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Posted by david927 3/30/2025

Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
390 points | 997 commentspage 3
_cn0w 3/31/2025|
Working on [redacted], a Chrome extension to make YouTube more time-efficient (and way more fun).

Its main differentiator: hover any thumbnail (homepage, search, shorts, etc.) for an instant mini-summary, like Wikipedia link previews. Also includes detailed summaries w/ timestamps, chat w/ video, chat w/ entire channels, and comment summaries.

Hover & Detailed summaries are free if you plug in your own OpenAI API key ("free for nerds" mode).

Aiming to be the best YouTube-specific AI tool. Would love your feedback. No signup needed for free tier/BYOK. If you try it and email me ([redacted]), happy to give you extended Pro access!

alabhyajindal 3/31/2025||
Love the idea and the name! Do you think whether this will worsen the YouTube experience? Because it encourages consuming content at a faster pace than watching the videos themselves.
_cn0w 3/31/2025||
Thanks!

I think its impact on watch time depends on your goal of that session. When I'm in "looking for a specific answer" mode it does reduce my watch time, but there's plenty of times when I just want to watch youtube–and when I do, it helps me find what to watch, rather than reducing my watch time per se.

thefourthchime 3/31/2025||
nice! can you support safari?
_cn0w 3/31/2025||
Thanks! This may take awhile to be honest, but have added it to the list.
purple-leafy 3/31/2025||
I was working on a ray-casting game engine in C, with the focus on enabling the largest worlds yet seen in such an engine (Minecraft scale etc). [0]

A ray-casting engine is an old style of game engine (think 1990 - Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem). The most famous, well-known example is probably Wolfenstein-3D created by ID software (John Carmack and John Romero etc!) You don’t see these engines used anymore in modern games.

So to me, they are novel and a great challenge to try and modernise. Especially as a solo dev! And for further context, raycasted levels are usually teeny tiny (Wolfenstein 3D or Shadow Warrior are the largest worlds I’ve seen, so nothing impressively scaled). I have never ever come across a raycaster with levels the scale of something like Minecraft. So that’s what my ambition is.

I spent a period of 2-3 months roughly 8-10 hour days every day on this project, not knowing much C and not knowing anything about game engines or graphics, and average at mathematics.

But I’m on a break from the project and coding after my 7 year relationship broke down. Realised I had tunnel vision with my life and ambitions, and am now “touching grass” daily instead. It’s hard to put effort into your hobbies when you feel other areas of your life are suffering.

So now I’m lifting weights and doing cardio and reading books instead, trying to keep active and my mind occupied.

I do want to pick this project back up, I’m really proud of what I was able to achieve with no knowledge coming in and I think the project has good bones.

And I loved coding, still haven’t found a hobby that scratches a similar itch

[0] - https://github.com/con-dog/chunked-z-level-raycaster/blob/ma...

bear330 3/31/2025||
I'm working on MailTrigger — a customizable SMTP server that turns any email notification into a message on platforms like LINE, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, SMS, or pretty much anything else.

The idea is simple: if your app can send an email, it can trigger notifications across multiple channels with no extra coding. Think of it as "SMTP Server to Anything."

One of the cool parts is MailTrigger supports WebAssembly (WASM), so you can customize your own notification logic and automate workflows. I’ve used it for tasks like monitoring internal systems, forwarding alerts to different chat platforms, and even adding basic decision-making logic before sending notifications. It’s been a huge time saver.

I’ve also experimented with using LLMs to assist in rule creation — you can configure notification rules using natural language instead of writing manual code. It’s like giving your infrastructure a smarter way to handle incidents.

At my company, I’m using MailTrigger for real-time price drop alerts and server health monitoring, along with integrations like Jenkins and Sentry to forward alerts to our DevOps Telegram channel.

It’s still super early, and things like the docs, pricing, and overall user experience are definitely a work in progress. But I’m iterating quickly and would love to hear feedback from this community!

