The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
Latest posts:
Show HN: Open-Source DocumentAI with Ollama
Show HN: Open-Source DocumentAI with Ollama
Show HN: CodeTracer – A time-traveling debugger implemented in Nim and Rust
Hey!<p>We are presenting CodeTracer - a user-friendly time-traveling debugger designed to support a wide range of programming languages:<p><a href="https://github.com/metacraft-labs/codetracer?tab=readme-ov-file#introduction">https://github.com/metacraft-labs/codetracer?tab=readme-ov-f...</a><p>CodeTracer records the execution of a program into a sharable self-contained trace file. You can load the produced trace files in a GUI environment that allows you to move forward and backward through the execution and to examine the history of all memory locations. They say a picture is worth a thousand words — well, a video is even better! Watch the demo below to see CodeTracer in action:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZsJ55JVqmU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZsJ55JVqmU</a><p>The initial release is limited to the Noir programming language, but CodeTracer uses an open format for its trace files and we've started community-driven projects which aim to add support for Ruby and Python.<p>We are also developing an alternative back-end, capable of working with RR recordings, which will make CodeTracer suitable for debugging large-scale programs in a variety of system programming languages such as C/C++, Rust, Nim, D, Zig, Go, Fortran and FreePascal.
Show HN: Beating Pokemon Red with RL and <10M Parameters
Hi everyone!<p>After spending hundreds of hours, we're excited to finally share our progress in developing a reinforcement learning system to beat Pokémon Red. Our system successfully completes the game using a policy under 10M parameters, PPO, and a few novel techniques. With the release of Claude Plays Pokémon, now feels like the perfect time to showcase our work.<p>We'd love to get feedback!
Show HN: Bayleaf – Building a low-profile wireless split keyboard
Hey HN,<p>I built a wireless, split, ultra-low profile keyboard from scratch called Bayleaf. As a beginner I learned all things electronics, PCB-building, designing for manufacturing, and many other hardware-related skills to put this together.<p>This case study dives into the build process and of course the final result, hope you enjoy!
Show HN: Sonauto API – Generative music for developers
Hello again HN,<p>Since our launch ten months ago, my cofounder and I have continued to improve our music model significantly. You can listen to some cool Staff Picks songs from the latest version here <a href="https://sonauto.ai/">https://sonauto.ai/</a> , listen to an acapella song I made for my housemate here <a href="https://sonauto.ai/song/8a20210c-563e-491b-bb11-f8c6db92ee9b">https://sonauto.ai/song/8a20210c-563e-491b-bb11-f8c6db92ee9b</a> , or try the free and unlimited generations yourself.<p>However, given there are only two of us right now competing in the "best model and average user UI" race we haven't had the time to build some of the really neat ideas our users and pro musicians have been dreaming up (e..g, DAW plugins, live performance transition generators, etc). The hacker musician community has a rich history of taking new tech and doing really cool and unexpected stuff with it, too.<p>As such, we're opening up an API that gives full access to the features of our underlying diffusion model (e.g., generation, inpainting, extensions, transition generation, inverse sampling). Here are some things our early test users are already doing with it:<p>- A cool singing-to-video model by our friends at Lemon Slice: <a href="https://x.com/LemonSliceAI/status/1894084856889430147" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/LemonSliceAI/status/1894084856889430147</a> (try it yourself here <a href="https://lemonslice.com/studio">https://lemonslice.com/studio</a>)<p>- Open source wrapper written by one of our musician users: <a href="https://github.com/OlaFosheimGrostad/networkmusic">https://github.com/OlaFosheimGrostad/networkmusic</a><p>- You can also play with all the API features via our consumer UI here: <a href="https://sonauto.ai/create">https://sonauto.ai/create</a><p>We also have some examples written in Python here: <a href="https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples">https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples</a><p>- Generate a rock song: <a href="https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/rock_song_generator.py">https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/ro...</a><p>- Download two songs from YouTube (e.g., Smash Mouth to Rick Astley) and generate a transition between them: <a href="https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/transition_generator.py">https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/tr...</a><p>- Generate a singing telegram video (powered by ours and also Lemon Slice's API): <a href="https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/singing_telegram.py">https://github.com/Sonauto/sonauto-api-examples/blob/main/si...</a><p>You can check out the full docs/get your key here: <a href="https://sonauto.ai/developers">https://sonauto.ai/developers</a><p>We'd love to hear what you think, and are open to answering any tech questions about our model too! It's still a latent diffusion model, but much larger and with a much better GAN decoder.
