Explore the hottest developer projects on Show HN for 2024-11-20. Dive into innovative tech, AI applications, and exciting new inventions!
Summary of Today's Content
Today's content summary includes various exciting projects showcased on Hacker News. Highlights include AI-driven tools like the Simple AI Poster Generator, a Christmas Wishlist Planner, and a Compost Monitoring Tech open-sourced for community use. New resources for B2B founders, such as "Founder Vision" book, and creative tools like a customizable AI accountability buddy named Karl, and a bike route planner that focuses on official trails were also featured. Additionally, advancements in gaming, productivity tools, and VR technology were presented, alongside useful platforms for managing affiliate links, file transfers, and even a mental health recovery chatbot.
1. Show HN: Simple AI Poster Generator
URL: https://www.easypostersai.com
Author: Gacheu
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 1 comments
2. Show HN: Christmas Wishlist Planner
URL: https://www.sugarplumplanner.com
Author: cgarvis
Description: Hi HN! I created a wishlist planner to help me keeping on budget with Christmas this year. There is even a feature to upload your kids hand written list and it will digitize it for ya. For those interested, I used Elixir/Phoenix/Liveview to get some
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
3. Show HN: We open-sourced our compost monitoring tech
URL: https://github.com/gtls64/MontyHome-Hackers-Guide
Author: montycompostco
Description:
Popularity: 112 points | 23 comments
4. Show HN: Founder Vision (Book) – Positioning and Narrative for B2B Founders
URL: https://lukestevens.co/foundervision/
Author: lukestevens
Description: Just published this book after 2.5 years of writing and would LOVE any feedback + reviews from HN folks in the B2B world.
In a nutshell, it's about the market in product/market fit.
Here's the PDF just for HN: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pSLp-tPIn6yvWt_wPiVs7e7FufP...
I've made the whole AI-narrated audiobook available on YouTube and as a podcast, too: https://lukestevens.co/foundervision/#podcast
And it's on Amazon for $0.99: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0975665243
By way of backstory...
In 2022, I was at a unicorn that had raised $200M+ and I saw them spend big money on big-name consultants doing narrative/positioning work to help the company crack their next stage of growth. The work, however, was bad and went nowhere, and I thought there had to be a better way.
So I started writing. What I thought would be a 6-month writing project became a B2B positioning textbook, but 225,000 words over 50 chapters is a bit much for most folks :) I went back to the drawing board and 80/20'd the book as Founder Vision, which is now a ~2 hour read that I hope B2B founders will find helpful, with lots of questions to get you thinking about your vision, market, and position within it.
The core of the book is the concept of science-based positioning. The idea is that we actually have decent science-based approaches to minds, markets, and go-to-market, so we don't have to totally wing it when it comes to the market in product/market fit. For example:
— Vision: Vision comes first, as what the founder sees (or needs to see!), both out on the x-axis in some imagined future and down on the y-axis of your own experience (or that of your customers), dictates what we're trying to communicate to the market.
— Minds: Markets are made up of minds, and Dr Iain McGilchrist's modern hierarchy of attention gives us a nuanced take on the brain's two modes of attention. The brain's attention API, as it were, has particular end points we can hit & essentially derive all of marketing from. The two primary modes of attention also happen to map very neatly to the two major schools of thought in positioning, which we can now synthesize.
— Markets: The diffusion of innovations (the basis for Crossing the Chasm) is well established, as is the study of how brands grow, the latter of which is just starting to cross over to the B2B world. We can now also synthesize this as niche -> reach and plan accordingly.
— Go-to-market: We can consider GTM approaches as N=1 experiments and not magical thinking or meaningless "testing" that plagues much B2B marketing.
With those approaches in mind, I boil down startup positioning to four choices: prove it (ride a wave/create a category), find it (zero in on a niche), own it (build a brand as a name/need memory association), or ride it (combine and run with what works). I provide a bunch of examples of each so you can see how it works in practice.
I also then provide a narrative deck outline so you have something you can test with prospects and customers.
With hundreds of millions of dollars regularly bet on venture-backed B2B startups, you'd think we'd have a more rigorous approach to markets, but we really don't. Hopefully this book does a tiny bit to change that, but we'll see.
Either way, I would absolutely love any reviews and feedback <3
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
5. Show HN: Dope Wars – An Onchain Strategy Game
Author: ogslayer
Description: Dope Wars reimagines the classic TI-83 calculator game Drug Wars, built entirely onchain using Dojo, a decentralized gaming engine. The game features dynamic markets that respond to player actions, with every trade influencing prices in a decentralized economy. Immutable gameplay logic ensures that the game's systems are transparent and player-driven.