Check it out here: https://mailtrigger.app/

Curious to hear your thoughts!

testycool 3/31/2025||
Sounds like you are making fast progress. Congrats!

I wanted to check it out but using Brave Browser and Chrome on a Samsung A54 it took 10s+ to load. After a few seconds the spinner loaded, then the progress bar moved and then restarted and then loaded.

bear330 3/31/2025||
Thanks for checking it out and for the feedback — really appreciate it!

I’m sorry the loading took so long. I’m not entirely sure if the issue was with the main site or the Join Waiting List process. We’ll definitely investigate and get it fixed as soon as possible.

If it turns out that the waiting list form was the problem and you'd still like to join, feel free to shoot me an email at bear@nuwainfo.com — I'd be happy to add you directly!

Thanks again for flagging this. Your feedback means a lot and will help us improve!

4ndrewl 3/31/2025||
How are you handling validation of inbound emails to prevent spoofing? Depending on your pricing model it could work expensive for someone?
bear330 4/1/2025||
Great question — thanks for bringing it up!

Right now, each MailTrigger mailbox requires SMTP authentication (username/password), so unless someone has the correct credentials, they can’t inject messages. That gives us a basic layer of protection against spoofing from the SMTP side.

For forwarded emails (e.g. from Gmail), we do validate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on inbound messages. Each mailbox acts as a gated endpoint — only verified senders are allowed to trigger actions.

As for pricing — you nailed it, we’re still working that out. We have a few rough ideas, but I’d genuinely love to hear what kind of pricing model would feel fair or sustainable to you.

Would you lean towards usage-based (like number of messages/month), flat monthly per mailbox, or something else entirely? Have you seen pricing models you liked (or didn’t) in similar tools like Zapier or SendGrid?

Your feedback’s incredibly helpful at this stage — really appreciate it!

aaronds 3/31/2025||
I'm working on AssetRoom, a free service to email you noise-free, easy to digest summaries of SEC filings from companies you're interested in.

I often read about interesting public companies (from an investment perspective or otherwise), but fail to then keep up with them over time (sometimes reading many months/years later how successful they were - or not!). I built this to make an easy way for me to follow updates from said companies.

https://www.assetroom.net/

brandbydan 3/31/2025||
Looks nice, my only initial nit is to change “twitter” to “x” in the footer, some people get very touchy about that haha
jwong_ 3/31/2025|||
Signed up but not getting the verification email. Interested in the execution though.
aaronds 3/31/2025||
just seen it- i think you made a typo in your email (.clm instead of .com) - I'll correct and re-send!
jwong_ 3/31/2025||
Thanks! Got it

Only feedback so far — I wish there was a bit of formatting for the numbers. The big blocks of text are hard to scan for important details.

Bullets are the first thing I can think of.

aaronds 3/31/2025||
Thanks! Will make a note of this, for sure scope to make them easier to digest.
mexlite1 3/31/2025||
[dead]
psviderski 3/31/2025||
I'm continuing to develop Uncloud [1] — an open source tool for deploying and managing containerised applications across multiple Docker hosts. Includes WireGuard overlay network, ingress with automatic HTTPS, and simple Docker-like CLI. Unlike traditional orchestrators such as Kubernetes, Uncloud has no state reconciliation or quorum needs which makes it easy to understand and use. If you ever wanted something simpler than Kubernetes for self-hosting your apps on cloud VMs or in your homelab, Uncloud might be for you.

Key updates from the past month:

- New demo screencast [2]: Deploy a highly available web app with automatic HTTPS across cloud VMs and on-premises in just a couple minutes

- Added initial Docker Compose support for service deployment. The same Compose can be used for developing locally and deploying to your cluster

- Completely revamped how service and container specifications are stored, enabling proper implementation of the service 'scale' command and selective container recreation

My goal for Uncloud is to create a more capable and modern replacement for Docker Swarm, which is no longer being actively developed.

