The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
Latest posts:
Show HN: Spegel, a Terminal Browser That Uses LLMs to Rewrite Webpages
Show HN: Spegel, a Terminal Browser That Uses LLMs to Rewrite Webpages
Show HN: I built a daily sunlight tracker
I kept trying to explain how important outdoor light is and how most people aren’t getting enough. Eventually I figured that showing is more effective than telling.<p>So we built a free app that uses your Apple Watch or iPhone to automatically track your light exposure throughout the day.<p>It tells you if you’re getting enough, shows you how consistent you are, and rewards habits that support hormone balance.<p>It's in beta on TestFlight, let me know what you think!
Show HN: Open-Source International Space Station Tracker ESP32/Arduino for $20
International Space Station Tracker on an ESP32 CYD (Cheap Yellow Display) costing $20. Live update over Wifi, touchscreen, backlight power management. Cheap and interesting classroom STEM project. Fully open source.
Show HN: We're two coffee nerds who built an AI app to track beans and recipes
It’s available on iOS now:
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6499280064" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6499280064</a><p>We got into specialty coffee during COVID and, like many others, fell deep down the rabbit hole. Along the way, we ran into the same frustrations:<p>- A drawer full of empty coffee bags.<p>- No simple way to track grind size, rest dates, notes—by bean.<p>- My coffee history scattered across photos, screenshots, notebooks, and half-memories.<p>- The unique traits, people, and stories behind each coffee disappearing from the internet once it sold out (since coffee is an agricultural good)<p>- In our opinion, no coffee tool really captures the flavor, emotion, and aesthetic of great coffee—from a design perspective.<p>So we built BeanBook—a coffee notebook log beans, extract recipes, and organize your coffee life in one place with just a snap, powered by AI<p>Here’s what it does:<p>- Snap a bag → Auto-detects roaster, origin, process, roast date, notes, producer, farm, and more<p>- Paste a YouTube link or photo → Extracts a structured recipe automatically<p>- Log grind size, roast timeline, ratings & notes → All saved in a clean, elegant UI<p>- See your coffee year in review → Track habits, trends, and favorites<p>- Ask BeanBook AI → From brew temps to bean facts, get instant answers<p>My co-founder and I built everything ourselves—branding, code, and UX design. If you’re into coffee (or trying to get more into it), we’d love your feedback.<p>- Rokey & Eric
Show HN: We're two coffee nerds who built an AI app to track beans and recipes
It’s available on iOS now:
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6499280064" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6499280064</a><p>We got into specialty coffee during COVID and, like many others, fell deep down the rabbit hole. Along the way, we ran into the same frustrations:<p>- A drawer full of empty coffee bags.<p>- No simple way to track grind size, rest dates, notes—by bean.<p>- My coffee history scattered across photos, screenshots, notebooks, and half-memories.<p>- The unique traits, people, and stories behind each coffee disappearing from the internet once it sold out (since coffee is an agricultural good)<p>- In our opinion, no coffee tool really captures the flavor, emotion, and aesthetic of great coffee—from a design perspective.<p>So we built BeanBook—a coffee notebook log beans, extract recipes, and organize your coffee life in one place with just a snap, powered by AI<p>Here’s what it does:<p>- Snap a bag → Auto-detects roaster, origin, process, roast date, notes, producer, farm, and more<p>- Paste a YouTube link or photo → Extracts a structured recipe automatically<p>- Log grind size, roast timeline, ratings & notes → All saved in a clean, elegant UI<p>- See your coffee year in review → Track habits, trends, and favorites<p>- Ask BeanBook AI → From brew temps to bean facts, get instant answers<p>My co-founder and I built everything ourselves—branding, code, and UX design. If you’re into coffee (or trying to get more into it), we’d love your feedback.<p>- Rokey & Eric
Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season<p>the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - <a href="https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/</a>
Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season<p>the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - <a href="https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/</a>
Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season<p>the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - <a href="https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/</a>
Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season<p>the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - <a href="https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/</a>
Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted
the IRS recently open sourced most of Direct File, a tax tool it has been working on for a few years now. unfortunately, due to recent events, the IRS isn't working on it anymore. I decided to pick up where they left off and I'm trying to get it ready for next tax season<p>the work behind Direct File is really interesting and I made a lot of it available online to read as well - <a href="https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.openfile.tax/en/latest/</a>
Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta
Ensō is a writing tool that helps you enter a state of flow by separating writing from editing and thus making it harder for you to edit yourself - <a href="https://enso.sonnet.io/" rel="nofollow">https://enso.sonnet.io/</a><p>After 6 years and 2 million words of daily writing I feel like I've learned enough to make Ensō simpler and more accessible.<p>Related thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073</a>
Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta
Ensō is a writing tool that helps you enter a state of flow by separating writing from editing and thus making it harder for you to edit yourself - <a href="https://enso.sonnet.io/" rel="nofollow">https://enso.sonnet.io/</a><p>After 6 years and 2 million words of daily writing I feel like I've learned enough to make Ensō simpler and more accessible.<p>Related thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073</a>
Show HN: TokenDagger – A tokenizer faster than OpenAI's Tiktoken
TokenDagger is a drop-in replacement for OpenAI’s Tiktoken (the tokenizer behind Llama 3, Mistral, GPT-3.*, etc.). It’s written in C++ 17 with thin Python bindings, keeps the exact same BPE vocab/special-token rules, and focuses on raw speed.<p>I’m teaching myself LLM internals by re-implementing the stack from first principles. Profiling TikToken’s Python/Rust implementation showed a lot of time was spent doing regex matching. Most of my perf gains come from a) using a faster jit-compiled regex engine; and b) simplifying the algorithm to forego regex matching special tokens at all.<p>Benchmarking code is included. Notable results show:
- 4x faster code sample tokenization on a single thread.
