t know it at the time but it turns out that building desktop RPAs at scale is extremely difficult because scripting is hard (learning the system, defining the automation, UIs changing constantly), orchestration is hard (is the VM up? queuing, parallelizing) and debugging is hard (zero observability, false positives, cascading failures). 30%+ failure rates are not uncommon. At scale we’ve seen cases of failed RPAs leading to thousands of support tickets a month.To solve the problems we were facing, we built an MCP that Claude Code/Codex can use to navigate a virtual machine running desktop software with Python to create RPA workflows. The RPA workflows run as Python scripts for speed, cost, and determinism. These workflows can be triggered by API following any input/output schema specified, with video replays and logs stored with each run. The MCP can debug RPAs and make changes to the underlying code, all of which are version controlled. We also built tools for cloning VMs for parallelizing RPAs, and handling 2FA/OTP challenges. Plus since workflows are code based: we were also able to add triggers for Slack notifications, human-in-the-loop steps, or call an LLM to verify the state of a VM by passing a screenshot.Would love to hear your feedback and if you have any RPA horror stories! (:
Hacker News3mo agoToolAI