Popularity: 1 points | 4 comments
6. Show HN: HTML Meets Zip Meets PNG: When Files Have More Layers Than an Onion
URL: https://gildas-lormeau.github.io/Polyglot-HTML-ZIP-PNG/
Author: gildas
Description:
Popularity: 3 points | 2 comments
7. Show HN: A notion-like link-in-bio builder
URL: https://www.reputable.so/
Author: codebymedu
Description: Hey HN,
It took me 4 months to build this app aside my full time job. 1 Month before finish, I decided I want to quit my job and go all in to build it.
I was working as software engineer, and it was quite a hard decision but I believed in the idea so much that I took the risk.
Now a couple of month after the launch, I am working in improving the product, and brining in more users.
It has a free version that is very easy for everyone to try out.
I would love your feedback so I can improve it more :)
Medu
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
8. Show HN: Test your knowledge on famous startups and their growth tactics
URL: https://growsurf.com/startup-growth-tactics-quiz
Author: grsfkev
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
9. Show HN: Fixed.pm: A tool to tell if your agile project is on track
URL: https://fixed.pm
Author: kdinn
Description: My background is that I have led teams delivering tech projects from startups to enterprise.
Throughout that I have often been asked "Kevin, when do you think this feature/release/update will be done?". Generally it wasn't with a view to locking us into a deadline, but, quite reasonably people wanted to know when to expect it.
Often this was in order to do things like prepare marketing or support in time for the release. Such as when we upgraded an ERP, we needed to prepare the team and customers for a new format of invoice. So very much a real-world need.
Along with that I feel strongly that all such "complex" projects should be agile, I've seen the horrors of old-school waterfall first-hand. Not necessarily big A "Agile" with scrum and such, but certainly agile as in being prepared to track and adjust the plan and expectations at every turn as the learnings, and ideas come in throughout the delivery.
But how do you track to a deadline or expectation, and still be flexible and agile throughout the delivery? Surely there is a tool that can take your remaining plan of work and calculate approximately how you are tracking. Well as it turns out there isn't, so I wrote it and that is "Fixed".
Fixed is focused on answering two crucial questions:
"Are we on track?", and
"What are our options if we're not?"
On that mission I have provided an app with:
- Clear traffic lights and timelines which give an instant view of how the project is tracking
- A visual "what-if" mode for exploring options in scope, resources, and timing - this mode has been designed to be usable as a tool for an individual, or in collaboration with a team such as in a strategic planning meeting
The initial release is a Jira marketplace app. It takes the current plan of work, simulates the delivery of the rest of the tasks and presents projected timing for all your releases, epics and sprints.
It also applies innovative logic to levelling your team by skill. E.g. if you have 20 backend python tasks and 3 backend python devs, it will distribute the tasks evenly across them. Most other systems either don't differentiate your team members, or force you to arbitrarily assign resources to tasks before it levels the plan.
To maintain agility, each day, week, month or whatever, you can push a button and get an update of that projection to have a readout of whether you are on track. Then you can adjust the plan, or expectations, accordingly.
You can see a demo video here: https://youtu.be/CFDbAdexwlY
And add the app for a free trial to your Jira account here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1229649?tab=overview&...
More info at: https://fixed.pm
I would love people's views and feedback on how I can make it better serve the vision of reducing the stress of agile project management.
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
10. Show HN: Self-Host Next.js in Production
URL: https://github.com/opennextjs/opennextjs-aws
Author: vednig
Description:
Popularity: 92 points | 53 comments
11. Show HN: Karl an AI Accountability Buddy
URL: #
Author: cheeseblubber
Description: Hi HN,
My name is Kam, and today we’re excited to launch an AI accountability buddy that helps keep you in check and holds you accountable. We originally launched Karl (https://www.heykarl.xyz/) as an AI companion but realized the use case was too broad. After talking to some users and collecting feedback, we decided to explore the direction of using Karl as an accountability buddy.
Prior to building Karl, one of my friends and I were manually checking in with ourselves daily to ensure we accomplished one goal we had discussed. Although it didn’t help me accomplish all of my goals, I noticed that there were times when, without the check-in, I wouldn’t have taken action. Our goal with Karl is to provide that nudge and reminder to keep you focused on your goals.
Currently, you can text Karl, and he will check in with you every morning at 8 a.m. and evening at 8 p.m. in your time zone. We charge $10 a month for Karl to cover server costs and the use of GPT on the backend.
We track how often you accomplish your goals and provide weekly feedback on your performance.
In the long term, we want to experiment with the best times to keep you on task and identify patterns that make you most productive based on your unique personality traits.