Show HN: Knowledge graph of restaurants and chefs, built using LLMs
Hi HN!<p>My latest side project is knowledge graph that maps the French culinary network using data extracted from restaurant reviews from LeFooding.com. The project uses LLMs to extract structured information from unstructured text.<p>Some technical aspects you may be interested in:<p>- Used structured generation to reliably parse unstructured text into a consistent schema<p>- Tested multiple models (Mistral-7B-v0.3, Llama3.2-3B, gpt4o-mini) for information extraction<p>- Created an interactive visualization using gephi-lite and Retina (WebGL)<p>- Built (with Claude) a simple Flask web app to clean and deduplicate the data<p>- Total cost for inferencing 2000 reviews with gpt4o-mini: less than 1€!<p>You can explore the visualization here: [Interactive Culinary Network](<a href="https://ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/1.0.0-beta.4/#/graph/?url=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/theophilec/351f17ece36477bc48438d5ec6d14b5a/raw/fa85a89541c953e8f00d6774fe42f8c4bd30fa47/graph.gexf&r=x&sa=re&ca[]=t&ca[]=ra-s&st[]=u&st[]=re&ed=u" rel="nofollow">https://ouestware.gitlab.io/retina/1.0.0-beta.4/#/graph/?url...</a>)<p>The code for the project is available on GitHub:
- Main project: <a href="https://github.com/theophilec/foudinge">https://github.com/theophilec/foudinge</a>
- Data cleaning tool: <a href="https://github.com/theophilec/foudinge-scrub">https://github.com/theophilec/foudinge-scrub</a><p>Happy to get feedback!
Show HN: Agents.json – OpenAPI Specification for LLMs
Hey HN, we’re building an open specification that lets agents discover and invoke APIs with natural language, built on the OpenAPI standard. agents.json clearly defines the contract between LLMs and API as a standard that's open, observable, and replicable.
Here’s a walkthrough of how it works: <a href="https://youtu.be/kby2Wdt2Dtk?si=59xGCDy48Zzwr7ND" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/kby2Wdt2Dtk?si=59xGCDy48Zzwr7ND</a>.<p>There’s 2 parts to this:<p>1. An agents.json file describes how to link API calls together into outcome-based tools for LLMs. This file sits alongside an OpenAPI file.<p>2. The agents.json SDK loads agents.json files as tools for an LLM that can then be executed as a series of API calls.<p>Why is this worth building?
Developers are realizing that to use tools with their LLMs in a stateless way, they have to implement an API manually to work with LLMs. We see devs sacrifice agentic, non-deterministic behavior for hard-coded workflows to create outcomes that can work. agents.json lets LLMs be non-deterministic for the outcomes they want to achieve and deterministic for the API calls it takes to get there.<p>We’ve put together some real examples if you're curious what the final output looks like. Under the hood, these LLMs have the same system prompt and we plug in a different agents.json to give access to different APIs. It’s all templatized.<p>- Resend (<a href="https://demo.wild-card.ai/resend">https://demo.wild-card.ai/resend</a>)<p>- Google Sheets (<a href="https://demo.wild-card.ai/googlesheets">https://demo.wild-card.ai/googlesheets</a>)<p>- Slack (<a href="https://demo.wild-card.ai/slack">https://demo.wild-card.ai/slack</a>)<p>- Stripe (<a href="https://demo.wild-card.ai/stripe">https://demo.wild-card.ai/stripe</a>)<p>We really wanted to solve real production use cases, and knew this couldn’t just be a proxy. Our approach allows you to make API calls from your own infrastructure. The open-source specification + runner package make this paradigm possible. Agents.json is truly stateless; the client manages all memory/state and it can be deployed on existing infra like serverless environments.<p>You might be wondering - <i>isn’t OpenAPI enough?</i> Why can’t I just put that in the LLM’s context?