Posted by tha_infra_guy 1 day ago
Ask HN: What are you working on? (November 2026)
I thought I’d get where I wanted much faster, but it turns out I ran into quite a few challenges: it’s quick to build something simple, but it takes much longer to get a reader that’s robust and pleasant to use (extraction, parsing, security, infrastructure, etc.).
On the tech side, I’m using my usual stack, Laravel and Livewire, with some Python for extraction and Go for the email infrastructure. This month I’m working on the beta release, since several people around me were already using it, so I’d like to gather more feedback.
When playing Zwift, Rouvy, etc, I find that I get too competitive and ruin longer workouts by trying to keep up with or sprint past people who are much faster than me over long distances.
This is bad for building stamina and endurance, but I get bored, and it's hard to fight boredom and physical strain both at once.
I do not get bored sitting in front of Balatro, Raccoin, Tetris - anything with bright colours and satisfying noises and combos.
The first finished prototype game is very simple: you sort coloured marbles. Higher watt output from the bike means marbles are blown, by wind, upwards as they roll across the screen. Lower watt output means they fall. Steady watt output means they move horizontally. Marble goes into correct hole -> satisfying noise. It rewards steady watt output over time, with minor adjustments, which is what I'm trying to work on right now.
I was pretty amazed by how engaging I found it (total iPad baby brain). The miles really fly by - I get tired before I get bored.
I think that next I'll either do a tower defence game, or a less-dopamine-rewarding game in the style of Kerbal Space Program. Taking your actual weight and watt output, putting a bike with wings into a physics engine, and the gameplay loop being unlocking increasingly large airplane pieces, and designing - then flying - increasingly ridiculous airborne bicycles seems like a compelling idea, though less good for fitness.
The control surface being so limited - essentially one measurement which can either go up or down - is a really fun constraint for creativity.
I'd love to try a similar approach to gamifying exercise on a smart watch. That's an even more fun problem, because (when running, for example) you don't even have a constantly-present screen to communicate dopamine to the player with. Perhaps some watches wouldn't even be able to provide sound feedback? I've never owned one. It's a really interesting constraint for game design.
I got overwhelmed by walls of text of parallel Claude Code sessions. This limited the sessions I could steer in parallel to maybe 5 or 6. I knew there had to be a better way, and I found one: A canvas per project. Work laid out as cards. An agent in a worktree per card. Chat condensed to WhatsApp-style back and forth, not a litany of tool calls. Result is usually a narrated demo video that I can comment on by voice to have the agent go another round. Remote-control from my phone. Remote workers to scale beyond my machine. Everyone I know who tried it has stuck with it so far.
Also trying to replace own Duolingo usage with Fika Lingo (https://fikalingo.com) basic idea was to first repro the practice of matching words. There is now few other types of language / vocabulary practices. The practice generation works on-device with local LLM, you can give the topic yourself like "Words that relate to Hacker News". Downside at the moment is that English needs to be the counterpart of the practices. Cant guarantee good enough quality with something like germany <-> italy practices. I'm trying to do finetuning with LFM models to see if it would be feasible to improve the local practice generation.
It’s been getting a decent number of sign ups despite me not really posting it anywhere or doing any marketing.
Ultimately a fun project, and useful for myself and a few friends, so I’m happy others are even interested in trying it.
I’ve started to regret using Phoenix LiveView, as it’s only deployed in one region, so high latency far from there. I’m exploring a SPA as a better alternative.
Otherwise, I’ve been playing around with a Lua engine to build feeds for websites that don’t support them, using AI to build the Lua as a once-off. It works reasonably well, but isn’t ready for prime time just yet.
It's a traditional systems language in the sense that you have fine control over how resources are used, but it's abstract in the sense that you have to come to an agreement with the compiler about your intent around the resources, rather than directly declaring the machinery.
It's a distributed language in the sense that there is a higher level structural abstraction in the language that situates computations of the program within a recursive graph structure. Part of that structure incorporates message broker semantics. This gives the compiler a unified view of programs across arbitrary process boundaries. The structural abstractions also enable an effects+formal verification syntax within the language, which allows programmers to codify architectural decisions that are then checked by the compiler.
The compiler itself is infrastructure aware, and the highest layer of functionality it handles is configuring the environment into which applications deploy. The single language handles everything from individual memory allocations to distributed fleet deployments.
The language is close to v1, and I'm currently building a fully distributed inference-as-a-service application with it. Arbitrary hardware/supply matched against arbitrary callers/demand in real time.
https://github.com/hale-lang/hale https://github.com/hale-lang/voice
Other than this, I'm playing with vibe-coding stuff I always wanted to do but never had the time/skills to do. For example, I built a TUI on top of beancount that is tailored to my needs and my business[2]. I also completely got rid of self-hosted plausible and umami analytics, and replaced them with vibe-coded built-in-rust (c) analytics tool that relies on both js-beacon and streaming of caddy access.log. Will probably publish about it in my blog soon, so subscribe to the RSS if you want.
Lastly, I'm messing with self-hosting. I completely ditched Github and Gitlab for self hosted forgejo + actions runner. I set up proper backup plan for everything I care (documents, immich library, my SaaS DB, and the forgejo repositories).
[2] https://kudmitry.com/articles/after-14-years-i-finally-built...
Guaranteed results are achieved using the state of the art adaptive TDEE (total calorie burn of the day) tracking technique we've developed. It's sensorless, so no watch or other wearable is needed. It's way more accurate than those wearables (data included on the website), and our group has 2,000+ members ( https://macrocodex.app/community/ ). You can also read Play Store reviews.
All this completely free, no subscription or ads: https://macrocodex.app/
MacroCodex also works on both Android and iOS and any platform where PWA app can run.
Other other 2 apps are Android only (for now):
If you are looking for a workout app with Alpha Progression or MacroFactor Workout-like “Smart Progression,” or an app where you can run any program like Boostcamp but ad- and subscription-free, check out the Symbiote workout app (beta) https://symbiote-studio.macrocodex.app/
IF you are looking for AI photo Calorie tracking with lots of features which make it very fast to log food on daily basis checkout CalorieCodex (beta): https://caloriecodex.macrocodex.app/
All the apps have been under active development for a few months now.
I'm a product designer by trade and learnt to vibe code on Claude about a month ago now. I was weaning my baby and he developed a rash and haven't been able to work out what the pattern was causing it. So I created an app for weaning parents to log the food, add any reactions so when talking to their GP they can start to see a pattern and all advice, like nutrients, food variety, how to serve food all coming from the NHS and FSA.
Currently got 12 mums using the app and would love any feedback to make it even better! <3
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/niblet-weaning-diary/id6822680...