Let us know what you’d like to see from Karl! We’d really appreciate your feedback. You can get started by texting Karl at +1 (844) 619-7958.
Popularity: 1 points | 1 comments
12. Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails
Author: allg12
Description: Hey guys, I built a route planner that is mostly focused on bike touring and using existing bike infrastructure.
For each request you're shown what bike tracks/trails your route uses and can further explore them by showing them on map or going to the official trail route.
The main idea for the app is to have a friendly and easy to use planner that would make heavy use of official bike trails data (mainly from OpenStreetMap) and make it easy to plan a longer trip using the best possible bike routes out there.
Currently the app only works for the Euro region but I'm planning to add North America very soon and then rest of the world.
Technical overview: Route finding - Graphhopper sitting in a docker container on a Hetzner server somewhere in Germany. It has 38 GB of graph data(Europe) loaded into RAM for a fast graph traversal.
Web App - Next.js 14 with Typescript, backend on the newest version of .NET
Map tiles - right now I'm using MapTiler their free tier but planning to switch to my own home server soon and host the maps on it.
Popularity: 3 points | 0 comments
13. Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs
URL: #
Author: jonasnelle
Description: Hey HN, we're Alexi and Jonas the co-founders of Autotab (https://autotab.com). Autotab is a chrome-based browser you can teach to do complex tasks, with a simple API for running them from your app or backend.
Here is a walkthrough of how it works: https://youtu.be/63co74JHy1k, and you can try it for free at https://autotab.com by downloading the app.
Why a dedicated editor?
The number one blocker we've found in building more flexible, agentic automations is performance quality BY FAR (https://www.langchain.com/stateofaiagents#barriers-and-chall...). For all the talk of cost, latency, and safety, the fact is most people are still just struggling to get agents to work. The keys to solving reliability are better models, yes, but also intent specification. Even humans don't zero-shot these tasks from a prompt. They need to be shown how to perform them, and then refined with question-asking + feedback over time. It is also quite difficult to formulate complete requirements on the spot from memory.
The editor makes it easy to build the specification up as you step through your workflow, while generating successful task trajectories for the model. This is the only way we've been able to get the reliability we need for production use cases.
But why build a browser?
Autotab started as a Chrome extension (with a Show HN post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37943931). As we iterated with users, we realized that we needed to focus on creating the control surface for intent specification, and that being stuck in a chrome sidepanel wasn't going to work. We also knew that we needed a level of control for the model that we couldn't get without owning the browser. In Autotab, the browser becomes a canvas on which the user and the model are taking turns showing and explaining the task.
Key features:
1. Self-healing automations that don't break when sites change
2. Dedicated authoring tool that builds memory for the model while defining steps for the automation
3. Control flows and deep configurability to keep automations on track, even when navigating complex reasoning tasks
4. Works with any website (no site-specific APIs needed)
5. Runs securely in the cloud or locally
6. Simple REST API + client libraries for Python, Node
We'd love to get any early feedback from the HN community, ideas for where you'd like the product to go, or experiences in this space. We will be in the comments for the next few hours to respond!
Popularity: 112 points | 58 comments
14. Show HN: Personality quiz for your killer app idea
Author: pixelswithin
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
15. Show HN: Claude François – An AI Code Reviewer in the style of François Chollet
URL: https://claude-francois.crossingminds.com
Author: cweichen
Description:
Popularity: 14 points | 4 comments
16. Show HN: Zapbox Link: fully-featured 6-DoF VR with your iPhone
URL: https://www.zappar.com/zapbox/zapbox-link/
Author: tb100
Description: I'm one of the core developers of Zapbox - a VR/MR headset for iPhone (11 and later) including two tracked Bluetooth controllers.
We have just released our "Zapbox Link" app which allows streaming PC VR content to Zapbox. The Zapbox controllers have Quest-compatible inputs so lots of content works out of the box. You'll need a gaming PC with an NVIDIA GPU (GTX 1060 or later).
With the code 'FREEALYX' you can pick up both a Zapbox and Half-Life: Alyx for under $100 (HL:Alyx is currently 66% off on Steam, and the code gives you the equivalent saving off the price of Zapbox).
As this is HN I'll give a bit more technical detail, and I'm very happy to answer any questions in the comments:
- This is way more than Cardboard. The aim is to get as close as possible to the experience of dedicated VR headsets, including the all-important physical interactions enabled by tracked controllers.
- The headset is really lightweight and has a very open design. The design was actually intended for Mixed Reality use cases but is still surprisingly immersive for VR content. I personally find it much more comfortable to be able to maintain awareness of where I am in the real world with a simple glance down at the floor.