- 2-3x higher throughput when tested on a 1GB natural language text file.
Show HN: TokenDagger – A tokenizer faster than OpenAI's Tiktoken
TokenDagger is a drop-in replacement for OpenAI’s Tiktoken (the tokenizer behind Llama 3, Mistral, GPT-3.*, etc.). It’s written in C++ 17 with thin Python bindings, keeps the exact same BPE vocab/special-token rules, and focuses on raw speed.<p>I’m teaching myself LLM internals by re-implementing the stack from first principles. Profiling TikToken’s Python/Rust implementation showed a lot of time was spent doing regex matching. Most of my perf gains come from a) using a faster jit-compiled regex engine; and b) simplifying the algorithm to forego regex matching special tokens at all.<p>Benchmarking code is included. Notable results show:
- 4x faster code sample tokenization on a single thread.
- 2-3x higher throughput when tested on a 1GB natural language text file.
Show HN: A tool to benchmark LLM APIs (OpenAI, Claude, local/self-hosted)
I recently built a small open-source tool to benchmark different LLM API endpoints — including OpenAI, Claude, and self-hosted models (like llama.cpp).<p>It runs a configurable number of test requests and reports two key metrics:
• First-token latency (ms): How long it takes for the first token to appear
• Output speed (tokens/sec): Overall output fluency<p>Demo: <a href="https://llmapitest.com/" rel="nofollow">https://llmapitest.com/</a>
Code: <a href="https://github.com/qjr87/llm-api-test">https://github.com/qjr87/llm-api-test</a><p>The goal is to provide a simple, visual, and reproducible way to evaluate performance across different LLM providers, including the growing number of third-party “proxy” or “cheap LLM API” services.<p>It supports:
• OpenAI-compatible APIs (official + proxies)
• Claude (via Anthropic)
• Local endpoints (custom/self-hosted)<p>You can also self-host it with docker-compose.
Config is clean, adding a new provider only requires a simple plugin-style addition.<p>Would love feedback, PRs, or even test reports from APIs you’re using. Especially interested in how some lesser-known services compare.
Show HN: A different kind of AI Video generation
Hello!<p>I'm Andrew Arrow, a developer and Final Cut Pro user. My history with FCP goes back years and years, I tried to be a video editor as a career but ended up a software developer. I purchased the full version of the software a long, long time ago. And to Apple's credit, every single time I goto the App Store on any mac I still have access to download it. I must have been through 20, 30? I don't know, but a lot of macs over the years. Just recently I downloaded it again and noticed the XML Export feature.<p>Wow. There's a lot of stuff there. I mean a lot. I started playing around with generating the XML and that has lead to this project.<p><a href="https://github.com/andrewarrow/cutlass/blob/main/README.md">https://github.com/andrewarrow/cutlass/blob/main/README.md</a><p>Read through those go structs and xml tags. Keep going. And going. It just never stops! It's a very sophisticated XML format that can describe any timeline, effect, or animation you can imagine. Apple's documentation is scattered, the XML is notoriously finicky, and one wrong attribute crashes your import.<p>And of course with Claude Code (or others, pick your favorite AI) you can have your AI write some amazing things in go using cutlass.<p>```go
// Generate a timeline with precise keyframe animations<p>video := fcp.Video{<p><pre><code> Ref: assetID,
Offset: "0s",
Duration: fcp.ConvertSecondsToFCPDuration(10.0),
AdjustTransform: &fcp.AdjustTransform{
Params: []fcp.Param{{
Name: "position",
KeyframeAnimation: &fcp.KeyframeAnimation{
Keyframes: []fcp.Keyframe{
{Time: "0s", Value: "0 0"},
{Time: "240240/24000s", Value: "100 50"},
},
},
}},
},</code></pre>
}
```<p>So I haven't been writing code like that with my human brain. I spend most of my time just telling Claude the video I want to create, and he uses the cutlass library to achieve it. I'm hooking up FCP directly to Claude. A different kind of AI Video generation.<p>Would love feedback, thanks for reading this far!
-aa
Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>
Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>
Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>