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 8

WD-42 11/10/2025|

I'm building a Jellyfin client focused on music using Rust + GTK:

I've been enjoying rebuilding my music collection from both old hard drives and ripping old CDs. Jellyfin is great but I wanted a native application focused on music, not video. Thus Gelly. It's been really fun to work on.

rootnod3 11/10/2025||

I am working on my own Lisp-like language (cliche, I know). Goal is a hybrid. Syntax is a bit more Clojure inspired, but want to emulate the interactivity of SBCL once I am done.

And the other goal is minimal dependencies. The only bootstrapping stage is a very very small core in Common Lisp + FSet but could also be replaced with other languages, and then using that subset to bootstrap the rest.

There is absolutely zero claim to be highly performant, it is more of an educational experience.

All of it is done via literate programming in org-mode. So far it's working pretty well, but will have to see how that approach works if the project grows.

alexisread 11/10/2025|

OOI how does the org-mode dev work? Are you tangling and then compiling in a hot-reload loop?

rootnod3 11/10/2025||

So far it works pretty good. Minor edits I just quickly edit and tangle, otherwise I open the source block in a buffer (C-c '), and from there I can just use the usual C-c C-c shortcut to send it to the REPL.

But as the first stage bootstrap in CL is mostly done at this point, I have to hot-reload anyway.

At some point it might be nice to have my own REPL running in Emacs, but that is a worry for way later when I actually get something usable. For now this is purely for personal entertainment.

stevefan1999 11/10/2025||

I'm working on a K8S hosting solution that just gives the user a simple Kubernetes cluster. I (or we) handle the compute, (networked) storage and ingress hosting for you, and the cluster provision time should be within minutes.

You just need to pay for a fixed monthly upfront cost rather than PAYG, giving small developers a good save of their money.

In other words, this is similar to self hosting with K0S/K3S/OpenShift, except you don't have to own servers to begin with, in other words, it is a little similar to serverless K8S.

Well, all you those you can actually do with a VPS today, heck why do I have to do it if EKS/GKE/LKE/OKE/DOKS exists? That's because it takes a lot of time to properly setup VPC/EBS/S3/EC2, you need to pay an insane amount of premium and overheads to those while an ordinary user just don't want to hassle too much.

I want to undercut the big clouds by saving people's money and time. I have had enough of seeing a ludicrous EKS billing. I just want K8S to be the control panel of everything.

Deploy, run and scale later, simple as that

myguestacc 11/10/2025||

This resonates with my experience as a small startup dev. I wouldn't mind bringing my own servers for running my apps but for k8s I need at least 3 control nodes in each cluster and I need multiple clusters to cover different parts of the world. All those control planes are idling most of the time but cost money and effort to keep them alive. I'm sure those could be shared among dozens of users. Is this something you are going to support? Or I'll also have to rent the worker nodes from you?

stevefan1999 11/10/2025||

You rent the compute, storage and network from the worker clusters at a fixed monthly price as one budget package, just like how you buy VPSes back in the days (think EC2 Lightsail or Linode, except now you just have a K8S context). You can choose multiple geolocations, but I'm still looking for a successful lab simulation first.

Right now I'm hosting my own test cluster under my bed so I can't show it.

You don't have to manage CNI, CSI, Linux kernel, etcd. You just need Kubernetes app development knowledge and that's basically it.

Now I'm still thinking about how to get live migration and failover working, so it is going to take a painful while...Kata Container doesn't support it out of the box but Cloud Hypervisor does

calind 11/10/2025||

Link? :)

stevefan1999 11/10/2025||

No link yet as I'm still just a solo dev, the (hobbish?) project is crawling very slowly, but I have the general architecture in mind. I need to get the frontend first.

I tried to submit it as a startup project last year but the feedback isn't great, I want to have something polished first before making it public

Arathorn 11/9/2025||

I'm resurrecting peer-to-peer Matrix (https://arewep2pyet.com) thanks to the Dutch government, who started funding it in October.

