Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

Posted by david927 11/9/2025

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

464 points | 1369 commentspage 5

koeng 11/9/2025|

I've been working on a sillier project lately. Green teeth!

Lumina has made a probiotic strain that is able to, theoretically, prevent cavities. I don't care that much about, but I do think it is a neat strain that can likely colonize your mouth. I'm genetically engineering it to express sfGFP, which would theoretically make my teeth fluorescent green under black light. Would be fun at raves! Also, if I make out with anyone, you could theoretically see changes in microbiome composition just from green-ness. I do wonder how much microbiomes are shared while kissing: this would be an example of a way to directly measure that, instead of just measuring on proxy like much microbiome research

yetihehe 11/10/2025||

In future: Papa, why are humans' teeth green?

- Oh, son, let me tell you a story about how an ancient dude called koeng wanted to see how many people he kissed.

fledgexu 11/10/2025||

That sounds so cool. Could you tell me more?

kgritesh 11/10/2025||

Working on Strot - an AI agent that reverse-engineers website APIs for scraping.

Instead of DOM scraping, it intercepts AJAX calls and figures out which API endpoint gives you the data you need. Uses visual analysis + fuzzy matching to identify the right call.

The use case: scraping product reviews, paginated listing data (products), etc. Existing AI scrapers either didn't work or were very slow and costly. A product with 1000 reviews takes 10+ minutes with Playwright, costs $10 with LLM scrapers. With Strot? 10 seconds via direct API calls.

Being used in production by a couple of clients. Would love feedback!

Blog: https://blog.vertexcover.io/strot-is-a-api-scraper GitHub: https://github.com/vertexcover-io/strot

greenbeans12 11/10/2025|

Very neat - I imagine you could even use this as a web scanner to identify security misconfigurations in API implementations (e.g. broken access control)

jamesponddotco 11/10/2025||

Since I got a baby and we’re still adjusting to their schedule, I’m still working on the same project, Librario[1]. Librario is a simple book metadata aggregation API written in Go. It fetches information about books from multiple sources, merges everything intelligently, and then saves it all to a PostgreSQL database for future lookups.

You can think of it as a data source, or a knowledgeable companion that can provide comprehensive book information for online booksellers, libraries, book-related startups, bookworms, and more.

I got a pre-alpha build running for those that want to test it out[2], but the code is still not out there, as there are a few things I want to refactor. Wrote comprehensive documentation for it this weekend, now I need to refactor the merger package with some new rules, and write something to decrease the number of genres returned.

Been tough to find time to work on it because of the baby, but AI has been helping a lot to speed things up, and the work has been quite fun. Not sure if there will be interest in the idea, but it solves a problem I have, so I had to work on it anyway.

Hope to have the code on GitHub by the end of this week. AGPL licensed.

[1]: https://github.com/pagina394/librario

[2]: https://paste.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/5612eaa80fc7eee8b6180a31...

deepakrb 11/9/2025||

I’m working on https://regularly.co/ - A website made for inquisitive minds to get their daily puzzle fix. Still very much a WIP (mainly working on tuning the difficulty of puzzles to make it enjoyable for most). That being said I really do enjoy the unique combination of puzzles when I do them each day. I’m looking for feedback so if you do take a look please do let me know your thoughts!

BrainRamp 11/9/2025||

Incredible. Thank you for sharing this, I love puzzles and like setting aside some time in the morning to do them. This will enhance that habit so much! A whole slew of daily puzzles, I'll let you know how it goes!

curtisblaine 11/9/2025||

I don't understand why I can't place two kings in "adjacent diagonal" position when they're in two different regions. Something like:

..k..

.k...

Rules state they must be in different regions, row and column. No mention of diagonal or adjacency.

codebje 11/10/2025|||

Maybe it wasn't there when you played, but rule 6 states kings cannot attack each other; chess kings can move one square in any direction. Without this rule the puzzle isn't solvable by logic, only trial and error.

deepakrb 11/10/2025||||

Ah this rule is mentioned under “Kings cannot attack each other” (in the chess sense, two Kings cannot be diagonal from one another). I’ve updated the rule to make this a little clearer

billforsternz 11/10/2025|||

I agree, I had the same problem.

sulicat 11/10/2025||

I'm making an HID translation dongle.

In programming mode, its a flash drive you can put LUA scripts on.

In run mode, you can select a lua script to run. Lua scripts can take HID input and produce HID output.

All open source, hardware and software: https://github.com/cedarhacks/ReMapper

It can do things like keyboard -> joystick mapping, key logging, macros, mouse wiggling etc etc

p2edwards 11/10/2025|

Hey cool! I've been wanting something like this for a while.

Would it be able to take multiple inputs?

sulicat 11/10/2025||

There's plans for a future iteration to be able to (I want to decouple multiple keyboard inputs!).

However in the git repo and prototype, ATM it's 1 input 1 output.

zachd 11/10/2025||

https://stretchmytimeoff.com

An algorithm to optimise vacation days using public holidays and weekends. Especially relevant at this time of year.

I created it a year ago and received quite some comments on the Show HN post[1]. Last weekend I updated it to work for end of year planning and adding fixed days off, which seems to solve most of the feedback. It was done with Cursor in agent mode.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42118039

openfret 11/10/2025||

Hey HN! I'm building https://openfret.com/ - the all-in-one platform for guitarists that I wish existed when I started playing.

