The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
Latest posts:
Show HN: Luna Rail – Treating night trains as a spatial optimization problem
Hi HN, I'm Anton, founder of Luna Rail.<p>I've always thought night trains are a fantastic, sustainable alternative to short-haul flights, but they're often held back by a lack of privacy, comfort, and poor economics due to low passenger capacity.<p>I became overly fascinated with this puzzle. I view it as a kind of night train Tetris (my wife less charitably calls it "sardinology"). I spent way too much time learning about and sketching various layouts, trying to figure out how to fit the maximum number of private cabins into a standard railcar, while making them attractive for both day and night travel.<p>This eventually led to a physical workshop (in Berlin) and a hands-on rapid prototyping process. We've built a series of full-scale mockups, starting with wood and cardboard and progressing to high-fidelity versions with 3D-printed and CNC-milled parts, with various functional elements.<p>Hundreds of people have come in to test our various iterations, because you can't test ergonomics or comfort by looking at renderings (although we did create a bunch of nice ones).<p>The link goes to our home page showing our approach and some of the thinking behind them. It’s been a lot of fun working on this puzzle, and we're excited to share what we've come up with. We hope you think it's cool too and would love to hear your thoughts.
Show HN: Luna Rail – Treating night trains as a spatial optimization problem
Hi HN, I'm Anton, founder of Luna Rail.<p>I've always thought night trains are a fantastic, sustainable alternative to short-haul flights, but they're often held back by a lack of privacy, comfort, and poor economics due to low passenger capacity.<p>I became overly fascinated with this puzzle. I view it as a kind of night train Tetris (my wife less charitably calls it "sardinology"). I spent way too much time learning about and sketching various layouts, trying to figure out how to fit the maximum number of private cabins into a standard railcar, while making them attractive for both day and night travel.<p>This eventually led to a physical workshop (in Berlin) and a hands-on rapid prototyping process. We've built a series of full-scale mockups, starting with wood and cardboard and progressing to high-fidelity versions with 3D-printed and CNC-milled parts, with various functional elements.<p>Hundreds of people have come in to test our various iterations, because you can't test ergonomics or comfort by looking at renderings (although we did create a bunch of nice ones).<p>The link goes to our home page showing our approach and some of the thinking behind them. It’s been a lot of fun working on this puzzle, and we're excited to share what we've come up with. We hope you think it's cool too and would love to hear your thoughts.
Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI
New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].<p>I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.<p>I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.<p>Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.<p>The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.<p>The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.<p>Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page" rel="nofollow">https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...</a>
Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI
New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].<p>I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.<p>I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.<p>Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.<p>The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.<p>The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.<p>Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page" rel="nofollow">https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...</a>
Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI
New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].<p>I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.<p>I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.<p>Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.<p>The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.<p>The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.<p>Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page" rel="nofollow">https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...</a>
Show HN: MMOndrian
Made a collaborative, persistent state Mondrian-style painting editor. Feedback welcome!
Show HN: MMOndrian
Made a collaborative, persistent state Mondrian-style painting editor. Feedback welcome!
Show HN: Ts-SSH – SSH over Tailscale without running the daemon
ts-ssh solves a specific problem: accessing machines on your Tailnet from
environments where you can't install the full Tailscale daemon (like CI/CD runners or
restricted systems).<p><pre><code> It uses Tailscale's tsnet library to establish userspace connectivity, then provides
a standard SSH experience. Works with existing workflows since it supports normal SSH
features like ProxyCommand, key auth, and terminal handling.
Some features that proved useful:
• Parallel command execution across multiple hosts
• Built-in tmux session management for multi-host work
• SCP-style file transfers
• Works on Linux/macOS/Windows (AMD64 and ARM64)
The codebase is interesting from a development perspective - it was written almost
entirely using AI tools (mainly Claude Code, with some OpenAI and Jules). Not as an
experiment, but because it actually worked well for this kind of systems programming.
Happy to discuss the workflow if anyone's curious about that aspect.
Source and binaries are on GitHub. Would appreciate feedback from anyone dealing with
similar connectivity challenges.</code></pre>
Show HN: A color name API that maps hex to the closest human-readable name
I built this API to return the closest named color for any hex value—using curated lists like my own [1], XKCD [2], and others.<p>I made it from scratch without Express or any frameworks because:<p>- I’m a frontend/interaction dev and wanted to learn how to build an API from the ground up.
