Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Side projects in this Ask HN thread range from hobby experiments to serious SaaS, but a few themes dominate: AI agents, developer tooling, and niche productivity apps. Many contributors are building agent harnesses, MCP tools, and LLM-backed services for coding, support, and automation, while others focus on highly specialized products like music players, personal CRMs, puzzle and strategy games, scientific tools, and privacy‑first utilities. The overall tone is one of experimentation and reinvention—often by solo or laid‑off developers—using modern AI and web stacks to scratch personal itches and explore potential businesses.

Overall Patterns

  • Extremely wide range of side projects: from hardcore systems work and math to kid games, jewelry, and local services.
  • Very heavy use of LLMs as “co-pilot” or full agent harnesses; many projects exist specifically to orchestrate or guard agents.
  • Strong undercurrent of privacy, local‑first, self‑hosting, and open source; several people explicitly avoid or replace cloud/SaaS tools.
  • Multiple commenters mention layoffs, burnout, or “doing nothing,” but still tinker or polish workflows.

AI, Agents & Safety

  • Many agent harnesses and orchestration layers: for coding, long‑horizon SDLC, mixnets, GitHub Actions, agents running on VMs, MCP‑based tools, etc.
  • Several tools benchmark agent skills or build evaluation harnesses on private tasks.
  • Concern over unbounded agents: some frameworks deliberately grant RCE, others focus on strict sandboxing, offline models, or “agent guards” to prevent destructive actions.
  • Some projects wrap user infrastructure so agents can act safely on local machines, homelabs, or Kubernetes clusters.
  • Debate around AI content quality: criticism of low‑fidelity AI art in a kids’ newspaper; strong push for accurate, non‑sloppy imagery in educational materials.

Developer Tools, Infra & Observability

  • Many dev‑centric tools: database clients and canvases, HTTP state exchange services, terminal UIs, Git helpers, test frameworks, linters, CI runners, and agent‑aware IDEs.
  • Infrastructure projects include mixnet‑capable privacy layers, WireGuard mesh coordinators, lightweight VMs as Firecracker replacements, inference platforms, sandbox providers, and observability/uptime tools.
  • Several people build explicit “agent‑native” backends: standardized APIs, structured context stores, and provenance‑aware data layers.

Games, Media & Creative Work

  • Numerous indie games: puzzle, roguelike, idle MMORPGs, factory builders, VR, kids’ games; some nearing commercial release with publishers or Game Pass deals.
  • Creative tooling: DAWs, synth engines, podcast and ad‑skipping clients, screen capture tools, image and video editors, UI design via diffusion, and coding‑ASMR generators.

Productivity, Knowledge & Everyday Apps

  • Personal CRMs, practice trackers (music, typing, workouts), personal finance tools, journaling and reflection apps, language learning, and educational courses.
  • Strong “local‑first” and no‑tracking ethos for note‑taking, photobooks, calendars, email spam filters, and document tools.

Hardware, Real‑World & Niche Domains

  • Hardware projects: drones, snow‑clearing robots, rowing counters, ESP32 watches, Pebble assistants, e‑bike batteries, 3D printers, and embedded OS work.
  • Specialized domains: transit software, spacecraft and golf‑course design, climate and hail alerts, prison re‑entry automation, mosquito genomics, carbon removal, math research, and more.