[1]: https://github.com/psviderski/uncloud

[2]: https://github.com/psviderski/uncloud?tab=readme-ov-file#-qu...

cbcoutinho 3/30/2025||
I dove into using LLMs together with MCP servers for the first time this weekend. Absolutely incredible.

In addition to the code assistant, I configured a Grafana's MCP server with Cline, so that I can chat with an LLM while having real-time metrics and logs.

For context, I self host grafana in addition to a bunch of services on a raspberry pi. Simple prompts such as "why has CPU been increasing this week?" resulted in a deep analysis of logs/metrics that uncovered correlations I had never been aware of.

Incredible. I can only imagine what this will all look like in a few years

luzer7 3/30/2025|
This sounds really cool. Do you have any guides or notes on how to set this up? I've been looking for something to dive into for LLM and MCP.
InkCanon 3/31/2025|||
Would be interested in this too!
vnce 3/31/2025|||
+1
changexd 3/31/2025||
My pursuit of happiness, I'm in fear of quitting my current job and go for a working holiday to Australia, I'm excited while still trying to overcome the fear of not having a stable and well paying job because I don't find any joy in this job no more , so I am working on mentally getting out of this, I want to truly let go "money is more important than my happiness" idea.
mmaunder 3/31/2025||
I embarked on a working holiday to the UK in 1998. Quit my job in South Africa and left with nothing but a backpack. Opened up my world, I worked for Coca Cola, the BBC, an investment bank, got wrapped up in the dot com boom, met my American wife, met the smartest people in the world, some invested in me, moved to the States, started a business that now has millions of customers and a team of 40 that my wife and I 100% own. So I guess I lean towards GO!! NOW!! :-) Best of luck.
lukeandrew 3/31/2025|||
I'm at a similar place to GP. Reading this comment and the employment[1] page for Defiant was a great reminder of some of the things I've been struggling with lately (and how alternatives can look). Congrats on taking the leap many years ago and setting up a company with a deliberate work culture that sounds brilliant to be part of!

[1]: https://www.defiant.com/employment/

Cyphase 3/31/2025||||
Wordfence is pretty cool. Heard about it and your security research for years before I ever used the plugin, then started using it with a client in the past couple years. My time with it is ending shortly (see my comment elsewhere on this thread[0]), but it's been great. Thanks!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528309

allpratik 3/31/2025||||
This is just the right dose of motivation required for me now! Deciding to take a break and hopefully end up like this!

Thanks for this! :)

changexd 4/2/2025|||
thanks for the story, one of the reasons I want to do this is to let go of control and to believe in myself so I can face unpredictable future, I will never know if future will get better or not, but I'll definitely be mentally stronger when I do this, cheers!
mooreds 3/31/2025|||
Not sure what your age and obligations are, but I did this years ago. Highly recommended.

I spent time kicking around, had a work visa through BUNAC[0] but didn't use it, went to some festivals, did some WWOOFing[1] and hiking and climbing. Also took the opportunity to visit other countries near AU that I wouldn't get to otherwise (NZ, Fiji).

One of my life highlights. Two thumbs up! I doubt my experience is super relevant any more, but feel free to send me an email (address in profile) if you want to chat about it.

0: https://bunac.org/

1: https://wwoof.com.au/

changexd 4/2/2025||
I'm 27 and have a bit of saving, I just checked wwoof and it seems pretty cool, I couldn't make up my mind which city I should go and WWOOFing gives me a general idea of the work demands, I'll hit you up sometimes, thank you for the sharing!
npodbielski 3/31/2025|||
That is cool thing to do if you do not have family yet. If you do not, than do it. Life is too short to worry about not having a job for a few months. If.you have savings than why not?
Minor49er 3/31/2025|||
I am doing this myself. I turned in my two weeks' notice a few days ago

I am worried about my decision too, but I think about a few things:

- You got your current job (plus all of the previous roles), so why wouldn't you be able to do it again if and when the time comes?

