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

This Hacker News discussion showcases a diverse range of personal projects and professional endeavors, with a recurring theme of individuals leveraging technology to solve problems, explore creativity, and learn new skills. The projects span various domains, from AI-powered applications and developer tools to creative arts and personal utilities.

Here's a summary of the key themes:

AI and Machine Learning Applications

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the application of AI and machine learning. Many users are building tools and services that utilize AI for tasks such as generating content, assisting with decision-making, analyzing data, and enhancing user experiences.

• "An LLM driven app that helps you make buying decisions, like for coffee grinders, dishwashers, and monitors."
• "An iOS app that lets you change the paint color of your rooms and try out new interior design styles (ex: Rustic, Coastal, etc). I built it because I was blown away with what the latest image generation models can do and found that interior design is one area where it could already provide significant value for people."
• "I'm building a custom vocalist/DSP AI. I’ve never built any kind of neural net beyond a toy demo, but I’ve been programming for ~25 odd years. Think like ACE Studio, but I’m going much less for pitch performance and much more for clarity, expressiveness and human realism."
• "I'm working on https://trosko.hr (HR, Android/iOS app) - super-simple receipt/bill tracker (snap a photo of the receipt, reads it using Gemini, categorizes and stores locally - no accounts, no data gathering)"
• "I'm working on Reflect [0], it’s a private self discovery and self experimentation app. You can track metrics, set goals, get alerted to anomalies, view correlations, visualize your data, etc."
• "I'm working on https://6k.ai/ (only a landing page for now) Working on AI/NLP stuff in low-resource languages. Working on some research ideas (hope to publish) and well as some practical tools for learning languages."
• "Sending weather alerts via sms. Sign up takes 3 taps from a. SMS enabled device. ... Around 27 users so far."

Developer Tools and Utilities

Many participants are creating tools and libraries aimed at improving developer workflows, simplifying complex tasks, or providing new functionalities for existing platforms. These often involve areas like data management, testing, and code generation.

• "More or less the same project since Feb 2021: OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com). Idea is to be the uptime monitoring + status page solution software teams choose. Next big project I'm looking at is making a terraform provider for uptime checks, so setting up alerts for your new microservice becomes seamless."
• "A standalone BitTorrent DHT client https://github.com/delusionallogic/dht It's pretty simple so far. I'm focused ok getting the basics right and robust, such that I can start playing around without disrupting the real network."
• "I'm working on Fro (https://fro.app Haven't released properly yet - not sure if it's stable but oh well. I don't like using my personal email to sign up for things. ... Anyway, I wanted to receive these transactional emails in my personal Slack. So, that's what Fro is for (https://fro.app)"
• "I'm working on https://tickerfeed.net - a new kind of forum for stock market discussion. ... With TickerFeed I'm hoping to recapture what was lost - a platform where investors can discuss companies and all things stock market through meaningful long form content."
• "I'm working on hcker.news, which first started as a more configurable hacker news frontpage, but has turned into a thing that I've found to be quite helpful at content discovery. I recently by request[0] added a cohesive timeline view for hn's /bestcomments."
• "A Parquet file compactor. I have a client whose data lakes are partitioned by date, and obviously they end up with thousands of files all containing single/dozens/thousands of rows."
• "While this itself is not that exciting, the context behind it is. We host a static site service where users can manage their sites via ssh (https://pgs.sh). Previously we used minio for object storage but have become frustrated by its perf issues on smaller VMs, don't need the distributed features, and wanted something a little lighter weight."
• "I've been working on https://stacks.camera - it's an idea about overlaying the previous picture when you're taking a photo so you can create a timelapse or animation."
• "I'm working on TokenDagger [0] a high performance implementation of OpenAI's Tiktoken. My benchmarks are showing 2-3x higher throughput, as well as ~4x faster tokenization for code samples on a single thread."
• "I’m working on a new app for creating technical diagrams - https://vexlio.com. It's an area with some heavyweight incumbents (e.g. Visio, Lucid) but I think there's good opportunity here to differentiate in simplicity and overall experience."
• "I'm building an interactive nuclear reactor scoping tool to help people build intuition about how different types of nuclear reactors work and cost at different sizes."
• "I'm working on https://www.zarbitrage.co.za just launched the full history of South African Arbitrage using beautiful graphs for anyone to explore here."
• "I'm working on https://www.growbell.com. You describe your strategy in plain language and we'll do the rest. Pretty charts included."
• "I’m working on https://www.flexlogs.com/ a tool to make tracking business metrics easy. I've always had issues collecting business metrics like 'signups per day' in observability tools, but using marketing type tools comes with it's own set of problems."
• "I'm working on https://infocaptor.com Photo to Portrait converter. In few weeks releasing Chrome Extension for Youtube Transcript and Summary dashboard."
• "I wonder if you're aware of https://www.aitofit.io/en and how your app compares to it"

Creative Endeavors and Hobbies

Several users are pursuing projects driven by personal interest, creativity, or a desire to share unique experiences. These range from games and art to explorations of niche topics.