OpenFret combines everything a guitarist needs in one place: smart gear inventory management, AI-powered practice sessions, real-time collaboration tools, and a vibrant community. Think of it as "GitHub for guitarists" meets comprehensive practice tool.

Core features:

1) Smart Guitar Inventory: Track your collection with auto-filled specs from thousands of guitar models. Monitor woods, pickups, scale length, string changes, and discover patterns in your gear

2) AI Practice Sessions: Generate personalized guitar tabs and lessons based on your practice history, with VexFlow sheet music and integrated metronome

3) Session Mode: Fork and merge music tracks like code. Layer recordings, see version history, and collaborate with musicians worldwide

4) Practice Analytics: Persistent timers, song tracking (Last.fm integration), scale visualization, fretboard maps, and chord progressions

5) Built-in Tools: Guitar tuner with frequency control, Strudel integration for backing tracks, and musical helpers to break out of E minor habits

Looking for:

Feedback from guitarists/musicians on which features resonate most

Link: https://openfret.com/ | Discord: https://discord.gg/G3Pur3PzZm

Thank you!

osigurdson 11/11/2025|

I think AI guided practice sessions could lead to something incredible but like everything "AI" it actually takes a lot of hard work to make it really useful.

bkallus 11/10/2025||

ABISan. Think of it like UBSan, but for assembly.

It's a custom assembler built on top of the LLVM assembler (llvm-mc) that emits instrumentation code to catch ABI violations at runtime. Stuff like clobbering nonvolatile registers, misaligning the stack pointer, misusing the redzone, assuming volatile registers don't change across a function call, etc.

Hoping to finish up basic x86_64 support within the next few days. I can now reliably assemble and run unoptimized gcc output without hitting false positives, but I still have to iron out some false positives triggered by OpenSSL's handwritten assembly routines.

TODO items for the near future include porting the runtime support library into a kernel module so I can instrument Linux, and beginning ports other architectures (ideally something semi-obscure like POWER or RISC-V). I also need to figure out how to support dynamic linking, because the tool currently needs static linking to access its thread-local variables.

https://github.com/kenballus/llvm-project/tree/abisan/llvm/t...

rmnclmnt 11/11/2025||

Currently working on two OSS projects:

Laketower: https://github.com/datalpia/laketower A lightweight data lakehouse exploration and management app (web+cli), using DuckDB as the default query engine. It can run locally or self hosted, and for now statically configured only. Hope to integrate Iceberg and Ducklake support by end of year.

Modelship: https://github.com/datalpia/modelship An ML model to app generator. For now, only ONNX models are supported as input, and only static website as target (onnx runtime web wasm/webgpu). I intend to also work more on it the following weeks/months, especially to support more model I/O types, and add support for more targets (REST API, CLI, etc).

These 2 projects were born from professional activity needs but are a nice playground to learn and try new things

0xbadcafebee 11/9/2025|

DIY grid-tied residential solar+inverter+battery. Trying to design the solar arrays' tilt mechanism now for lifting/lowering 5 panels at a time in winter (60-degree winter angle, 35-degree spring/summer/fall; ~24" difference). Thinking either two linear actuators, or a single hydraulic jack connected to multiple support beams. The weight isn't much, but I want a way to lift entire top edge at once to prevent twisting. Linear actuators are slightly more money and easier to build, but require power and weather-proofing. Jack is cheaper, but more complex to distribute force. Wondering if there's other options. (winch would require more robust/taller rear posts, seems more complex, might shade rear array)

eternityforest 11/10/2025||

Tilting them vertical or nearly so is very useful if there could be any hail, that might be a good idea to support.

What about compressed air? It might not be too hard to find a small brushless low power air pump that could drive pistons directly.

You could mount the pump controller onto the back of the panels and use an accelerometer to measure angle, and run the pump until it's where you want it.

You'd probably need to do some testing and make sure it couldn't get jammed, then build up pressure, then suddenly unstick and move unsafely.

whitehexagon 11/10/2025|||

Nice, I started with 5 panels (450W each) and a simple design of interchangeable long and short rear legs to adjust the angle of each panel. Base of leg sits in a bracket on a steel frame, and pivots on an M8 bolt. Top of the leg attaches to some angled 'meccano' steel I affixed to the rear of the panels. It worked great, but I slightly over optimized by sharing legs, which made the twice a year switchover a bit tricky, since I could only manage to lift a single panel at a time.

Last year the 550W panels here dropped to 90eur, and so I just added some more panels to remove the need for the switchover. I saw last week 600W panels going for 80eur but no space left, but tempting. Good luck! It's a nice feeling to have energy independence.

Joel_Mckay 11/10/2025||

"Projects With Everyday Dave" has done quite a few tests, and may be worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Fz5T5c0OQ

Best of luck =3

0xbadcafebee 11/10/2025||

Thanks! And I've seen Dave's tests. Since I don't need a fixed angle, do need to maximize production (due to a limited sun horizon), and only have 10 panels, the best option is adjusting angle during winter. The N-S orientation is a really poor performer. (Notice that his test is 30-degree tilt vs N-S; 60-degree tilt will provide 20-25% more power than 30-degree at my latitude, without even considering bifacials w/snow. The only thing that would produce more is an active tracker, but I've got other things to do, and a December deadline...)

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