Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

312 points by david927 · 1,142 comments
What are you working on? What have you been curious about lately?

1,142 comments

5 Q L https://fiveql.com

I've been working on this for a while now. It creates a sort of AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md table for your database which holds all the joins, definitions, formats, and relationships, as well as what are popular criteria sets and combinations.

And it populates it into a bi-directional visual (round-trip) SQL editor. Make changes in the UI or SQL text, it goes both ways.

It's a single HTML file.

david927 OP
Very cool
mgerb
I'm working on Spacecap: https://github.com/mgerb/spacecap

It's a screen recording tool for Linux. The goal is to make it as fast and efficient as possible, while also being simple to use and install. It's just a hobby project that I am having fun working on. Here are some notable things about it:

- Written in Zig

- Uses Vulkan Video for encoding

- UI built with SDL3 and imgui

- Features recording, replay buffer, and screenshots

Evidlo
Biggest advice for exposure is to try to get it packaged on Debian. Annoying but worth it.
mgerb OC
Thanks for the suggestion. I plan to explore things like this as it stabilizes and becomes more feature complete.
A newspaper for kids. Printed on real newspaper and delivered monthly. Full of puzzles, math challenges, nature facts, science experiments, outdoor scavenger hunts, and even custom card/board games for families to play. https://thecuriositytimes.com/

Limiting screen time has been a primary goal in my household and has been going well. But I wanted something that would take my kids hours every month that

1. isn’t on a screen 2. educational 3. fun

It's a worthy goal, but can you please not push unimaginative AI slop on kids? The frontpage graphic you're showing here already contains numerous slop markers and errors, and you've apparently still chosen to use it.

In modern times, kids mostly get to know the world through images, and they deserve those images to be real or at least realistic. It really matters that the details are either correct or simplified, but not present and wrong.

For example, a compass with two norths and a garbled east is not a good start for curious conversation, but I think you should refrain from using generated images even if the details aren't so clearly wrong, as you are not an expert in most subject matters, and can't judge those errors. Instead use either photography or stylized illustrations which leave out details to imagination instead of including them and getting them wrong.

Gotta get those kids hooked on LLM garbage nice and early, great goal.

Please rethink this radically. Actually, I don't think you're fit to do this if AI slop is your first instinct, just not your field.

Automatic local events aggregator https://whatson.town/
nbbaier
This is cool, please add Chicago!

Also, what data sources do you aggregate from?

aamargulies OC
Chicago is there! Look in the cities dropdown menu. getting sources is the trick… I’ve made some discoveries about how to ‘reverse-engineer’ a city.
nbbaier
Oh nice! Silly my, I didn't scroll up!
I am also very interested in knowing how you source that information :)
I am working on analytics for AI chat and search. Suppose you have a sports shoe brand, then you would like to track what AIs recommend when they are asked "best running shoe".

https://lumirank.ai/

david927 OP
Just a fun thing I do: editing films to music. https://brodlist.com/sfe

P.S. Credit to adityaathalye for the change of phrasing for these posts to add "what are you curious about?"

SMAAART
Working on putting together a self-paced "Coding with AI" course for non-SWE(s).

Since I could not find anything out there, I am scratching my own itch.

I'd love to see more - I've been thinking about this a lot as a way to go from from vibe to viable - look at NFRs, etc.

Do introductions of key concepts and explain what real scalability ladders look like and how to guide an AI to build it.

I'd be interested to be a beta user when you get ready to share.

https://httpstate.com // a super easy to use, batteries included, library and server to exchange small bits of data between apps

https://wafertown.com // the first LLMORPG, you write a prompt and your character "lives" through a simulation of life using it as a guide, interacts with others, etc. sends you a summary of what it did and allows you to steer it for next day. think of it as a small tamagotchi but with hundreds (hopefully thousands!) of other players

nbbaier
> https://httpstate.com // a super easy, batteries included, library and server to exchange small bits of data between apps

This is very cool! What's the stack for the actual server?

moralestapia OC
Thanks!

Right now it is Node.js and I store data in an in-memory database.

(I keep no history, state is volatile, I think that of being a feature :)).

There's some work on the roadmap to "standardize" the API spec. and publish servers for most common stacks: Docker (agnostic), Go, node.js and Python.