- Existing APIs didn’t guarantee unique names per color—mine does.
- It also supports WebSocket updates, gzip responses, and multiple name sets.<p>I’ve been collecting color names for over 10 years [1]. With ~30,000 entries, bundling them into every color-related project became excessive. This API keeps things lightweight—for me and hopefully for others too.<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/meodai/color-name-api">https://github.com/meodai/color-name-api</a><p>Would love feedback on naming logic, accuracy, performance, or backend best practices I might’ve missed.<p>[1] Large Color Name List: <a href="https://github.com/meodai/color-names">https://github.com/meodai/color-names</a>
[2] XKCD color survey results: <a href="https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/</a>
Show HN: A color name API that maps hex to the closest human-readable name
I built this API to return the closest named color for any hex value—using curated lists like my own [1], XKCD [2], and others.<p>I made it from scratch without Express or any frameworks because:<p>- I’m a frontend/interaction dev and wanted to learn how to build an API from the ground up.
- Existing APIs didn’t guarantee unique names per color—mine does.
- It also supports WebSocket updates, gzip responses, and multiple name sets.<p>I’ve been collecting color names for over 10 years [1]. With ~30,000 entries, bundling them into every color-related project became excessive. This API keeps things lightweight—for me and hopefully for others too.<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/meodai/color-name-api">https://github.com/meodai/color-name-api</a><p>Would love feedback on naming logic, accuracy, performance, or backend best practices I might’ve missed.<p>[1] Large Color Name List: <a href="https://github.com/meodai/color-names">https://github.com/meodai/color-names</a>
[2] XKCD color survey results: <a href="https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/</a>
We moved from AWS to Hetzner, saved 90%, kept ISO 27001 with Ansible
Earlier this year I led our migration off AWS to European cloud (Hetzner + OVHcloud), driven by cost (we cut 90%) and data sovereignty (GDPR + CLOUD Act concerns).<p>We rebuilt key AWS features ourselves using Terraform for VPS provisioning, and Ansible for everything from hardening (auditd, ufw, SSH policies) to rolling deployments (with Cloudflare integration). Our Prometheus + Alertmanager + Blackbox setup monitors infra, apps, and SSL expiry, with ISO 27001-aligned alerts. Loki + Grafana Agent handle logs to S3-compatible object storage.<p>The stack includes:
• Ansible roles for PostgreSQL (with automated s3cmd backups + Prometheus metrics)
• Hardening tasks (auditd rules, ufw, SSH lockdown, chrony for clock sync)
• Rolling web app deploys with rollback + Cloudflare draining
• Full monitoring with Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana Agent, Loki, and exporters
• TLS automation via Certbot in Docker + Ansible<p>I wrote up the architecture, challenges, and lessons learned: <a href="https://medium.com/@accounts_73078/goodbye-aws-how-we-kept-iso-27001-slashed-costs-by-90-914ccb4b89fc" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@accounts_73078/goodbye-aws-how-we-kept-i...</a><p>I’m happy to share insights, diagrams, or snippets if people are interested — or answer questions on pitfalls, compliance, or cost modeling.
