The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
Latest posts:
Show HN: I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin
Hi Hacker News,<p>This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I've never programmed DSP before. But I was able to use Claude code and have it help me build this using CMajor.<p>I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online.<p>So please watch the video and tell me what you think<p><a href="https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA</a><p>The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me.<p>I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for better or worse!<p>Thanks!
Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
Show HN: Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt
Happy new year folks!<p>This tool was born out of a situation where I had 'inherited' a bunch of servers that were not under any form of config management. Oh, the horror...<p>Enroll 'harvests' system information such as what packages are installed, what services are running, what files have 'differed' from their out-of-the-box defaults, and what other custom snowflake data might exist.<p>The harvest state data can be kept as its own sort of SBOM, but also can be converted in a mere second or two into fully-functional Ansible roles/playbooks/inventory.<p>It can be run remotely over SSH or locally on the machine. Debian and Redhat-like systems are supported.<p>There is also a 'diff' mode to detect drift over time. (Years ago I used Puppet instead of Ansible and miss the agent/server model where it would check in and re-align to the expected state, in case people were being silly and side-stepping the config management altogether). For now, diff mode doesn't 'enforce' but is just capable of notification (webhook, email, stdout) if changes occur.<p>Since making the tool, I've found that it's even useful for systems where you <i>already</i> have in Ansible, in that it can detect stuff you forgot to put into Ansible in the first place. I'm now starting to use it as a 'DR strategy' of sorts: still favoring my normal Ansible roles day-to-day (they are more bespoke and easier to read), but running enroll with '--dangerous --sops' in the background periodically as a 'dragnet' catch-all, just in case I ever need it.<p>Bonus: it also can use my other tool JinjaTurtle, which converts native config files into Jinja2 templates / Ansible vars. That one too was born out of frustration, converting a massive TOML file into Ansible :)<p>Anyway, hope it's useful to someone other than me! The website has some demos and more documentation. Have fun every(any)-one.
Show HN: OpenWorkers – Self-hosted Cloudflare workers in Rust
I've been working on this for some time now, starting with vm2, then deno-core for 2 years, and recently rewrote it on rusty_v8 with Claude's help.<p>OpenWorkers lets you run untrusted JS in V8 isolates on your own infrastructure. Same DX as Cloudflare Workers, no vendor lock-in.<p>What works today: fetch, KV, Postgres bindings, S3/R2, cron scheduling, crypto.subtle.<p>Self-hosting is a single docker-compose file + Postgres.<p>Would love feedback on the architecture and what feature you'd want next.
Show HN: Use Claude Code to Query 600 GB Indexes over Hacker News, ArXiv, etc.
Paste in my prompt to Claude Code with an embedded API key for accessing my public readonly SQL+vector database, and you have a state-of-the-art research tool over Hacker News, arXiv, LessWrong, and dozens of other high-quality public commons sites. Claude whips up the monster SQL queries that safely run on my machine, to answer your most nuanced questions.<p>There's also an Alerts functionality, where you can just ask Claude to submit a SQL query as an alert, and you'll be emailed when the ultra nuanced criteria is met (and the output changes). Like I want to know when somebody posts about "estrogen" in a psychoactive context, or enough biology metaphors when talking about building infrastructure.<p>Currently have embedded:
posts: 1.4M / 4.6M
comments: 15.6M / 38M
That's with Voyage-3.5-lite. And you can do amazing compositional vector search, like search @FTX_crisis - (@guilt_tone - @guilt_topic) to find writing that was about the FTX crisis and distinctly without guilty tones, but that can mention "guilt".<p>I can embed everything and all the other sources for cheap, I just literally don't have the money.
Show HN: Use Claude Code to Query 600 GB Indexes over Hacker News, ArXiv, etc.
Paste in my prompt to Claude Code with an embedded API key for accessing my public readonly SQL+vector database, and you have a state-of-the-art research tool over Hacker News, arXiv, LessWrong, and dozens of other high-quality public commons sites. Claude whips up the monster SQL queries that safely run on my machine, to answer your most nuanced questions.<p>There's also an Alerts functionality, where you can just ask Claude to submit a SQL query as an alert, and you'll be emailed when the ultra nuanced criteria is met (and the output changes). Like I want to know when somebody posts about "estrogen" in a psychoactive context, or enough biology metaphors when talking about building infrastructure.<p>Currently have embedded:
posts: 1.4M / 4.6M
comments: 15.6M / 38M
That's with Voyage-3.5-lite. And you can do amazing compositional vector search, like search @FTX_crisis - (@guilt_tone - @guilt_topic) to find writing that was about the FTX crisis and distinctly without guilty tones, but that can mention "guilt".<p>I can embed everything and all the other sources for cheap, I just literally don't have the money.