• "On a whim, I bought a pack of playing cards at the supermarket. Now I'm learning how to play card games. The card maker has its own web site with the rules for playing all kinds of card games, and it's filterable by number of players, including many games for one person."
• "Last year I quickly built then released an experimental mixed reality horror game for Apple VisionPro: https://pulsargeist.com. It was a lot of fun and people actually liked the early prototypes of it. The game ended up completely tanking on VisionPro."
• "I’m working on a little website to summarize discussion trends across the podcast ecosystem. ... My secret agenda is to explore how the “information supply chain” can be tracked across the data-processing stack all the way from the original audio through transcription, the processing pipeline, and UI."
• "A UI to start conversations and debates between LLMs, from a user-supplied prompt: https://modelmash.ai."
• "A super hacky, OAI Codex/Cursor built dungeon master in your console. Started as “can I build this while riding in the car using codex?” to maybe taking it a little too far."
• "I’m working on a tool to make tracking business metrics easy. [0] I've always had issues collecting business metrics like “signups per day” in observability tools, but using marketing type tools comes with it's own set of problems."
• "I built my own game engine with threejs, and now at a point where we can game via a config file and edit game with an editor. Now I am focusing on trying to get brands / businesses to create games on https://playcraft.fun for their marketing campaigns or events"
• "I’m working on https://heliographe.studio indie photography software (iOS/macOS for the time being)."
• "I'm working on https://tangerinefeed.net/ - a job feed for remote jobs - This is something I’ve needed myself over the last few years as jobs become shorter and shorter lived."
• "I am working on https://vimgolf.ai , a site where users play vim golf with each other and try to beat a bot powered by O3."

Personal Well-being and Learning

Some users are focused on personal growth, self-improvement, or addressing personal frustrations through their projects. This theme includes learning new technologies, simplifying personal finance, and even engaging in a form of digital self-therapy.

• "Just writing posts for my blog on personal experiences with startups https://developerwithcat.com . Am taking a break from any serious building, bit tired of failing. Using the blog as a form of self therapy."
• "Still on my sabbatical and continuing to build on things I enjoy rather than things that pay (for now). Main focus is https://wheretodrink.beer, collecting and cataloging craft beer venues from around the world."
• "I’ve been working on an app called Lång. It’s a calm daily spending guide – shows you what’s okay to spend today, based on how much needs to last how long."
• "I'm still working on a German health insurance calculator. It evolved into a very elaborate recommendation tool. ... It's a really fun project, even if the topic is boring. It's a great research, UX, copywriting, coding and business project."
• "I’m working on https://regularly.co/ a website full of daily puzzle games. I built the first game for my wife (https://regularly.co/countable) which she plays every day."
• "I wanted to learn a bit about backend development, so I've been building my own version of soundcloud with supabase. Main thing I've learnt so far, auth is flipping complicated. But it's been really fun!"
• "I’m working on https://www.chloro.dev – developing a tool to generate and manage dev environments. ... I plan to support multiple runtimes (Node, Python, Ruby etc.) and to let users specify custom environments via Dockerfiles."
• "I’m working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I am working on https://jobs.stuy.dk, a platform that aggregates jobs and information for companies that are hiring, and I am also working on https://stuy.dk, personal projects/blog related to software development and tech."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm building an app for students :) help them learn by using ai to generate flashcards, quizzes, materials etc."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm working on https://regularly.co/ a website full of daily puzzle games. I built the first game for my wife (https://regularly.co/countable) which she plays every day."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I’ve been working on an app called Lång. It’s a calm daily spending guide – shows you what’s okay to spend today, based on how much needs to last how long."
• "I'm trying to create the best A/B test sample size & duration calculator: https://calculator.osc.garden/"
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "Doing some minor fixes for https://wireframes.org - MockupTiger AI Wireframing"

Community and Collaboration

A subset of the conversation highlights the value of community and collaboration, with users seeking feedback, offering help, or sharing resources with others who are also building projects.

