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Posted by david927 2 days ago

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
281 points | 1075 commentspage 28
pmarreck 1 day ago|
A "universal" format validator whose goal is to validate every byte of as many of the most common file formats as possible (I'm up to about 190, to varying degrees of coverage; turns out many formats don't have checksums, and some formats' parsing won't break on corrupt data)

https://github.com/pmarreck/validate

Written in Zig, it has a C FFI and a CLI for mac/windows/linux.

The purpose of this is to feed into a different project I'm working on that is for-pay.

mikenikles 1 day ago||
I build Seaquel, the database client I've always wished I had. It's open source, works offline and doesn't track what you do.

It has a visual query builder and separate SQL tutorial.

https://seaquel.app

planckscnst 1 day ago||
I'm working on "context bonsai" which is currently a plugin for OpenCode that allows the LLM to self-edit its own context. It works like compaction, but it can retrieve back the compacted info if needed. And it's not just when the context is completely full, and it doesn't compact the entire context - it picks messages / tool calls where the details are no longer necessary, like a debugging session that is already solved or feature implementation that is complete and you've started on implementing the next feature.

I've also used tweakcc to make this work in Calude Code and plan to also do one for open source coding agents - codex, pi, Gemini, etc. And I'm also doing Livestreams of the development process.

https://github.com/Vibecodelicious/opencode

junaid_97 1 day ago||
I'm building Fillvisa: Turboxtax for Immigration [1]

It's a free USCIS form-filling web-app(no Adobe required). USCIS forms still use XFA PDFs, which don’t let you edit in most browsers. Even with Adobe, fields break, and getting the signature is hard.

So I converted the PDF form into modern, browser-friendly web forms - and kept every field 1:1 with the original. You fill the form, submit it, and get the official USCIS PDF filled.

I found out SimpleCitizen(YC S16) offers a DIY plan for $529 [2]

So, a free (and local-only) version might be a good alternative

[1] https://fillvisa.com/demo [2] https://www.simplecitizen.com/pricing/

jmstfv 1 day ago||
I've finally finished the long-abandoned project that I've been meaning to build for a while.

If you use Stripe Billing for subscriptions, your customers can specify reasons why they cancelled (e.g. too expensive, not using it, switched to competitor, etc.). However, to access those, you either have to use Stripe Sigma or pull them from the API. I wanted to build a more convenient way to access those (and also act upon them).

I've submitted the app to Stripe's App Marketplace, but I have a limited number of test invites to send out if you're interested (I will happily waive your subscription for 3 months).

https://dunningbear.com

jbonatakis 1 day ago||
Very much mvp but I just got this all set up: https://www.pginbox.dev/

Downloaded and parsed a bunch of the pgsql-hackers mailing list. Right now it’s just a pretty basic alternative display, but I have some ideas I want to explore around hybrid search and a few other things. The official site for the mailing list has a pretty clean thread display but the search features are basic so I’m trying to see how I can improve on that.

The repo is public too: https://github.com/jbonatakis/pginbox

I’ve mostly built it using blackbird [1] which I also built. It’s pretty neat having a tool you built build you something else.

[1] https://github.com/jbonatakis/blackbird

kushalpandya 1 day ago||
Been working on Petrichor - native macOS music player [1]

This has been my side project for nearly a year, and I also shared it here in HN when it was in alpha [2] and received a ton of feedback (and stars on GitHub).

The project has evolved quite a bit since then, like having additional file format support, lyrics, Last.fm scrobbling, and more!

[1] https://github.com/kushalpandya/Petrichor

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44515266

wan23 1 day ago||
https://hobbybot.net

I'm trying to see how far I can get using AI to help me track pre-owned items for sale, starting with watches. I started with an OpenClaw agent that was looking for specific things I wanted to buy, and then I figured might as well make a whole site for it so I can share with others.

sprine 1 day ago||
I've been working on a Ontario open data MCP: https://github.com/sprine/ontario-data-mcp

There is a wealth of data that's behind CSVs and other data formats. This uses DuckDB as a common (local) database to cache and run queries against, and enables going across datasets for insights using LLMs.

nick-sta 1 day ago|
I'm working on a project for deploying containerized workloads across your own servers, but with great dx from starting on a $5 server to migrating/scaling to 200 servers (no downtime required for any migrations). think coolify, but with railway dx and no single server limitations.

there's no control plane, each node is equal and eventually consistant and its (so far) end to end rust so a very minimal footprint per node.

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