Show HN: Inspect and extract files from MSI installers directly in your browser
Hey everyone!<p>I'm excited to share a small web app I built that allows you to view and extract the contents of Windows MSI installers directly in your browser. It's essentially a web-based "lessmsi" powered by Pyodide.<p>You can try it out at: <a href="https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html" rel="nofollow">https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html</a><p>My motivation for building this was from part of my day job -- I often get Windows MSI installers and need to extract files while preserving the relative directory structure and filenames, as they would appear after a full installation. The existing tools I found were good but limited in which platforms they support: lessmsi works great on Windows, while msitools works for Linux/macOS. Neither is a truly cross-platform solution that works on any major OS.<p>So we developed pymsi (a pure Python library, available on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi</a>) to handle reading and extracting MSI files from Python. Then I realized that since pymsi has no native dependencies, it could potentially run in a web browser using Pyodide. After a bit of "vibe coding" and fixing some "hallucinated" functions/classes that don't exist in pymsi, the result was this client-side web app.<p>If you need an MSI file to experiment with, older versions of PowerToys included the installer in .msi form, such as this one: <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0.21.1/PowerToysSetup-0.21.1-x64.msi">https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0....</a><p>Note that the underlying pymsi library hasn't been extensively tested against a bunch of MSI installers yet, so there might still be lingering bugs. If you come across any issues, please don't hesitate to report them in on the GitHub repository (<a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues</a>).<p>I'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
Show HN: Inspect and extract files from MSI installers directly in your browser
Hey everyone!<p>I'm excited to share a small web app I built that allows you to view and extract the contents of Windows MSI installers directly in your browser. It's essentially a web-based "lessmsi" powered by Pyodide.<p>You can try it out at: <a href="https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html" rel="nofollow">https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html</a><p>My motivation for building this was from part of my day job -- I often get Windows MSI installers and need to extract files while preserving the relative directory structure and filenames, as they would appear after a full installation. The existing tools I found were good but limited in which platforms they support: lessmsi works great on Windows, while msitools works for Linux/macOS. Neither is a truly cross-platform solution that works on any major OS.<p>So we developed pymsi (a pure Python library, available on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi</a>) to handle reading and extracting MSI files from Python. Then I realized that since pymsi has no native dependencies, it could potentially run in a web browser using Pyodide. After a bit of "vibe coding" and fixing some "hallucinated" functions/classes that don't exist in pymsi, the result was this client-side web app.<p>If you need an MSI file to experiment with, older versions of PowerToys included the installer in .msi form, such as this one: <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0.21.1/PowerToysSetup-0.21.1-x64.msi">https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0....</a><p>Note that the underlying pymsi library hasn't been extensively tested against a bunch of MSI installers yet, so there might still be lingering bugs. If you come across any issues, please don't hesitate to report them in on the GitHub repository (<a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues</a>).<p>I'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
Show HN: Inspect and extract files from MSI installers directly in your browser
Hey everyone!<p>I'm excited to share a small web app I built that allows you to view and extract the contents of Windows MSI installers directly in your browser. It's essentially a web-based "lessmsi" powered by Pyodide.<p>You can try it out at: <a href="https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html" rel="nofollow">https://pymsi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/msi_viewer.html</a><p>My motivation for building this was from part of my day job -- I often get Windows MSI installers and need to extract files while preserving the relative directory structure and filenames, as they would appear after a full installation. The existing tools I found were good but limited in which platforms they support: lessmsi works great on Windows, while msitools works for Linux/macOS. Neither is a truly cross-platform solution that works on any major OS.<p>So we developed pymsi (a pure Python library, available on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi</a>) to handle reading and extracting MSI files from Python. Then I realized that since pymsi has no native dependencies, it could potentially run in a web browser using Pyodide. After a bit of "vibe coding" and fixing some "hallucinated" functions/classes that don't exist in pymsi, the result was this client-side web app.<p>If you need an MSI file to experiment with, older versions of PowerToys included the installer in .msi form, such as this one: <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0.21.1/PowerToysSetup-0.21.1-x64.msi">https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/download/v0....</a><p>Note that the underlying pymsi library hasn't been extensively tested against a bunch of MSI installers yet, so there might still be lingering bugs. If you come across any issues, please don't hesitate to report them in on the GitHub repository (<a href="https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues">https://github.com/nightlark/pymsi/issues</a>).<p>I'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
Show HN: SnapQL – Desktop app to query Postgres with AI
SnapQL is an open-source desktop app (built with Electron) that lets you query your Postgres database using natural language. It’s schema-aware, so you don’t need to copy-paste your schema or write complex SQL by hand.<p>Everything runs locally — your OpenAI API key, your data, and your queries — so it's secure and private. Just connect your DB, describe what you want, and SnapQL writes and runs the SQL for you.
Show HN: SnapQL – Desktop app to query Postgres with AI
SnapQL is an open-source desktop app (built with Electron) that lets you query your Postgres database using natural language. It’s schema-aware, so you don’t need to copy-paste your schema or write complex SQL by hand.<p>Everything runs locally — your OpenAI API key, your data, and your queries — so it's secure and private. Just connect your DB, describe what you want, and SnapQL writes and runs the SQL for you.
