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

Hacker News Discussion ↗

AI, Agents, and Developer Tools

  • Many projects center on AI copilots, agents, and eval tooling:
    • IDE integrations (Contextify, coding agents for Claude Code/Cursor, “Custom Copilot” alternatives) with emphasis on privacy, local context, and user control over workflows.
    • Multi-agent orchestration and visualization (Omnispect, agent OS, decision-tree tooling, KV-cache eviction research).
    • Infrastructure for running LLM stacks locally (Harbor, self-hostable MCP servers, Ollama/OpenWebUI setups).
    • Eval and safety tools (promptfoo, red-teaming frameworks, multi-agent test harnesses).
  • Skepticism appears around ceding too much control to Big Tech copilots and brittle cloud-only workflows; many projects explicitly prioritize local-first, open-source, or BYO-API-key designs.

Web, Infra, and Data Platforms

  • New web frameworks, SSGs, and knowledge tools: custom static site generators, Mint language, Mizu (Go web framework), Outcrop (fast knowledge base), activitypub servers, RSS tools.
  • Devops / infra tools: K8s PaaS (Canine), microservice orchestration, SOC2 and security analytics, observability (Signoz), Postgres tooling, job schedulers, local-first and embedded databases.
  • Several efforts to simplify C/C++ build and package management (“Cargo for C”), plus HTTP clients (pyreqwest), and ID tools (ULID-like types).

Productivity, Personal Data, and Life Simplification

  • Many personal-tracking apps: time trackers (with screenshot → LLM analysis), self-experiment CLIs, meal/health loggers, focus tools, habit/chores RPGs, typing trainers, self-tracking dashboards.
  • Strong “local-first” and privacy themes: offline note+spaced repetition systems, local file organizers, encrypted spreadsheets, local email search, AI visibility tools without GA.
  • A notable subthread on “digital simplification” (deleting VPSs, removing smart home tech, fewer apps). Some admire this; others question practicalities (e.g., taxes, hosting).

Games, Puzzles, and Creative Projects

  • Numerous indie games and puzzle sites (NES titles, Godot games, daily word/puzzle games, autobattlers, mods like Battlefield realism, retro map editors).
  • Discussion around balancing difficulty, growth (especially via TikTok/Wordle-style virality), and tooling (Kaplay, Bevy, custom engines).
  • Community feedback is largely enthusiastic; several games become part of commenters’ daily routines.

Education, Civic, and Legal Tools

  • Learning tools for kids and adults: curriculum-aligned school apps, language-learning (Cangjie, vocabulary apps), Rust/Bevy tutorials, research assistants for papers.
  • Civic/government projects: council data aggregation in UK/US, Puerto Rico need tracking, Berlin rent maps, history mapping, missing-person clustering.
  • Legal/administrative utilities: USCIS form fillers, flat-rate legal billing analytics, DAO experiments; some users question long-term necessity or impact.

Hardware, Embedded, and Physical Projects

  • Diverse hardware builds: e-bike batteries, handheld computers, custom thumb keyboards, golf launch monitors, analog computing modules, cloud chambers, game controllers.
  • Frequent use of LLMs to shortcut unfamiliar domains (Rust on MCUs, ESP32 firmware, PCB design), with some concern about AI’s limits on part selection and low-level detail.