- We've implemented asynchronous timewarp in the iOS client. This runs at 120 FPS on iPhones with Pro Motion displays ("Pro" iPhones from the 13 series and later).
- We've also been able to sidestep the usual iOS compositor surface queue, getting motion-to-photon down as low as 3ms (caveats: CoreMotion samples aren't synced with display vsync, and scanout on iPhone takes the full display period so this isn't constant across the display)
- Zapbox is not just for PC VR - we also have a native iOS Unity XR provider and some native apps, Spatial Video playback functionality, and a WebXR-compatible browser app. There's Mixed Reality support too with really low-latency camera (photon-to-photon as low as 25ms and timewarp corrected for comfort).
- For PC VR streaming, we're using NVIDIA CloudXR on the PC side. If you don't have a PC it's also possible to stream from an AWS g5 instance. It works well for me, but I'm based in London and was using the London AWS region so your mileage may (literally) vary.
- Android support is being worked on, but we're waiting until we can actually test it on real world devices before recommending people part with their cash...
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
17. Show HN: Ruby manager – a simple script to manage Ruby versions on your OS
URL: https://github.com/azzenabidi/ruby_manager
Author: azzen
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
18. Show HN: All AIs on Fashion (Knitwear Version)
URL: https://2ndsetai.substack.com/p/all-ais-on-fashion-1
Author: sauravpandit
Description:
Popularity: 3 points | 1 comments
19. Show HN: Betron Markets – Shape the future with your predictions
Author: AhmedBn
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
20. Show HN: Spaces Protocol Is Live on Bitcoin Mainnet as of Today
URL: https://explorer.spacesprotocol.org/
Author: ca98am79
Description:
Popularity: 3 points | 1 comments
21. Show HN: Weave - actually measure engineering productivity
URL: https://app.workweave.ai/welcome
Author: adchurch
Description: Hey HN,
We’re building Weave: an ML-powered tool to measure engineering output, that actually understands engineering output!
Why? Here’s the thing: almost every eng leader already measures output - either openly or behind closed doors. But they rely on metrics like lines of code (correlation with effort: ~0.3), number of PRs, or story points (slightly better at ~0.35). These metrics are, frankly, terrible proxies for productivity.
We’ve developed a custom model that analyzes code and its impact directly, with a far better 0.94 correlation. The result? A standardized engineering output metric that doesn’t reward vanity. Even better, you can benchmark your team’s output against peers while keeping everything private.
Although this one metric is much better than anything else out there, of course it still doesn't tell the whole story. In the future, we’ll build more metrics that go deeper into things like code quality and technical leadership. And we'll build actionable suggestions on top of all of it to help teams improve and track progress.
After testing with several startups, the feedback has been fantastic, so we’re opening it up today. Connect your GitHub and see what Weave can tell you: https://app.workweave.ai/welcome.
I’ll be around all day to chat, answer questions, or take a beating. Fire away!
Popularity: 22 points | 38 comments
22. Show HN: Rebuild of Blossom, an open-source social robot
URL: https://msgtn.xyz/rebuild_of_blossom
Author: psychomugs
Description: From the post:
Blossom is an open-source robot platform for human-robot interaction (HRI) research that I developed during my PhD. I’ve used Blossom for research in design, machine learning, and telepresence; others have made Blossoms for their own research purposes. I have continued working on “rebuilding” the entire platform: I redesigned the inner frame as a model kit, complete with Gunpla-inspired runners and instructions, and refactored the codebase as r0b0, a Python library for communicating between hardware peripherals and software applications. In preparation to present Blossom at Maker Faire Coney Island, I refined the telepresence interface and enabled conversational interaction with a language model. The new repository is available on GitHub and includes documentation for construction.
Popularity: 56 points | 3 comments
23. Show HN: ShortsKing: Automate Your Short Video Content
Author: jjatinggoyal
Description:
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
24. Show HN: Neuronic – Define AI functions in your apps with predictable responses
URL: https://github.com/level09/neuronic
Author: level09
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
25. Show HN: AI Music Video Generator
URL: https://aivideo.to/ai-music-video-generator
Author: ImranK
Description:
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
26. Show HN: One Prompt – A super framework for prompt engineering
URL: https://github.com/VaibhavAcharya/oneprompt
Author: vaibhavacharya_
Description:
Popularity: 6 points | 0 comments
27. Show HN: Agentic Evaluators for Agentic Workflows (Starting with RAG)
URL: https://blog.lytix.co/posts/agentic_rag
Author: sahilsinha20
Description: Hey all! Thought this group might find this interesting - new approach to evaluating RAG pipelines using 'agents as a judge'. We got excited by the findings in this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.10934), about agents producing evaluations closer to human-evaluators, especially for multi-step workflows.