Show HN: 22 GB of Hacker News in SQLite
Community, All the HN belong to you. This is an archive of hacker news that fits in your browser. When I made HN Made of Primes I realized I could probably do this offline sqlite/wasm thing with the whole GBs of archive. The whole dataset. So I tried it, and this is it. Have Hacker News on your device.<p>Go to this repo (<a href="https://github.com/DOSAYGO-STUDIO/HackerBook" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DOSAYGO-STUDIO/HackerBook</a>): you can download it. Big Query -> ETL -> npx serve docs - that's it. 20 years of HN arguments and beauty, can be yours forever. So they'll never die. Ever. It's the unkillable static archive of HN and it's your hands. That's my Year End gift to you all. Thank you for a wonderful year, have happy and wonderful 2026. make something of it.
Show HN: 22 GB of Hacker News in SQLite
Community, All the HN belong to you. This is an archive of hacker news that fits in your browser. When I made HN Made of Primes I realized I could probably do this offline sqlite/wasm thing with the whole GBs of archive. The whole dataset. So I tried it, and this is it. Have Hacker News on your device.<p>Go to this repo (<a href="https://github.com/DOSAYGO-STUDIO/HackerBook" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DOSAYGO-STUDIO/HackerBook</a>): you can download it. Big Query -> ETL -> npx serve docs - that's it. 20 years of HN arguments and beauty, can be yours forever. So they'll never die. Ever. It's the unkillable static archive of HN and it's your hands. That's my Year End gift to you all. Thank you for a wonderful year, have happy and wonderful 2026. make something of it.
Show HN: Stop Claude Code from forgetting everything
I got tired of Claude Code forgetting all my context every time I open a new session: set-up decisions, how I like my margins, decision history. etc.<p>We built a shared memory layer you can drop in as a Claude Code Skill. It’s basically a tiny memory DB with recall that remembers your sessions. Not magic. Not AGI. Just state.<p>Install in Claude Code:<p><pre><code> /plugin marketplace add https://github.com/mutable-state-inc/ensue-skill
/plugin install ensue-memory
# restart Claude Code
</code></pre>
What it does: (1) persists context between sessions (2) semantic & temportal search (not just string grep). Basically git for your Claude brain<p>What it doesn’t do: - it won’t read your mind - it’s alpha; it might break if you throw a couch at it<p>Repo: <a href="https://github.com/mutable-state-inc/ensue-skill" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mutable-state-inc/ensue-skill</a><p>If you try it and it sucks, tell me why so I can fix it. Don't be kind, tia
Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code
Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code
Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB
How small can a language model be while still doing something useful? I wanted to find out, and had some spare time over the holidays.<p>Z80-μLM is a character-level language model with 2-bit quantized weights ({-2,-1,0,+1}) that runs on a Z80 with 64KB RAM. The entire thing: inference, weights, chat UI, it all fits in a 40KB .COM file that you can run in a CP/M emulator and hopefully even real hardware!<p>It won't write your emails, but it can be trained to play a stripped down version of 20 Questions, and is sometimes able to maintain the illusion of having simple but terse conversations with a distinct personality.<p>--<p>The extreme constraints nerd-sniped me and forced interesting trade-offs: trigram hashing (typo-tolerant, loses word order), 16-bit integer math, and some careful massaging of the training data meant I could keep the examples 'interesting'.<p>The key was quantization-aware training that accurately models the inference code limitations. The training loop runs both float and integer-quantized forward passes in parallel, scoring the model on how well its knowledge survives quantization. The weights are progressively pushed toward the 2-bit grid using straight-through estimators, with overflow penalties matching the Z80's 16-bit accumulator limits. By the end of training, the model has already adapted to its constraints, so no post-hoc quantization collapse.<p>Eventually I ended up spending a few dollars on Claude API to generate 20 questions data (see examples/guess/GUESS.COM), I hope Anthropic won't send me a C&D for distilling their model against the ToS ;P<p>But anyway, happy code-golf season everybody :)
Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB
How small can a language model be while still doing something useful? I wanted to find out, and had some spare time over the holidays.<p>Z80-μLM is a character-level language model with 2-bit quantized weights ({-2,-1,0,+1}) that runs on a Z80 with 64KB RAM. The entire thing: inference, weights, chat UI, it all fits in a 40KB .COM file that you can run in a CP/M emulator and hopefully even real hardware!<p>It won't write your emails, but it can be trained to play a stripped down version of 20 Questions, and is sometimes able to maintain the illusion of having simple but terse conversations with a distinct personality.<p>--<p>The extreme constraints nerd-sniped me and forced interesting trade-offs: trigram hashing (typo-tolerant, loses word order), 16-bit integer math, and some careful massaging of the training data meant I could keep the examples 'interesting'.<p>The key was quantization-aware training that accurately models the inference code limitations. The training loop runs both float and integer-quantized forward passes in parallel, scoring the model on how well its knowledge survives quantization. The weights are progressively pushed toward the 2-bit grid using straight-through estimators, with overflow penalties matching the Z80's 16-bit accumulator limits. By the end of training, the model has already adapted to its constraints, so no post-hoc quantization collapse.<p>Eventually I ended up spending a few dollars on Claude API to generate 20 questions data (see examples/guess/GUESS.COM), I hope Anthropic won't send me a C&D for distilling their model against the ToS ;P<p>But anyway, happy code-golf season everybody :)
Show HN: Mysti – Claude, Codex, and Gemini debate your code, then synthesize
Hey HN! I'm Baha, creator of Mysti.<p>The problem: I pay for Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, and Gemini but only one could help at a time. On tricky architecture decisions, I wanted a second opinion.<p>The solution: Mysti lets you pick any two AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) to collaborate. They each analyze your request, debate approaches, then synthesize the best solution.<p>Your prompt → Agent 1 analyzes → Agent 2 analyzes → Discussion → Synthesized solution<p>Why this matters: each model has different training and blind spots. Two perspectives catch edge cases one would miss. It's like pair programming with two senior devs who actually discuss before answering.<p>What you get:
* Use your existing subscriptions (no new accounts, just your CLI tools)
* 16 personas (Architect, Debugger, Security Expert, etc)
* Full permission control from read-only to autonomous
* Unified context when switching agents<p>Tech: TypeScript, VS Code Extension API, shells out to claude-code/codex-cli/gemini-cli<p>License: BSL 1.1, free for personal and educational use, converts to MIT in 2030 (would love input on this, does it make sense to just go MIT?)<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/DeepMyst/Mysti" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DeepMyst/Mysti</a><p>Would love feedback on the brainstorm mode. Is multi-agent collaboration actually useful or am I just solving my own niche problem?
Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English
I built a CLI tool that lets you do common video/audio operations without remembering ffmpeg syntax.<p>Instead of:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "fps=15,scale=480:-1:flags=lanczos" -loop 0 output.gif<p>You write:
ff convert video.mp4 to gif<p>More examples:
ff compress video.mp4 to 10mb
ff trim video.mp4 from 0:30 to 1:00
ff extract audio from video.mp4
ff resize video.mp4 to 720p
ff speed up video.mp4 by 2x
ff reverse video.mp4<p>There are similar tools that use LLMs (wtffmpeg, llmpeg, ai-ffmpeg-cli), but they require API keys, cost money, and have latency.<p>Ez FFmpeg is different:
- No AI – just regex pattern matching
- Instant – no API calls
- Free – no tokens
- Offline – works without internet<p>It handles ~20 common operations that cover 90% of what developers actually do with ffmpeg. For edge cases, you still need ffmpeg directly.<p>Interactive mode (just type ff) shows media files in your current folder with typeahead search.<p>npm install -g ezff
Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English
I built a CLI tool that lets you do common video/audio operations without remembering ffmpeg syntax.<p>Instead of:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "fps=15,scale=480:-1:flags=lanczos" -loop 0 output.gif<p>You write:
ff convert video.mp4 to gif<p>More examples:
ff compress video.mp4 to 10mb
ff trim video.mp4 from 0:30 to 1:00
ff extract audio from video.mp4
ff resize video.mp4 to 720p
ff speed up video.mp4 by 2x
ff reverse video.mp4<p>There are similar tools that use LLMs (wtffmpeg, llmpeg, ai-ffmpeg-cli), but they require API keys, cost money, and have latency.<p>Ez FFmpeg is different:
- No AI – just regex pattern matching
- Instant – no API calls
- Free – no tokens
- Offline – works without internet<p>It handles ~20 common operations that cover 90% of what developers actually do with ffmpeg. For edge cases, you still need ffmpeg directly.<p>Interactive mode (just type ff) shows media files in your current folder with typeahead search.<p>npm install -g ezff
Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your Linux system
Hi HN,<p>I built a small Linux CLI tool called witr (Why Is This Running?).<p>The idea came from a situation most of us have hit: you log into a machine, see a process or port running, and immediately wonder why it exists, who started it, and what is keeping it alive right now.<p>witr traces a process, service, or port back to its origin and responsibility chain and explains it in a way that’s quick to read, especially when you’re debugging under pressure.<p>This is v0.1.0. It’s intentionally small and focused.
