Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Food safety, plastics, and citizen testing

  • A major thread revolved around a crowdfunding platform for independent lab testing of food products for plastic-derived endocrine disruptors (phthalates, BPA, etc.).
  • Commenters praised the mission but found current reports hard to interpret; they asked for “EU safe”‑style labels, clearer thresholds, LOQ explanations on every page, dates of testing, and scans of full lab reports.
  • Suggestions included alternative business models (subscription + voting instead of per‑product crowdfunding), expansion to vitamins and other categories, and geographic clarity (currently only products shippable to the US).
  • Concerns were raised about companies gaming tests by altering packaging or SKUs mid‑campaign; others argued that such gaming is expensive and that real incentives would be to improve products.
  • Broader debate touched on declining testosterone: some blamed plastics heavily; others pointed to lifestyle factors (weight, sleep, alcohol) and personal counterexamples.
  • A side discussion contrasted EU vs US regulation and whether transparent market data could “enforce” better food safety more effectively than government, with pushback on rosy views of “free markets” vs crony capitalism.

AI agents, coding, and infrastructure

  • Many projects aimed at making LLM agents safer, more controllable, or more productive:
    • Deterministic “bumper rails” and monitoring for AI agents.
    • Multiple agentic coding tools and IDEs (e.g., terminal-based, cloud-based agents, multi‑worktree orchestration, MCP‑centric workflows).
    • Memory layers and shared knowledge bases for coding agents to avoid re-solving the same bugs.
    • Firewalls and policy systems around MCP tools to prevent dangerous combinations of actions (reading private data + acting on public data).
  • Several dev tools targeted observability and orchestration: real‑time log visualization with arcade‑style UIs, simple self‑hosted observability SaaS, partition‑oriented data build systems to replace brittle DAG orchestration, and new security platforms that wrap many open‑source scanners.

Games, learning, and creative tools

  • Numerous indie games and engines were showcased: narrative adventures, retro pixel platformers, a long‑running voxel engine with hot‑reloadable shaders, chess/poker hybrids, mobile MMORPGs, and AI‑powered “monster trainers.”
  • Word and puzzle games drew notable enthusiasm; one daily crossword‑adjacent game received strong praise for UX and originality, with users requesting selection improvements and keyboard controls.
  • Several language‑learning tools used chat or spaced repetition (Chinese, Japanese/kanji, Sanskrit tooling in Emacs), with feedback around naturalness of prompts and dictionary integration.

Health, sleep, and wellbeing

  • Sleep and lighting projects included circadian‑aware lamps, low–blue‑light bulbs, and a neurostimulation device claiming to enhance slow‑wave sleep and HRV; some commenters asked for outcomes and criticized “quackery‑like” marketing language.
  • Tools for personal health tracking ranged from migraine and chronic‑condition journaling apps to burnout detectors for SREs combining on‑call data with standardized burnout inventories—users said they’d needed such tools earlier in their careers.

Self‑hosting, privacy, and protocols

  • Multiple efforts focused on local‑first or self‑hosted alternatives: a local‑first workspace (chat/docs/db/files), privacy‑preserving analytics (“consentless”), static site generators, and tools to simplify self‑hosting (Kubernetes‑backed PaaS, Docker‑Compose GitOps, NixOS installers).
  • Security and crypto projects included zero‑trust access platforms, federated key transparency for ActivityPub, biscuit‑based authorization, and new JVMs and HDL simulators.

Personal productivity, knowledge, and community

  • People built tools for personal finance simulation, personal libraries and ISBN aggregation, relationship management, knowledge systems with LLM‑built link graphs, and Obsidian/Markdown workflows.
  • Several community‑oriented projects aimed to strengthen offline life: IRL clubs platform, local radio stations, neighborhood commercial zoning advocacy, and curated “old web” link newsletters.