• "If you want to get a jumpstart on the Playwright stuff: https://github.com/kordless/gnosis-wraith. Runs on Google Cloud Run. The UI is still in progress but you can test it here: https://wraith.nuts.services. Uses tokens to email for login."
• "If this whole thing got you curious you can watch a technical talk I made about this game at the Letsvision conference in Shanghai, CN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYFH2hiRNqk ...and if social media doesn't somehow destroy your soul, you can follow me here: https://x.com/sxpstudio"
• "Nothing because I'm terrible at coming up with useful ideas for something to code. I'd like to volunteer for a software project but I struggle to find good ways of locating a project that interests me."
  • "Not sure if this will help you https://full.cx/daily-drops"
  • "Pretty much every project out there could use some help."
• "I’m working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Oh I thought there was interesting user agent stuff going on in Redlib itself but sounds like not. I'll use the public methods then thanks!"
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "A couple friends and I do this manually, we work on side projects, mute ourselves on Discord, and play random games during the break. This just puts it all in one place."
• "I'Im working on https://vexlio.com/blog/making-diagrams-with-syntax-highlighted-code-snippets/"

Technical Challenges and Innovations

Users discussed various technical hurdles they've encountered, from complex algorithmic problems to the challenges of working with specific technologies or APIs. They also shared innovative solutions and approaches to overcome these difficulties.

• "The hardest problem thus far has been attempting to automate popularity rankings and automatic removal of defunct venues without breaching a bunch of ToS."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "How's it working with the Quickbook API - any tips?"
  • "Pretty smooth once you respect the limits: 500 calls/min + 10 concurrent per realm. We run a per-realm token bucket and queue work; If you throttle and batch, you won’t hit 429s, but I talked to a few QB app owners and bigger apps tend to find it restrictive."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "The toughest part has been the performance of the Ray tracing engine in order to render 1M triangles in under 16ms."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "The encoder ring which works like an LED mouse, but in reverse: Fully reverse-engineered and on its own demo PCB. The faceplate PCB, which does the actual control of the thermostat wires, has been laid out, but the first version missed a really-obvious problem involving the behavior on power-on with certain of the GPIO pins from the ESP32, so I've got rev 3 on order from the PCB manufacturer."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Now I'm baffled how song identification can work, if even identifying notes is so unreliable!"
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "For my 3D audio project I need an affordable way to make plastic cases. I felt like injection molding services are way overpriced, so I decided to make the molds in-house. Turns out, CNC milling is overpriced, too. As are 5 axis CNC mills. So in the end, we built our own CNC machine."
• "I’m working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "When I finally decide to compile into a book, everyone now uses AI and no longer read and learn from books but instead through LLMs."
  • "This is part of what discourages me from starting now, sadly. That, and having more concepts for actual Python projects than I know what to do with."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Still trying to figure out the details, use cases, business value but the core backend is done so is the client-side crypto stuff. I managed to get chunked AES-GCM working so that it doesn't load the whole file in memory in order to encrypt it, it does that in chunks of let's say 2MB."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "You can think of OSINTBuddy as node graphs, OSINT data mining, and plugins, or as an alternative to Maltego."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Found an EMI issue with my power supply and a USB compliance bug in the off-the-shelf stepper control board. But it all turned out OK in the end so we now have the first mold tool that was designed and machined fully in-house."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "When I finally decide to compile into a book, everyone now uses AI and no longer read and learn from books but instead through LLMs."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "My work there has also led me to developing some side utilities: a library for filesystem tree operations (and other trees, if you're clever enough swapping in components); a utility to identify and extract wheels from pip's cache (so that they can be dumped into other installers' caches, for example)."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Update of a treatment of a finite difference approach to Schrodinger's equation from WebGL to WebGPU, using WebGPU compute shaders. Having actual arrays for data storage is so much cleaner than the older approach with textures for data storage and fragment shaders for computations."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "I'm working on a decompiler for Turbo Pascal 3.0, to reverse engineer an educational game from the 80s."
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "Integrating my time series database (https://github.com/dicroce/nanots) as the underlying storage engine in my video surveillance system, and the performance is glorious. Next up I'm trying to decide between a mobile app or AI... and if AI local or in the cloud?"
• "I'm working on https://www.petrichor.dev – the privacy-focused privacy policy generator. It’s a SaaS product that uses LLMs behind the scenes to help you write your privacy policy for your website or app."
  • "It’s a work-in-progress passion project of mine where I get to explore new technologies and hone in on my UX / Web a11y skill set."

The discussion demonstrates a vibrant community of creators, problem-solvers, and learners, all contributing to the ever-evolving landscape of technology.