<p>We thought so too, at first, when building an agent with access to Gmail. But putting the API spec into LLM context gave us poor accuracy in tool selection and in tool calling. Even with cutting down our output space to 5-10 endpoints, we’d see the LLMs fail to select the right tool. We wanted the LLM to just work given an outcome rather than having it reason each time which series of API calls to make.<p>The Gmail API, for example, has endpoints to search for threads, list the emails in a thread, and reply with an email given base64 RFC 822 content. All that has to happen in order with the right arguments for our agent to reply to a thread. We found that APIs are designed for developers, not for LLMs.<p>So we implemented agents.json. It started off as a config file we were using internally that we slowly started adding features to like auth registration, tool search, and multiple API sources. 3 weeks ago, Dharmesh (CTO of Hubspot) posted about the concept of a specification that could translate APIs for LLMs. It sounded a lot like what we already had working internally and we decided to make it open source. We built agents.json for ourselves but we’re excited to share it.<p>In the weeks since we’ve put it out there, agents.json has 10 vetted API integrations (some of them official) and more are being added every day. We recently made the tool search and custom collection platform free for everyone so it’s even easier for devs to scale the number of tools. (<a href="https://wild-card.ai">https://wild-card.ai</a>)<p>Please tell us what you think! Especially if you’re building agents or creating APIs!
Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative
Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads.<p><pre><code> Still no half-star ratings.
No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option.
UI still looks like it's from 2005.
Amazon owns it and doesn't care.
</code></pre>
So I built Kaguya, a modern alternative, over the past 9 months.<p>What’s live:<p><pre><code> Custom shelves (Organize however you want)
Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly)
10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars)
DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses
Likes, shares, comments on reviews
Import your library from Goodreads/StoryGraph
A beautiful design that doesn’t make you feel like you’re using an ancient website
Coming next:
Deep tagging system (Genres, moods, character traits, tropes)
Beautiful stats & insights (Visualize your reading habits)
Discussion forums for every book (Think subreddit-style discussions)
</code></pre>
Would love feedback. What do you think?
Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative
Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads.<p><pre><code> Still no half-star ratings.
No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option.
UI still looks like it's from 2005.
Amazon owns it and doesn't care.
</code></pre>
So I built Kaguya, a modern alternative, over the past 9 months.<p>What’s live:<p><pre><code> Custom shelves (Organize however you want)
Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly)
10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars)
DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses
Likes, shares, comments on reviews
Import your library from Goodreads/StoryGraph
A beautiful design that doesn’t make you feel like you’re using an ancient website
Coming next:
Deep tagging system (Genres, moods, character traits, tropes)
Beautiful stats & insights (Visualize your reading habits)
Discussion forums for every book (Think subreddit-style discussions)
</code></pre>
Would love feedback. What do you think?
Show HN: Berlin Swapfest – Electronics flea market
Hey HN,<p>After scrounging the local classifieds and our version of Craigslist to find pre-owned equipment and getting frustrated I decided that there needs to be a flea market but for electronics tools and homelab stuff. The Berlin Swapfest follows in the same spirit as the MIT Swapfest!<p>I’ve partners with a long time hacker space in Berlin c-base who will be hosting this event!<p>Would love for local hackers to come by and buy and sell their old gear!<p>Details on the site!