Our first use case was RAG pipelines, specifically evaluating if your agent MISSED pulling any important chunks from the source document. While many RAG evaluators determine if your model USED its chunk in the output, there's no visibility on if your model grabbed all the right chunks in the first place. We thought we'd test the 'agent as judge', with a new metric called 'potential sources missed', to help evaluate if your agents are missing any important chunks from the source of truth.
Curious what you all think!
Popularity: 4 points | 1 comments
28. Show HN: AnyModal – A Flexible Multimodal Language Model Framework for PyTorch
URL: https://github.com/ritabratamaiti/AnyModal
Author: anneta
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
29. Show HN:2048games
Author: jokera
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
30. Show HN: I'm 17 and made a tool to help students study smarter
URL: https://lira.study
Author: delamri
Description: Hey HN! I'm Dris, a 17y/o solo founder.
Over the past few weeks, I've been developing LIRA, a free Chrome extension that helps you take notes & get instant answers on any site.
Instead of switching tabs or copying/pasting to ChatGPT, just select and right-click text, images, or links to save a note or ask LIRA anything.
LIRA can instantly find accurate answers, summaries, and explanations, and automatically highlights correct answers.
I made LIRA to help busy students like myself study smarter, not longer!
That being said, LIRA is still a work in progress. There may be a few bugs & unfinished features, so feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Popularity: 14 points | 22 comments
31. Show HN: ThreePort – Render 3D models generated by LLMs
URL: https://github.com/idaeyus/ThreePort
Author: gojiramothra
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
32. Show HN: WikiGraph – Wikipedia 2.0
URL: https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph/?lang=en&query=Erwin%20Schr%C3%B6dinger
Author: blinpete
Description: I always enjoyed zooming out to the bigger picture to see some hidden connections. so I built this tool turning Wikipedia search into a graph
Popularity: 3 points | 0 comments
33. Show HN: Payload, P2P file transfer app, goes online
URL: https://payload.app/blog/payload-goes-online
Author: klabb3
Description: Payload is a x-platform desktop app for file transfers, with focus on E2EE security, speed and UX. Last time[1] it was LAN only, and over the last 2 years (wow, time flies) it's now online (WAN) as well.
- There's no storage/hosting. This is device-to-device transfers only.
- Unlike FTP, syncthing etc, you don't need to grant permissions to your file system. The receiver decides where to put the files.
- Hybrid P2P - relay architecture: This imo is the most complex, fun, frustrating and interesting part. Hole punching is fascinating. If you are curious, I highly recommend Tailscale's article[2].
- Privacy: Server maintains contact list for online status and connection assistance (in other words, not anonymous). However, transfers are always end-to-end encrypted, including metadata.
- Speed: The ambition is to saturate both LAN and WAN links. If you got a 1-10 Gbps+ line, I'd love to stress test it with you.
- Tech stack: Tauri, Go, SQlite, Svelte, etc (ask!)
This is a one-man show, with no outside funding. Planning to monetize with paid data plans for heavy users + permanent free tier for casuals. LAN transfers remain free & unlimited.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32100352
[2]: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works
Popularity: 11 points | 1 comments
34. Show HN: SmartDesk 5–A touchscreen-enabled standing desk for developers
URL: https://www.autonomous.ai/standing-desks/autonomous-smartdesk-5
Author: james_robert
Description: Hi HN, I’m from the product team at Autonomous.
We built SmartDesk 5 with coders, hackers, and builders in mind—those who spend hours solving problems and creating. Here’s what it offers:
1. Smooth surface: The 1.2” HDF surface with rounded edges provides flawless mouse tracking and a comfortable setup for long sessions.
2. Touchscreen control: Adjust desk height directly from the surface, even with heavy setups (lifts up to 330 lbs). Save presets for sitting and standing.
3. Sturdy platform: The oval-shaped C-frame eliminates wobble, even during intense typing or multitasking.
4. Built-in power: Integrated outlets and cable management for clean workspace.
5. Functional details: Hooks for bags or headphones keep essentials within reach.
SmartDesk 5 is made to adapt to your workflow and handle everything from coding marathons to hardware-heavy projects.
We’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or ideas to make it even better. Let us know what you think—thanks for checking it out!
Popularity: 12 points | 3 comments
35. Show HN: Alpine Linux / Xorg / i3 running in the browser via WebAssembly
URL: https://webvm.io/alpine.html
Author: apignotti
Description:
Popularity: 3 points | 0 comments
36. Show HN: My Chatbot-Assisted Mental Health Recovery
URL: https://casual-talk.vercel.app/
Author: peacepromoter
Description:
Popularity: 8 points | 2 comments
37. Show HN: deploying a website just to transfer a file
URL: https://www.lunesu.com/2024/11/19/Nailed-it-with-Defang.html
Author: lionello
Description: Hi HN!