Feedback, criticism, and edge cases are very welcome.<p>Repo: <a href="https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr</a>
Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your Linux system
Hi HN,<p>I built a small Linux CLI tool called witr (Why Is This Running?).<p>The idea came from a situation most of us have hit: you log into a machine, see a process or port running, and immediately wonder why it exists, who started it, and what is keeping it alive right now.<p>witr traces a process, service, or port back to its origin and responsibility chain and explains it in a way that’s quick to read, especially when you’re debugging under pressure.<p>This is v0.1.0. It’s intentionally small and focused.
Feedback, criticism, and edge cases are very welcome.<p>Repo: <a href="https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr</a>
Show HN: Gaming Couch – a local multiplayer party game platform for 8 players
Hi HN,<p>I’ve been working on Gaming Couch, a web-based game platform where up to 8 players use their smartphones as controllers to play real-time action mini-games on a central browser screen.<p>TL;DR:<p>- 18 competitive mini-games for up to 8 players<p>- Runs entirely in the browser<p>- Phones act as controllers (no apps, no accounts required)<p>- Focused on fast, chaotic, real-time party games (no trivia)<p>- Currently in public early access<p>Try it here: <a href="https://gamingcouch.com" rel="nofollow">https://gamingcouch.com</a>. Open the link on a computer, host a session, scan the QR code with your phone(s) and play!<p>What is it?<p>Gaming Couch is a party game platform where friends play short competitive action games together on one screen, using their phones as controllers (there's also support for physical gamepads if that's more your thing!)<p>I intentionally avoided trivia and text-heavy games. Many people don’t write or read English fluently, and I wanted games where reaction, timing, and chaos matter more than spelling.<p>It’s currently in early public access with 18 mini-games, all made by me and a two friends. All game rounds last ~1 minute, scores carry over, and after each round players vote on the next game. If you’re solo, 3 games support bots, but it’s best with a full couch of people as half the fun comes from the social aspect of playing together!<p>Why I built it:<p>For the last 15+ plus years, me and my friends have loved video game nights but organizing them has always been a PITA when you have more than 4 people playing:<p>- Different games were under different Steam accounts requiring downloads and installation.<p>- Extra controllers were missing (somebody forgot to bring theirs) or they wouldn’t pair.<p>- Consoles were expensive and not always available if we were on the road.<p>Once I started building it, other dev friends asked if they could make games for it too, which led me to realize this could also be a platform for small party games, especially for gamejam devs who don’t want to or have time to build multiplayer infrastructure from scratch. This is why supporting third-party games is the next major feature I’m working on.<p>Tech stack:<p>- Games run locally in the host’s browser (no streaming of games)<p>- Phones connect via WebRTC to the host session (1–10ms latency in ideal conditions with P2P connection)<p>- Fallback to TURN when direct P2P connection isn’t possible e.g. due to strict firewall settings in corporate networks or use of VPN's<p>- Website/Platform made with React + TypeScript<p>- Existing games made with Unity or just plain JS/TS.<p>- Backend: Supabase (Postgres + auth only, currently only used for optional user accounts)<p>How is it different from e.g. Jackbox, Airconsole or Nintendo?<p>Jackbox is absolutely great, but it’s heavily dependent on English literacy and "being funny" on the spot. I wanted something focused on fast, chaotic, real-time action games that work even if your friends speak different languages or just want to smash buttons. Also, I'm not a fan of their party pack model...<p>AirConsole is the most well known comparison to Gaming Couch in terms of technology and execution, but I feel there is a gap for a curated experience where the UI is unified, rounds are 60 seconds, and the competitive "meta-game" (scoreboards/voting) is baked into the platform. And in any case AirConsole was acquired by a car-software company and have pivoted their focus from couch gaming toward in-car entertainment.<p>Nintendo games are usually the gold standard in the party game category but the HW and games cost so much! With Gaming Couch, I want to keep the accessibility threshold as low as possible so everyone is able to play without upfront HW or SW costs.<p>What do you think of this? Are you an interested player or perhaps a developer who has had an idea to develop a fun 8 player mini-game but has been daunted by the idea thus far?
