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Show HN: Companies use AI to take your calls. I built AI to make them for you

We're living in this weird asymmetry where companies use AI to talk to us, but we're still manually dialing them. Companies everywhere are adopting AI voice agents lately. Big retail, family dentist clinics, local pharmacy. This year, I've been in a few calls where it's super natural sounding AI, which has been pretty cool to experience. But then it got me thinking - why are we, the consumers, still the ones making calls if they're using robots for theirs?<p>So I built Piper: basically AI that makes phone calls for you. You tell it what you need (book appointment, check on an order, dispute some charge, whatever), and it handles the entire conversation while you do actual work. Right now it's a web app, Chrome extension is pending approval but soon you'll be able to click any phone number anywhere and just let Piper handle it.<p>Technical stuff that was harder than expected:<p>Latency - every millisecond counts in conversation, had to optimize around kv cache, got it down to ~1000ms to first word over PSTN for telephony, which feels pretty natural<p>Keeping the voice agents on track - built custom context engineering logic that constantly updates the agent's situational awareness, so it knows when it's been transferred, when it's on hold, etc<p>Done ~50 successful calls with early testers so far. Main failures are when they need complex verification or documents. Also had to take down our IVR navigation temporarily :/, found some edge cases that were causing unnecessary transfers but working on fixing that.<p>I really think we're heading toward this world where AI talks to AI for most routine things, and phone calls might be the first real example of this happening at scale!<p>you can check out the a voice demo on our website. <a href="https://pipervoice.com" rel="nofollow">https://pipervoice.com</a>

Show HN: Companies use AI to take your calls. I built AI to make them for you

We're living in this weird asymmetry where companies use AI to talk to us, but we're still manually dialing them. Companies everywhere are adopting AI voice agents lately. Big retail, family dentist clinics, local pharmacy. This year, I've been in a few calls where it's super natural sounding AI, which has been pretty cool to experience. But then it got me thinking - why are we, the consumers, still the ones making calls if they're using robots for theirs?<p>So I built Piper: basically AI that makes phone calls for you. You tell it what you need (book appointment, check on an order, dispute some charge, whatever), and it handles the entire conversation while you do actual work. Right now it's a web app, Chrome extension is pending approval but soon you'll be able to click any phone number anywhere and just let Piper handle it.<p>Technical stuff that was harder than expected:<p>Latency - every millisecond counts in conversation, had to optimize around kv cache, got it down to ~1000ms to first word over PSTN for telephony, which feels pretty natural<p>Keeping the voice agents on track - built custom context engineering logic that constantly updates the agent's situational awareness, so it knows when it's been transferred, when it's on hold, etc<p>Done ~50 successful calls with early testers so far. Main failures are when they need complex verification or documents. Also had to take down our IVR navigation temporarily :/, found some edge cases that were causing unnecessary transfers but working on fixing that.<p>I really think we're heading toward this world where AI talks to AI for most routine things, and phone calls might be the first real example of this happening at scale!<p>you can check out the a voice demo on our website. <a href="https://pipervoice.com" rel="nofollow">https://pipervoice.com</a>

Show HN: Companies use AI to take your calls. I built AI to make them for you

We're living in this weird asymmetry where companies use AI to talk to us, but we're still manually dialing them. Companies everywhere are adopting AI voice agents lately. Big retail, family dentist clinics, local pharmacy. This year, I've been in a few calls where it's super natural sounding AI, which has been pretty cool to experience. But then it got me thinking - why are we, the consumers, still the ones making calls if they're using robots for theirs?<p>So I built Piper: basically AI that makes phone calls for you. You tell it what you need (book appointment, check on an order, dispute some charge, whatever), and it handles the entire conversation while you do actual work. Right now it's a web app, Chrome extension is pending approval but soon you'll be able to click any phone number anywhere and just let Piper handle it.<p>Technical stuff that was harder than expected:<p>Latency - every millisecond counts in conversation, had to optimize around kv cache, got it down to ~1000ms to first word over PSTN for telephony, which feels pretty natural<p>Keeping the voice agents on track - built custom context engineering logic that constantly updates the agent's situational awareness, so it knows when it's been transferred, when it's on hold, etc<p>Done ~50 successful calls with early testers so far. Main failures are when they need complex verification or documents. Also had to take down our IVR navigation temporarily :/, found some edge cases that were causing unnecessary transfers but working on fixing that.<p>I really think we're heading toward this world where AI talks to AI for most routine things, and phone calls might be the first real example of this happening at scale!<p>you can check out the a voice demo on our website. <a href="https://pipervoice.com" rel="nofollow">https://pipervoice.com</a>

Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

Hi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like.<p>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force.<p>edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.

Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

Hi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like.<p>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force.<p>edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.

Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act

Hi HN - I made a site that takes a UK postcode, grabs the local MP's information and generates an AI mockup of what their ID might look like.<p>It's a small, silly protest at the stupidity of the Online Safety Act that just came into force.<p>edit - My open AI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Kier Starmer's constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime.

Show HN: Competitor Finder – Paste your domain, get your top competitors

I built a simple tool to help founders figure out who their actual competitors are! You know... the ones your potential customers already know and compare you to.<p>Just paste your domain, and we generate a focused list of 10 competitors with names, sites, and a quick positioning note for each.<p>Why I built it: I run a competitor monitoring tool (<a href="https://champsignal.com" rel="nofollow">https://champsignal.com</a>), and I realized that before people can monitor competitors… they first need to <i>find</i> them. This is harder than you think for people that have not been around for years aha<p>(It's free and doesn't require signup)<p>Would love feedback, especially if you don't think it's giving you the right competitors. Happy to improve the product.

Show HN: Flyde 1.0 – Like n8n, but in your codebase

Hi HN!<p>I'm excited to share Flyde 1.0. A big update to the open-source visual programming tool I launched here in March of last year (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628285">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628285</a>).<p>Since Flyde’s launch, there's been a huge rise in demand for visual builders, especially for AI-heavy workflows. Visual-programming shines with async and concurrency-heavy logic, which describes most LLM chains perfectly.<p>A few months ago, I tried to capitalize on this trend by launching a commercial version of Flyde called Flowcode (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43830193">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43830193</a>). It didn't go well. I learned the hard way that Flyde’s strength wasn't just about flexibility or performance compared to tools like n8n. The real value was always how Flyde fits inside your <i>existing codebase</i>. The launch also helped me understand that there's still a big gap: no tool really covers the full lifecycle, from rapid prototyping to deep integration, evaluation, and iteration inside your own projects.<p>So, over the last few months, I worked hard to polish Flyde: - Cleaned up and simplified the nodes API - Made it possible to fork any node for maximum flexibility - Launched a new online playground for quick experimenting and sharing (<a href="https://www.flyde.dev/playground" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyde.dev/playground</a>) - Created a new CLI tool to speed up development and setup - Fixed a ton of bugs - Simplified the UI/UX to make it smoother and less confusing<p>There’s still a lot of missing stuff. Better templates, docs, and nodes, but I think it’s finally stable and useful enough to give it another shot.<p>My plan is to first make sure that Flyde is usable and valuable as an OS project, and then try to provide additional value via “Flyde Studio” - a SaaS that will help non-engineers iterate on Flyde flows from a web-app. Changes become a PR in the host repo.<p>I'd really love some honest feedback and hear whether Flyde resonates with an existing pain/problem.<p>Check it out here: Playground: <a href="https://www.flyde.dev/playground" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyde.dev/playground</a><p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/flydelabs/flyde">https://github.com/flydelabs/flyde</a><p>Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! - Gabriel