My name is Lio. I'm the author of the article and CTO of Defang: a CLI tool to deploy Docker Compose projects to the cloud(s).
This story on how I deployed a website just to transfer a file got many chuckles in my friend circle and it was suggested I blog about it, so here it is.
Yes, it's ridiculous, but it got the job done, and hopefully you'll enjoy the story, and perhaps the tool, too.
AMA
Popularity: 11 points | 9 comments
38. Show HN: Postiz – open-source social media scheduling tool
URL: https://postiz.com/
Author: gitroom
Description:
Popularity: 31 points | 0 comments
39. Show HN: I made a calendar where every month is also a crossword
URL: https://aaronson.org/blog/crossword-calendar
Author: aaaronson
Description:
Popularity: 17 points | 0 comments
40. Show HN: AI Token Counter and API - input token counts and costs for LLMs
URL: https://www.zatomic.ai/tokens
Author: arcware
Description: A free service and API to get input token counts and costs for over 160 AI models.
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
41. Show HN: Made a site with searchable Compose Multiplatform libraries
URL: https://www.composelibraries.com/
Author: alexstyl
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
42. Show HN: A People Search Engine with Face Recognition
Author: vignesh_warar
Description: Hey there HN!
I'm Vignesh, and I'm excited to launch Introthem.com — a people search engine that uses facial recognition to provide in-depth, accurate summaries of individuals, assist with HR screening, research prospects, and analyze brands.
The Problem: Researching individuals - whether for hiring or personalizing outreach - is a time-consuming challenge. While RAG-based search engines can help summarize someone's online presence, they have significant limitations. When multiple people share the same name, these engines often mix their information together, creating inaccurate profiles. Even worse, if someone shares a name with a celebrity or public figure, meaningful research becomes nearly impossible as the well-known person's results overshadow everything else.
The Solution: Introthem solves this using facial recognition to accurately classify and organize information by individual. Simply select the specific person you're interested in, and our engine will generate a comprehensive profile.
But that's not all – remember how we typically perform multiple queries to look up someone? For example, if a person founded a company, we then look up how that company is doing. Introthem handles this in-depth research automatically. It generates additional queries based on the first summary the engine produces – what I internally call Content-aware query generation. This helps you conduct thorough research about someone just by their name.
Try it now at https://introthem.com
Would love to hear your feedback, HN!
Demo:
Link 1: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=51d6bc6a-08ad-464e-b4f1-16...
Link 2: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=9f3ad850-1c72-4e8c-ad36-07...
Link 3: https://introthem.com/search?uuid=3f31072e-bf74-4ff2-b1ef-ee...
Popularity: 23 points | 29 comments
43. Show HN: XHR anti bot bypass (xhr.dev)
URL: https://xhr.dev
Author: skilbjo
Description: I've launched the new product, xhr.dev (https://xhr.dev/)
The initial product is a 1 line code integration that does bot detection avoidance via a forward proxy.
Ideal customer is someone who gets blocked by anti-bot defences like cloudflare or other captcha challenges. Usually these customers have web scraping use cases.
You can view our historical performance on our status page (https://status.xhr.dev).
ty v much, john
Popularity: 18 points | 2 comments
44. Show HN: Unbug – Rust macros for programmatically invoking breakpoints
URL: https://github.com/greymattergames/unbug
Author: BrainBacon
Description: This project is inspired by some of the asserts in Unreal engine.
Due to reliance on core_intrinsics it is necessary to develop using nightly Rust, but there are stubs in place so a production build will not require nightly.
I recently released version 0.2 which includes no_std support and adds optional log message arguments to the ensure macro.
Popularity: 88 points | 40 comments
45. Show HN: Ply Portals – forms but better
URL: https://ply.io/
Author: mp3il
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
46. Show HN: Time Shooter
URL: https://time-shooter.com/
Author: hapJam
Description:
Popularity: 4 points | 1 comments
47. Show HN: Sparkline-Svelte a small line chart for dashboards etc.
URL: https://github.com/bn-l/sparkline-svelte
Author: bn-l
Description:
Popularity: 5 points | 0 comments
48. Show HN: Cardo ‒ Open Source desktop podcast client
URL: https://cardo-podcast.github.io/
Author: n0vella
Description: Show HN: Cardo - Open Source Desktop Podcast Client
Hi, I'm an amateur developer from Spain. I have released this desktop podcast client that works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
It's a modest project, but it might be useful for you, it has syncing capabilities with Antennapod, Kasts, Repod or other clients. You can manage your subscriptions, queue episodes and even download them to listen to later.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Popularity: 90 points | 31 comments
49. Show HN: I Launched a Newsletter
URL: https://sabyr-nurgaliyev.beehiiv.com/p/my-lessons-from-building-fast
Author: nurgaliyevsabyr
Description: Always set yourself a deadline even when you feel not good enough. I have a lot of doubts in myself. That's why I set real deadlines and targets to do.