Show HN: Gaming Couch – a local multiplayer party game platform for 8 players
Hi HN,<p>I’ve been working on Gaming Couch, a web-based game platform where up to 8 players use their smartphones as controllers to play real-time action mini-games on a central browser screen.<p>TL;DR:<p>- 18 competitive mini-games for up to 8 players<p>- Runs entirely in the browser<p>- Phones act as controllers (no apps, no accounts required)<p>- Focused on fast, chaotic, real-time party games (no trivia)<p>- Currently in public early access<p>Try it here: <a href="https://gamingcouch.com" rel="nofollow">https://gamingcouch.com</a>. Open the link on a computer, host a session, scan the QR code with your phone(s) and play!<p>What is it?<p>Gaming Couch is a party game platform where friends play short competitive action games together on one screen, using their phones as controllers (there's also support for physical gamepads if that's more your thing!)<p>I intentionally avoided trivia and text-heavy games. Many people don’t write or read English fluently, and I wanted games where reaction, timing, and chaos matter more than spelling.<p>It’s currently in early public access with 18 mini-games, all made by me and a two friends. All game rounds last ~1 minute, scores carry over, and after each round players vote on the next game. If you’re solo, 3 games support bots, but it’s best with a full couch of people as half the fun comes from the social aspect of playing together!<p>Why I built it:<p>For the last 15+ plus years, me and my friends have loved video game nights but organizing them has always been a PITA when you have more than 4 people playing:<p>- Different games were under different Steam accounts requiring downloads and installation.<p>- Extra controllers were missing (somebody forgot to bring theirs) or they wouldn’t pair.<p>- Consoles were expensive and not always available if we were on the road.<p>Once I started building it, other dev friends asked if they could make games for it too, which led me to realize this could also be a platform for small party games, especially for gamejam devs who don’t want to or have time to build multiplayer infrastructure from scratch. This is why supporting third-party games is the next major feature I’m working on.<p>Tech stack:<p>- Games run locally in the host’s browser (no streaming of games)<p>- Phones connect via WebRTC to the host session (1–10ms latency in ideal conditions with P2P connection)<p>- Fallback to TURN when direct P2P connection isn’t possible e.g. due to strict firewall settings in corporate networks or use of VPN's<p>- Website/Platform made with React + TypeScript<p>- Existing games made with Unity or just plain JS/TS.<p>- Backend: Supabase (Postgres + auth only, currently only used for optional user accounts)<p>How is it different from e.g. Jackbox, Airconsole or Nintendo?<p>Jackbox is absolutely great, but it’s heavily dependent on English literacy and "being funny" on the spot. I wanted something focused on fast, chaotic, real-time action games that work even if your friends speak different languages or just want to smash buttons. Also, I'm not a fan of their party pack model...<p>AirConsole is the most well known comparison to Gaming Couch in terms of technology and execution, but I feel there is a gap for a curated experience where the UI is unified, rounds are 60 seconds, and the competitive "meta-game" (scoreboards/voting) is baked into the platform. And in any case AirConsole was acquired by a car-software company and have pivoted their focus from couch gaming toward in-car entertainment.<p>Nintendo games are usually the gold standard in the party game category but the HW and games cost so much! With Gaming Couch, I want to keep the accessibility threshold as low as possible so everyone is able to play without upfront HW or SW costs.<p>What do you think of this? Are you an interested player or perhaps a developer who has had an idea to develop a fun 8 player mini-game but has been daunted by the idea thus far?