- Job gaps don't look as bad as they used to. People understand burnout and being stuck in a bad job. Breaking away from those can be seen as a positive, especially if you are pursuing your own health and interests

- There's more to life than draining your useful waking hours for a paycheck at a place that offers little else. With more time and energy, you can explore interests and projects on your own terms

Best of luck in your future endeavors

changexd 4/2/2025||
I guess I'm somewhat worried about not being able to get back to tech again, but I just realized I can still do open source contribution if I want to when doing WH.

I'm in a weird state that I have an okay amount of saving for me to do this, but I'm still worried because I had been through having almost zero money and two years of unemployment, I'm scared to get back to that again.

In the end, I know I have to let this thing go or I'll never become happy even if I'm making tons of money, gotta enjoy life sometimes, thanks for the words!

Best of luck in our journeys too!

Rendello 3/31/2025||
I moved to a new city with nothing but a backpack a few years ago. It was tough, and I had a lot of painful experiences, but very cool.
yasserf 3/31/2025||
I’m working on https://pikku.dev

It’s a TypeScript web framework that’s runtime agnostic, so it can work on serverless and servers (similar to Hono).

What’s different is that the focus is primarily just on TypeScript. There’s a CLI tool that inspects all the project code and generates loads of metadata. This can include:

• services used

• all the HTTP routes, inputs and outputs

• OpenAPI documentation

• schemas to validate against

• typed fetch client

• typed WebSocket client (and more)

The design decision was also to make it follow a function-based approach, which means your product code is just functions (that get given all the services required). And you have controllers that wire them up to different transport protocols.

This allows interesting design concepts, like writing WebSocket code via serverless format, while allowing it to be deployed via a single process or distributed/serverless. Or progressive enhancement, allowing backend functions to work as HTTP, but also work via Server-Sent Events if a stream is provided.

It also allows functions to be called directly from Next.js and full-stack development frameworks without needing to run on a separate server or use their API endpoints (not a huge advocate, but it helps a lot with SSR). Gave a talk about that last week at the Node.js meetup in Berlin.

It’s still not 1.0 and there are breaking changes while I include more use cases.

Upcoming changes:

• use Request and Response objects to make it truly runtime agnostic (currently each adapter has its own thin layer, which tbf is still needed by many that don’t adopt the web spec)

• smarter code splitting (this will reduce bundle size by tree-shaking anything not needed on a per-function basis)

• queues (one more form of transport)

Check it out, would love feedback!

dzink 3/30/2025||
I’ve been dissecting stock market data with code to see how dark pool and automated trading behaviors are evolving and impacting the market. The market is the most adverse possible brain battle where actors constantly try to outsmart and make money off of each-other. Greed and fear playing out and conditions changing constantly. AI is also used but it gets funny when the market adapts and plays against past behavior to take advantage of AI traders as well.
throwaway2037 3/31/2025||

    > see how dark pool and automated trading behaviors are evolving and impacting the market.
How/Where did you get the data?
WhiteWalker2021 3/31/2025|||
Curious to know more about your findings!
vnce 3/31/2025|||
Would love to read the outcomes
mhuffman 3/31/2025||
Also curious about what you find out. I also thought that the cool billionaire kids were using "private rooms"[0] now and dark pools were for poor boomer hundred-millionaires! :-)

[0]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/darker-dark-pool-welcome-wall...

TimTheTinker 3/31/2025|
My toddler has a LeapFrog talking dictionary that drives my teenage daughter crazy. So I just started a project to replace its logic board with a RPi Pico 2 and interfacing with all ~45 of the toy's buttons and LEDs via a couple of GPIO expansion cards.

We'll have about ~300 short audio clips to record, and we'll store/access them via an SPI SD card reader peripheral. Audio output via a MAX98357A combo DAC/class D amplifier that we'll talk to via I2S. Powered by 2 AA batteries. Programming will be in CircuitPython, which is a cool way to teach the kids programming. (There are easy libraries for talking to all those peripherals.)

vnce 3/31/2025|
I’m interested :)
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