Show HN: Flyde 1.0 – Like n8n, but in your codebase

Hi HN!<p>I'm excited to share Flyde 1.0. A big update to the open-source visual programming tool I launched here in March of last year (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628285">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39628285</a>).<p>Since Flyde’s launch, there's been a huge rise in demand for visual builders, especially for AI-heavy workflows. Visual-programming shines with async and concurrency-heavy logic, which describes most LLM chains perfectly.<p>A few months ago, I tried to capitalize on this trend by launching a commercial version of Flyde called Flowcode (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43830193">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43830193</a>). It didn't go well. I learned the hard way that Flyde’s strength wasn't just about flexibility or performance compared to tools like n8n. The real value was always how Flyde fits inside your <i>existing codebase</i>. The launch also helped me understand that there's still a big gap: no tool really covers the full lifecycle, from rapid prototyping to deep integration, evaluation, and iteration inside your own projects.<p>So, over the last few months, I worked hard to polish Flyde: - Cleaned up and simplified the nodes API - Made it possible to fork any node for maximum flexibility - Launched a new online playground for quick experimenting and sharing (<a href="https://www.flyde.dev/playground" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyde.dev/playground</a>) - Created a new CLI tool to speed up development and setup - Fixed a ton of bugs - Simplified the UI/UX to make it smoother and less confusing<p>There’s still a lot of missing stuff. Better templates, docs, and nodes, but I think it’s finally stable and useful enough to give it another shot.<p>My plan is to first make sure that Flyde is usable and valuable as an OS project, and then try to provide additional value via “Flyde Studio” - a SaaS that will help non-engineers iterate on Flyde flows from a web-app. Changes become a PR in the host repo.<p>I'd really love some honest feedback and hear whether Flyde resonates with an existing pain/problem.<p>Check it out here: Playground: <a href="https://www.flyde.dev/playground" rel="nofollow">https://www.flyde.dev/playground</a><p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/flydelabs/flyde">https://github.com/flydelabs/flyde</a><p>Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! - Gabriel

Show HN: QuickTunes: Apple Music player for Mac with iPod vibes

The slow and bloated nature of the Mac Apple Music app inspired us to create QuickTunes. It is a simple, fast, and native Apple Music player inspired by the simplicity of the iPod. You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate a simple multi column layout, pick something, and press Play.

Show HN: QuickTunes: Apple Music player for Mac with iPod vibes

The slow and bloated nature of the Mac Apple Music app inspired us to create QuickTunes. It is a simple, fast, and native Apple Music player inspired by the simplicity of the iPod. You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate a simple multi column layout, pick something, and press Play.

Show HN: Windows 7 GUI for the web

Show HN: Windows 7 GUI for the web

Show HN: Open IT Maintenance Planner

Made and open-sourced a little web-based tool I use to generate maintenance plans for IT. Let me know what you think, contributions are welcome!

Show HN: I built a biological network visualization tool

I've been working on nodes.bio - an interactive tool for visualizing biological networks and systems thinking. The tool features interactive network visualization powered by Cytoscape.js, with real-time graph editing and manipulation capabilities. It supports JSON import/export and provides a responsive design that works seamlessly on the desktop (mobile-friendly version coming later).<p>The tech stack combines modern frontend technologies with robust backend architecture. The frontend uses Next.js 14 with TypeScript and Cytoscape.js for the visualization engine. The backend is built with FastAPI and Python.<p>The featured demo showcases a Traumatic Brain Injury Nasal Spray mechanism of action visualization, demonstrating the tool's capability to handle complex biological pathway mapping.<p>You can explore the live demo at <<a href="https://nodes.bio" rel="nofollow">https://nodes.bio</a>> to see the TBI Nasal Spray visualization in action, along with other biological network examples.<p>I'd love feedback on the visualization capabilities or any suggestions for biological data integration. What do you think?

Show HN: I built a biological network visualization tool

I've been working on nodes.bio - an interactive tool for visualizing biological networks and systems thinking. The tool features interactive network visualization powered by Cytoscape.js, with real-time graph editing and manipulation capabilities. It supports JSON import/export and provides a responsive design that works seamlessly on the desktop (mobile-friendly version coming later).<p>The tech stack combines modern frontend technologies with robust backend architecture. The frontend uses Next.js 14 with TypeScript and Cytoscape.js for the visualization engine. The backend is built with FastAPI and Python.<p>The featured demo showcases a Traumatic Brain Injury Nasal Spray mechanism of action visualization, demonstrating the tool's capability to handle complex biological pathway mapping.<p>You can explore the live demo at <<a href="https://nodes.bio" rel="nofollow">https://nodes.bio</a>> to see the TBI Nasal Spray visualization in action, along with other biological network examples.<p>I'd love feedback on the visualization capabilities or any suggestions for biological data integration. What do you think?

Show HN: Tsbro – TypeScript for the browser, no build step

Show HN: Tsbro – TypeScript for the browser, no build step

Show HN: Tsbro – TypeScript for the browser, no build step