Posted by david927 7 hours ago
Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)
Also recently got a lot of home VHS tapes digitalized and always had trouble with playing from Google drive or finding the right video. So I just built a webapp this month to split the videos into clips, transcoding it for better streaming, Google casting support, and tagging for search. [1]
Github: https://github.com/microsoft/accordant
Docs: https://microsoft.github.io/accordant
Every API has a contract - the rules for how it should behave. You can't withdraw more than the balance. You can't delete a resource with active references. You can't re-create what already exists. But usually these rules are never written down in one place. Accordant lets you write the contract directly, as executable code. Not documentation that drifts, but code - if the implementation stops behaving according to the contract, you get immediate failures. Not only can you use the executable spec to validate _arbitrary_ scenarios, you can also use the spec - a first class construct - to mechanically explore the state space of a system and generate interesting test sequences. The docs above have examples.
Also worth calling out that we've used the framework to model a number of complex, distributed real-world systems: those involving async processes, concurrency, retries and crash consistency. These are non-trivial specs (and they pair quite well with techniques like deterministic simulation testing). Great care has been taken to ensure the specs remain readable and concise despite that richness of behavior. For those of you old timers who might be familiar with Spec#/SpecExplorer and NModel, this model-based testing library is a descendant of that line of work.
With the rise in AI-assisted software development, I feel we need richer ways of specifying and validating software and I feel quite excited and bullish about the possibilities here. There's a lot more to say on the topic - follow my twitter feed if interested in more updates ;)
The first is that some effect happens asynchronously, potentially interleaved with other operations. Whether a client observes completion by polling or by receiving an event from a message broker is orthogonal to the specification itself - the model looks essentially the same in both cases. The built-in test executor uses polling, but that's an execution strategy, not a specification construct.
If you have a trace containing both requests/responses and observed events, you can use the model to check that the trace conforms to the specification. In practice, it helps if the events can be localized to some interval in the execution (e.g. "this happened after A and before B"); otherwise the checker has to consider many more possible concurrent interleavings.
The conformance testing docs hint at how this can be done, but don't yet show an event-driven example. It's a good enough question that I'll write a dedicated doc page on it.
Conformance testing page: https://microsoft.github.io/accordant/docs/concepts/conforma...
Where we felt there was a gap was in expressing rich stateful behavior: models involving non-determinism (e.g. a timeout where the write may or may not have committed), concurrency, and eventual asynchronous completion, and then checking that an observed execution trace conforms to that model. Accordant aims to make those kinds of specifications concise and readable.
Once you have such a model, it's possible to integrate it with the fuzzing and shrinking capabilities of existing property-based testing libraries. We'll have documentation on that integration soon.
We're a collaborative canvas + context engine for all the code and docs in your company, with a zoomable UI + CLI , where you can collaborate with your co-workers and agents.
We map technical debt, agent readiness, code complexity, security scanning, bus factor and more, so you can easily see how all the software in your company runs.
One of the most complex things is our incremental git blame engine built on top of GitOxide, as our backend is fully built on Rust. Our frontend is built on PixiJS so you can explore at gaming speed with 60Hz refresh rates.
Recently we sponsored Rust Week in Europe and a hundred or so developers tried our mini-game which is GeoGuessr for code, and got rave reviews. Future is looking bright!
Reading Brand's quick little life changer kept me going with surprisingly few cuss fits:
The Maintenance of Everything: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1511798465
Thanks, Stew!
Since posting, I got it running, PTO and deck line up great, fuel filter is clean and clear, it runs better than it has in years.
I’m prioritizing user experience and QoL features, I’d like to build something calming and user friendly.
I recently added support for user generated puzzles - here’s a nonogram that I drew just now[2].
[1]: https://lab174.com/nonoverse/
[2]: https://lab174.com/nonoverse/play/custom/N4IgbiBcCMA0IGcogHR...
It's a project I have been working on for quite a long time and I released it on TestFlight about a week ago. It was really nice to work on something end-to-end, from creating a wrapper around llama.cpp with support for prompt caching/forking and automatic model loading and unloading based on device memory constraints, to the custom agentic harness the app runs on. I have also spent quite a lot of time on agent execution modes that I hope can enable to more easily reason about agent security regarding prompt injection attacks.
What I'm really hoping for now is to get actual feedback, to know if users end up having real use cases where the app is truly useful / interesting for them, to understand what should most urgently be improved etc.
Right now your LP reads like a technical doc rather than a product’s page.
My starting hypothesis is power users and devs, people who want to experiment with local and cloud LLMs, build their own custom agents, and try experiences they wouldn't usually find in consumer AI mobile apps. As the app is now closer to release, I think it has reached a level where it is likely complete enough that there are some viable combinations of its features that can actually solve concrete user problems. I could see the app being used to create agents that serve as small shortcuts tailored to the users' needs, with all the flexibility it enables. A bit like a more iOS-native OpenClaw with opinionated takes on tooling and security. I personally used it to create a food tracker that has a good understanding of my daily routine and also TL;DRs of various sources (including HN) surfaced as suggestions on the home page.
I don't yet know the exact words those users would use to describe their problem, so surfacing that is part of why I'm putting it in front of testers first.
Don't tell my husband that I spent more than $200 on parts and supplies for it.
I've wanted a Heathkit since I learned about them as a teenager, and this is the first one I've ever seen in the wild. The original owner left the date he assembled it and his callsign written on the inside! I looked him up and he died in 2013, but by sheer happenstance I'm restoring it 58 years to the day that he initially built it. I got super lucky with this unit because as far as I can tell, it's only been run a few hours in its entire life. I really only have to replace aged components because they're physically breaking down, I expect the thing will outlive me once I'm done with it. Can't wait to hand it off to a bewildered young EE in another half century.
I checked my analytics recently and over 100 people have 100+ day streaks which kind of blows my mind!
I released custom player puzzles which has been a lot of fun! I’ve gotten dozens of submissions that I’m working through. People are submitting really clever and interesting puzzles. It’s fun to get to solve puzzles I didn’t make myself! There’s more I want to do here (featured puzzles, categories, etc.)
https://tiledwords.com/player-puzzles/page/1
I think I’ve also tracked down an issue that was causing the game to crash on older iPhones. I’m having playtesters run through it now and hope to deploy tomorrow. (Switching some positioning rules from CSS transforms to SVG coordinates)
I recently made some puzzle brainstorming tools using the Datamuse API which have been very helpful for brainstorming words related to a theme.
I’m starting to debate some monetized features. So far everything is free but it would be nice if my wife and I could dedicate more time to this. If I could get a few thousand dollars a month in subscriptions my wife could quit her job and focus more on puzzle creation and improving the game. If you play and have ideas for features you pay for I’d love to hear them!