Show HN: SnapQL – Desktop app to query Postgres with AI
SnapQL is an open-source desktop app (built with Electron) that lets you query your Postgres database using natural language. It’s schema-aware, so you don’t need to copy-paste your schema or write complex SQL by hand.<p>Everything runs locally — your OpenAI API key, your data, and your queries — so it's secure and private. Just connect your DB, describe what you want, and SnapQL writes and runs the SQL for you.
Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser
Hi HN - we're Nithin and Nikhil, twin brothers and founders of nxtscape.ai (YC S24). We're building Nxtscape ("next-scape") - an open-source, agentic browser for the AI era.<p>-- Why bother building a new browser?
For the first time since Netscape was released in 1994, it feels like we can reimagine browsers from scratch for the age of AI agents. The web browser of tomorrow might not look like what we have today.<p>We saw how tools like Cursor gave developers a 10x productivity boost, yet the browser—where everyone else spends their entire workday—hasn't fundamentally changed.<p>And honestly, we feel like we're constantly fighting the browser we use every day. It's not one big thing, but a series of small, constant frustrations. I'll have 70+ tabs open from three different projects and completely lose my train of thought. And simple stuff like reordering tide pods from amazon or filling out forms shouldn't need our full attention anymore. AI can handle all of this, and that's exactly what we're building.<p>Here’s a demo of our early version <a href="https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo" rel="nofollow">https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo</a><p>-- What makes us different
We know others are exploring this space (Perplexity, Dia), but we want to build something open-source and community-driven. We're not a search or ads company, so we can focus on being privacy-first – Ollama integration, BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys), ad-blocker.<p>Btw we love what Brave started and stood for, but they've now spread themselves too thin across crypto, search, etc. We are laser-focused on one thing: making browsers work for YOU with AI. And unlike Arc (which we loved too but got abandoned), we're 100% open source. Fork us if you don't like our direction.<p>-- Our journey hacking a new browser
To build this, we had to fork Chromium. Honestly, it feels like the only viable path today—we've seen others like Brave (started with electron) and Microsoft Edge learn this the hard way.<p>We also started with why not just build an extension. But realized we needed more control. Similar to the reason why Cursor forked VSCode. For example, Chrome has this thing called the Accessibility Tree - basically a cleaner, semantic version of the DOM that screen readers use. Perfect for AI agents to understand pages, but you can't use it through extension APIs.<p>That said, working with the 15M-line C++ chromium codebase has been an adventure. We've both worked on infra at Google and Meta, but Chromium is a different beast. Tools like Cursor's indexing completely break at this scale, so we've had to get really good with grep and vim. And the build times are brutal—even with our maxed-out M4 Max MacBook, a full build takes about 3 hours.<p>Full disclosure: we are still very early, but we have a working prototype on GitHub. It includes an early version of a "local Manus" style agent that can automate simple web tasks, plus an AI sidebar for questions, and other productivity features (grouping tabs, saving/resuming sessions, etc.).<p>Looking forward to any and all comments!<p>You can download the browser from our github page: <a href="https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape">https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape</a>
Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser
Hi HN - we're Nithin and Nikhil, twin brothers and founders of nxtscape.ai (YC S24). We're building Nxtscape ("next-scape") - an open-source, agentic browser for the AI era.<p>-- Why bother building a new browser?