For example, 6 months ago, I said myself, If I reached 1,000 follower on X, I would start a newsletter, I reached it, here I am.
Set a deadline, announce it to your friends, relatives, family. And then make it happen!
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
50. Show HN: Open-Source Apple Intelligence Writing Tools for Windows and Linux
URL: https://github.com/theJayTea/WritingTools/releases/tag/v5
Author: TechExpert2910
Description: I posted this previously, but there's been a major update.
As a high school student, I love LLMs and the execution of Apple's Appel Intelligence Writing Tools, but was disappointed that nothing like that existed for Windows. I thus created Writing Tools, a better than Apple Intelligence open-source alternative that works system-wide on Windows. It's much better than the tiny 2B parameter Apple Intelligence model!
Features (works system-wide):
- Select text in a textbox, press the hotkey, and optimise your text in a click (proofread, rewrite, tone changes, custom instructions...). You can also select code to fix/refactor it with the custom instructions.
- Press the hotkey without selecting any text to bring up a chat UI with the LLM.
- Select all text on a webpage, press the hotkey, and use the Summarise button to get summary of the webpage/text!
It can use the free Gemini API, or a multitude of local LLMs via Ollama, llama.cpp, KoboldCPP, TabbyAPI, vLLM, etc.
It's completely free & open source, and is heavily privacy-focused (local LLM support, your API key stays on-device, no logging, no tracking, etc.)
GitHub (with a demo video): https://github.com/theJayTea/WritingTools
Writing Tools has also been featured on XDA, Beebom, Windows Central, Neowin, and more! :D
P.S. This is my first major Windows coding project, so I'm especially keen on advice for best practices and potential improvements! Thank you so much for your time :)
Popularity: 6 points | 0 comments
51. Show HN: Perspectra – CLI tool to extract documents from images
URL: https://github.com/ad-si/Perspectra
Author: adius
Description:
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
52. Show HN: Pesto, a PST viewer made for archivists
URL: https://pestoviewer.com/en/
Author: jebricole
Description: In the past year, I have built a PST viewer that lets you analyze, visualize, and search multiple PST files.
The project was born from the issues that archivists in France face when dealing with Outlook mailboxes (PST files). In public administration, archivists must collect office data (mostly from Microsoft products) generated during administrative operations. This data will be used by researchers in the future to document and report how public administration works and what the decision-making process was. A lot of information is conveyed through emails, and in most French administrations, they use Outlook. Therefore, archivists must collect and handle PST files but lack proper tools. To work with and analyze PST files, they can only use Outlook, which is slow and cumbersome given the size of the PST files and the limited power of their computers.
My application is called Pesto, and it can be tried for free here: https://pestoviewer.com/.
I wanted to provide the best performance possible for archivists. Pesto is designed to work with PST files of any size (tens of gigabytes) and on low-budget office laptops. To achieve this, I chose Rust for its performance (and also because I wanted to learn and practice Rust). The main challenge was implementing the PST specification in Rust to read and exploit the files effectively.
For the curious, the stack is: Rust, Tauri, Tokio, Serde, TypeScript, React, Vite, and Axum for the website.
I have been in contact with archivists from the main French ministries. There has been some word-of-mouth interest and weak signals, but adoption has been slow, and I can’t make a living from it yet.
So I am looking for an opportunity to work with small, motivated, user-centric teams. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to meet for coffee in Paris.
Have fun with Pesto.
Jean-Baptiste Assouad Creator of Pesto https://jeanbaptisteassouad.com/
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
53. Show HN: XtyleAI – Get Your Perfect Hairstyle by AI
Author: dim99
Description: Hello Builders!
I'm excited to share Xtyle.AI with you all! Xtyle.AI is designed to help you discover the best styles that fit you, starting with personalized hairstyle recommendations.
We know that finding the perfect hairstyle can be tricky, so we built Xtyle.AI to make the process simple and fun. Just upload a photo, and our AI will generate a variety of hairstyle options tailored specifically for you. Our goal is to help men explore different looks and make style choices with confidence!
