Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall Themes

  • Wide variety of non‑AI work: finance tools, dev tooling, personal productivity, games, language learning, hardware, crypto, bio, and long‑term data storage.
  • Many builders are solo or very small teams, often scratching personal itches or rebuilding legacy tools with modern stacks.

Privacy, Local‑First, and Self‑Hosting

  • Strong interest in privacy‑first products: local‑first personal finance, diaries, monitoring tools, and note‑taking apps.
  • Common patterns:
    • Localhost / self‑hosted mode plus a paid cloud/SaaS version.
    • Client‑side encryption and browser‑based PWAs.
    • Users frequently ask about export, migration between SaaS/local, and long‑term viability.

Developer & Infrastructure Tooling

  • Significant activity around:
    • HTTP/DB layers (Postgres HTTP clients, OpenAPI tooling, config & secret managers).
    • Monitoring/observability (uptime checks, GitHub Actions analytics, log viewers, honeypots, honeypot‑style SSH keys).
    • Low‑code / no‑code app builders, internal tools, and templated scaffolding.
  • Discussion often compares new tools to incumbents (PostgREST, Hasura, Hotjar, FullStory, etc.) and presses for differentiation and pricing clarity.

Consumer Apps, Education, and Games

  • Many lifestyle/consumer projects: productivity and habit trackers, breathing and reflection apps, language learning via interactive stories, RSS readers, recipe tools, event RSVPs, calendar mergers, soundscapes, and “look away” eye‑strain timers.
  • Games and creative tools: money‑laundering simulator, tower defense, MTG utilities, art editors, music sequencers/generators, robotic hardware, MIDI controllers, VR/AR and Vision Pro apps.

Business Models & Risk Concerns

  • Long‑term services (e.g., archival storage, “after death” note delivery) trigger questions about:
    • How users can trust multi‑decade continuity.
    • What happens on shutdown, sale, legal pressure, or provider failure.
  • Builders respond with ideas like fixed‑term renewals, public continuity plans, escape hatches, and use of major cloud cold storage.

Social / UX Debates

  • One gift‑card‑hidden‑in‑cheap‑jewelry idea sparks a long side debate about:
    • Waste and environmental impact.
    • Whether circumventing gift‑giving norms is clever, narcissistic, or socially fraught.
    • Broader norms around politeness (e.g., disclosing dietary restrictions before dinners).
  • UX feedback recurs: confusing onboarding, overwhelming configurability, unclear clickable elements, and layout issues on mobile.