The main question is which P2P overlay network to use, if any: the prior incarnation used Pinecone (a variant of Yggdrasil), whereas this time we're pondering keeping it simpler and more scalable and using Matrix itself as the backbone to connect together smallish local P2P meshes - so by default you try to route via Matrix, but failing that you look on your LAN or BLE to see if you can talk directly to whoever you're addressing. Time will tell if this works :)

AquiGorka 11/9/2025||

If you are open to suggestions, libp2p has a good amount of sdks for several languages and you can integrate kademlia for peer discovery

Arathorn 11/9/2025||

We are open to suggestions :) And the very first generation of P2P Matrix was indeed built on libp2p (and Protocol Labs led Element's Series B). However, the thought experiment here is whether we can get away without a full global P2P overlay at all in the interests of keeping it simple & stupid. We might well end up back at libp2p tho!

Edit: another option on our todo list to look into more is Iroh (https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh)

dingnuts 11/9/2025||

[flagged]

dang 11/9/2025||

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ronbenton 11/9/2025||

Currently working on getting back into a fitness routine. I got into this habit of hacking on side projects in my very little spare time but I have realized taking care of my body will pay off far more than any project

photon_lines 11/13/2025||

20 minutes a day is all it takes. Don't even think about it - just do it. After a couple of weeks you'll wonder how in the world you ever lived without exercise -- trust me on this one :)

ebbi 11/9/2025||

All the best - the best project to work on! I recently tested a walking pad with a standing desk at my friends place - I was surprisingly productive being able to walk while using the computer. Will be investing in a standing desk and walking pad for my home office.

irskep 11/10/2025||

Today I'm hacking on automate-terminal, a command line program and Python library that abstracts the various terminal emulator automations (iTerm2, WezTerm, Kitty, tmux) into a single API. Mostly made for use by other tools. https://github.com/irskep/automate-terminal

cocodill 11/10/2025|

sounds interesting. what was your first scenario when you thought, “Baam! I need to automate this, and I'm going to do it right now!” ?

t0duf0du 11/10/2025||

Working on a binary that will instrument every Java service running on Linux host machine with OpenTelemetry Java Agent.

Kinda like this (https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-injector) but with support of having multiple service name for different services. This includes tomcat, normal systemd services and also services running inside docker containers.

EDIT: I am popping my cherry with this comment on HN. Been a lurker since past 2-3 years.

techman001 11/10/2025||

I've just released my beta of FURS.

FURS does for Forth, what headers do for C, namely provide all the embedded configuration information inside a Cortex-M MCU, for the up to 100 inbuilt peripherals.

Without this data, neither C nor Forth (or any other language) have any clue about how to use the peripherals.

FURS does this by intercepting the Forth user source as it's uploaded to the on-chip compiler and transforming it into language the MCU inherently understands.

The Forth user source code is not altered in any way.

I've used the Fossil DCVS for the entire FURS project so that all the flowcharts, pictures, code, user doc, trouble-ticket, wiki ... everything is contained in the ONE FILE, under 5MB.

This one file gives you a web server so all you need is a browser to easily view all the above from the main menu.

Howto: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc/f...

leventov 11/10/2025||

I'm working on Pocketdata - a personal, private AI data plane.

The idea is to take boring components: PostgreSQL, Bifrost (LLM gateway), Open WebUI, LanceDB, Agentgateway (MCP and OpenAPI gateway) and deploy them in Fly.io. One Fly.io "org" per user. The closest equivalent is blaxel.ai, but it caters for AI SaaS startups, not individual customers.

The combination of the fact that Fly secrets are visible only from within the apps, distroless containers, and transparent data encryption for PostgreSQL assures that the service (Pocketdata) provider cannot access their data, only the infrastructure provider (Fly.io) theoretically can, but practically speaking, this gives an extremely high degree of privacy assurance.

The latest update on the project: https://engineeringideas.substack.com/p/tasklet-is-the-o1-mo...

pscanf 11/10/2025|

Hey! Your project looks very similar, from a conceptual point of view, to what I'm doing with https://github.com/superegodev/superego. Would you like to have a chat about it? Email in my profile, if you're interested.

Rick76 11/10/2025|

I've been wanting to learn more embedded type projects, and I've been snacking too often so I've been building a box that will only open on the weekends.

I got all the components, tested it on a breadboard, learned to solder and now I'm working on the 3d Print to enclose everything.

I actually just did a test run to see if my current 3d design would fit my PICO board, and it fit, but not that secure yet.

Im a developer but never worked this close to metal, so I've been so happy with how it's been going so far, making me real proud of myself.

bbkane 11/10/2025||

Great project, hope you enjoy (not) using it!

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