I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on how we can make Xtyle.AI even better. Happy styling!
see the example result here: https://my.xtyle.ai/672f5479001b6e03204e
Get 30% OFF: LAUNCH30 (Discount Code)
have a question? contact me at founder@xtyle.ai
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
54. Show HN: MRuby a cross platform scripting environment in a single, small binary
URL: https://github.com/IxDay/mruby
Author: IxDay
Description: Hey HN!
If you are a Golang/Infrastructure developer like me, you might also be struggling with Bash and Make. Well, I think I found a solution worth sharing! I repackaged mruby—a lightweight Ruby runtime for embedded systems—into a tool for writing cross-platform scripts and build pipelines.
While Make + Bash are the ecosystem default, they’re far from ideal: Bash lacks support for most data structures, handles strings poorly, and has many other shortcomings (a good list here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-disadvantages-of-the-Bash...). Make doesn’t include globbing for subdirectory traversal (you need to use find for that), is often misused as a task runner, and has its own limitations. On top of this, achieving cross-platform support is tricky (we’ve all run into bugs caused by GNU vs BSD coreutils flags).
Ruby + Rake seemed like a better fit, but
- The Ruby ecosystem isn’t lightweight: Ruby + Rake + dependencies add up to ~24MB.
- Installing Ruby on remote hosts or containers can be challenging.
- It may conflict with system versions (macOS’s default Ruby, for instance).
- It’s not self-contained (you need multiple files instead of a single binary).
This project offers a different approach: a repackaged mruby binary (just ~2.2MB with my dependencies) that bundles useful libraries into a single file. I included the following to meet my needs:
- CLI tools: Optparse for argument parsing, ANSI colors for better output.
- Data handling: Built-in YAML/JSON support.
- Networking: HTTP/HTTPS client/server capabilities.
- Task management: A simplified version of Rake.
You can customize it (add or remove dependencies and repackage the binary) to fit your specific requirements.
I now use this as a replacement for tasks where Bash or Make would have been my first choice. The repository includes example scripts (e.g., using kubectl or vault) and a Golang project skeleton to show how it all works.
If you’re interested in my journey exploring alternatives, check out my blog post: https://platipy.notion.site/The-quest-for-the-optimal-script...
Feedback and contributions are welcome—I hope it helps with some of your challenges too!
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
55. Show HN: BouncerLink – Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer
Author: getproduct_dev
Description: I'm launching BouncerLink (bouncerlink.com), a SaaS focused specifically on Amazon affiliate link localization.
Key Features:
- Automatic conversion of Amazon affiliate links across global storefronts
- Prevents revenue loss from incorrect regional links
- One-click link transformation for affiliate marketers
The problem: Amazon affiliates lose up to 15% potential revenue due to incorrect country-specific links. BouncerLink ensures links always resolve to the user's local Amazon marketplace.
Technical Stack:
- Ruby on Rails
- Tailwind CSS
- Postgres
Would love feedback from the HN community on the Amazon affiliate link localization concept.
Link: https://bouncerlink.com
Popularity: 2 points | 0 comments
56. Show HN: Analysis of What 1M Influencers on TikTok Promote
URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/AppBusiness/comments/1gv3klu/influencers_database_where_you_can_search/
Author: yktifhqyj
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
57. Show HN: AI Infographic Generator
Author: 0xcoder_cn
Description:
Popularity: 6 points | 0 comments
58. Show HN: Search engine specifically for AI agents and projects
Author: dhj9817
Description:
Popularity: 1 points | 0 comments
59. Show HN: Langrocks – tools like computer access, browser etc., for LLM agents
URL: https://github.com/langrocks/langrocks
Author: ajhai
Description: We built tools like web browser, code interpreter etc., needed for LLM agents as part of our LLMStack project. We have now moved them into a single collection as langrocks. We're using this in LLMStack and thought others might find it useful. https://github.com/trypromptly/LLMStack/blob/main/llmstack/p... shows how we use langrocks with Anthropic's Claude with computer use to automate web browsing.
The coolest part is watching an LLM actually use a computer - you get a unique URL to view the virtual display, so you can see exactly what it's doing with tools like computer access and web browser. We've used this to automate complex workflows where the LLM needs to research across multiple sites, interact with web apps, or perform system operations.
Popularity: 3 points | 0 comments
60. Show HN: JSON Price Table for Top Large Language Models
URL: https://glama.ai/model-prices/json
Author: punkpeye
Description:
Popularity: 7 points | 2 comments
Conclusion
Today's Show HN roundup showcases a diverse range of innovative projects. From AI-powered tools to creative coding solutions, these projects reflect the dynamic nature of our tech community. Which project caught your attention the most? Let us know in the comments!
Tags: #ShowHN #TechInnovation #DeveloperProjects #AI Applications #Open Source Software