For the first time since Netscape was released in 1994, it feels like we can reimagine browsers from scratch for the age of AI agents. The web browser of tomorrow might not look like what we have today.<p>We saw how tools like Cursor gave developers a 10x productivity boost, yet the browser—where everyone else spends their entire workday—hasn't fundamentally changed.<p>And honestly, we feel like we're constantly fighting the browser we use every day. It's not one big thing, but a series of small, constant frustrations. I'll have 70+ tabs open from three different projects and completely lose my train of thought. And simple stuff like reordering tide pods from amazon or filling out forms shouldn't need our full attention anymore. AI can handle all of this, and that's exactly what we're building.<p>Here’s a demo of our early version <a href="https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo" rel="nofollow">https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo</a><p>-- What makes us different
We know others are exploring this space (Perplexity, Dia), but we want to build something open-source and community-driven. We're not a search or ads company, so we can focus on being privacy-first – Ollama integration, BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys), ad-blocker.<p>Btw we love what Brave started and stood for, but they've now spread themselves too thin across crypto, search, etc. We are laser-focused on one thing: making browsers work for YOU with AI. And unlike Arc (which we loved too but got abandoned), we're 100% open source. Fork us if you don't like our direction.<p>-- Our journey hacking a new browser
To build this, we had to fork Chromium. Honestly, it feels like the only viable path today—we've seen others like Brave (started with electron) and Microsoft Edge learn this the hard way.<p>We also started with why not just build an extension. But realized we needed more control. Similar to the reason why Cursor forked VSCode. For example, Chrome has this thing called the Accessibility Tree - basically a cleaner, semantic version of the DOM that screen readers use. Perfect for AI agents to understand pages, but you can't use it through extension APIs.<p>That said, working with the 15M-line C++ chromium codebase has been an adventure. We've both worked on infra at Google and Meta, but Chromium is a different beast. Tools like Cursor's indexing completely break at this scale, so we've had to get really good with grep and vim. And the build times are brutal—even with our maxed-out M4 Max MacBook, a full build takes about 3 hours.<p>Full disclosure: we are still very early, but we have a working prototype on GitHub. It includes an early version of a "local Manus" style agent that can automate simple web tasks, plus an AI sidebar for questions, and other productivity features (grouping tabs, saving/resuming sessions, etc.).<p>Looking forward to any and all comments!<p>You can download the browser from our github page: <a href="https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape">https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape</a>
Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser
Hi HN - we're Nithin and Nikhil, twin brothers and founders of nxtscape.ai (YC S24). We're building Nxtscape ("next-scape") - an open-source, agentic browser for the AI era.<p>-- Why bother building a new browser?
For the first time since Netscape was released in 1994, it feels like we can reimagine browsers from scratch for the age of AI agents. The web browser of tomorrow might not look like what we have today.<p>We saw how tools like Cursor gave developers a 10x productivity boost, yet the browser—where everyone else spends their entire workday—hasn't fundamentally changed.<p>And honestly, we feel like we're constantly fighting the browser we use every day. It's not one big thing, but a series of small, constant frustrations. I'll have 70+ tabs open from three different projects and completely lose my train of thought. And simple stuff like reordering tide pods from amazon or filling out forms shouldn't need our full attention anymore. AI can handle all of this, and that's exactly what we're building.<p>Here’s a demo of our early version <a href="https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo" rel="nofollow">https://dub.sh/nxtscape-demo</a><p>-- What makes us different
We know others are exploring this space (Perplexity, Dia), but we want to build something open-source and community-driven. We're not a search or ads company, so we can focus on being privacy-first – Ollama integration, BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys), ad-blocker.<p>Btw we love what Brave started and stood for, but they've now spread themselves too thin across crypto, search, etc. We are laser-focused on one thing: making browsers work for YOU with AI. And unlike Arc (which we loved too but got abandoned), we're 100% open source. Fork us if you don't like our direction.<p>-- Our journey hacking a new browser
To build this, we had to fork Chromium. Honestly, it feels like the only viable path today—we've seen others like Brave (started with electron) and Microsoft Edge learn this the hard way.<p>We also started with why not just build an extension. But realized we needed more control. Similar to the reason why Cursor forked VSCode. For example, Chrome has this thing called the Accessibility Tree - basically a cleaner, semantic version of the DOM that screen readers use. Perfect for AI agents to understand pages, but you can't use it through extension APIs.<p>That said, working with the 15M-line C++ chromium codebase has been an adventure. We've both worked on infra at Google and Meta, but Chromium is a different beast. Tools like Cursor's indexing completely break at this scale, so we've had to get really good with grep and vim. And the build times are brutal—even with our maxed-out M4 Max MacBook, a full build takes about 3 hours.<p>Full disclosure: we are still very early, but we have a working prototype on GitHub. It includes an early version of a "local Manus" style agent that can automate simple web tasks, plus an AI sidebar for questions, and other productivity features (grouping tabs, saving/resuming sessions, etc.).<p>Looking forward to any and all comments!<p>You can download the browser from our github page: <a href="https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape">https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape</a>