Show HN: Libredesk – Open-source customer support desk. Single binary app
Libredesk is a 100% free and open-source customer support desk, the backend is written in Go and the frontend is in Vue JS with ShadnCN for UI components.<p>Unlike many "open-core" alternatives that lock essential features behind enterprise plans, Libredesk is fully open-source and plans to always stay this way.<p>It's in alpha (v0.1.0) right now, but there’s a working demo available. I built this because I wanted a truly open and self-hosted alternative to platforms like Chatwoot, Intercom, and Zendesk.<p>Would love feedback, suggestions, and thoughts from the community.<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk">https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk</a><p>Demo: <a href="https://demo.libredesk.io/" rel="nofollow">https://demo.libredesk.io/</a>
Show HN: Libredesk – Open-source customer support desk. Single binary app
Libredesk is a 100% free and open-source customer support desk, the backend is written in Go and the frontend is in Vue JS with ShadnCN for UI components.<p>Unlike many "open-core" alternatives that lock essential features behind enterprise plans, Libredesk is fully open-source and plans to always stay this way.<p>It's in alpha (v0.1.0) right now, but there’s a working demo available. I built this because I wanted a truly open and self-hosted alternative to platforms like Chatwoot, Intercom, and Zendesk.<p>Would love feedback, suggestions, and thoughts from the community.<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk">https://github.com/abhinavxd/libredesk</a><p>Demo: <a href="https://demo.libredesk.io/" rel="nofollow">https://demo.libredesk.io/</a>
Show HN: A Database Written in Golang
Recently created a minimal persistent relational database in Go. Main focus was on implementing & understanding working the of database, storage management & transaction handling. Use of B+ Tree for storage engine(support for indexing), managing a Free List (for reusing nodes), Support for transactions, Concurrent Reads.
Still have many things to add & fix like query processing being one of the main & fixing some bugs<p>Repo link - <a href="https://github.com/Sahilb315/AtomixDB">https://github.com/Sahilb315/AtomixDB</a><p>Would love to hear your thoughts
Show HN: A Database Written in Golang
Recently created a minimal persistent relational database in Go. Main focus was on implementing & understanding working the of database, storage management & transaction handling. Use of B+ Tree for storage engine(support for indexing), managing a Free List (for reusing nodes), Support for transactions, Concurrent Reads.
Still have many things to add & fix like query processing being one of the main & fixing some bugs<p>Repo link - <a href="https://github.com/Sahilb315/AtomixDB">https://github.com/Sahilb315/AtomixDB</a><p>Would love to hear your thoughts
Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold ~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro, but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA?<p>(my game is Ballionaire: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/526461473225965590" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/5264614...</a>)
Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold ~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro, but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA?<p>(my game is Ballionaire: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/526461473225965590" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/5264614...</a>)
Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist
Hi HN ! This is an open source project I've been working on for a while. It's actually the third breakout-like game I've built. I really like the simplicity of the concept, having just one input (the puck horizontal position) and a simple gameplay that gives a low skill floor.<p>My girlfriend and I played a lot of the excellent LBreakoutHD, an open source breakout game that follows the traditional formula of having multiple lives, scoring points by breaking bricks and catching the good upgrades that spawn randomly and fall down, while avoiding bad upgrades.<p>She liked this game because it is non-violent, and doesn't make her sick like the first person 3D games. There are some issues though, it gets boring to break the last bricks, it's a bit unfair or slow sometimes, and the run length is too long with 30 something levels to clear for a high score.<p>I wanted to make a clone that would be fix those issues. I first tried to introduce more strategy by making the upgrades visible from the start, instead of them appearing randomly. You'd then strategize what to break first to earn more points. That first version is playable (<a href="https://breakout-v1.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout-v1.lecaro.me/</a>) but a bit too complex.<p>I then wanted to simplify the gameplay, but make the game multiplayer in split screen (<a href="https://breakout-v2.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout-v2.lecaro.me/</a>). Instead of bonus and malus, each brick drops some coins, and you need to catch them with the puck. This worked pretty well. You can play with the keyboard (A/D and LEFT/RIGHT keys) or mouse or both. The bomb explosions will blow coins around, including the coins of other players, and if you lose your ball, then a gap opens between your screen and the guy next to you, to give him a chance to lend you his ball. You can play using your phone as a controller by scanning the QR code, but make sure everyone is on the same Wi-Fi and that the the firewalls are down.<p>For my last version (<a href="https://breakout.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout.lecaro.me/</a>) is focused on the game feel and juice. It is about breaking bricks and catching coins, like the v2, but you can now pick upgrades at the end of each level. Your score unlocks more upgrades and levels that are added to the pool for the next runs. There are currently 31 upgrades and 91 levels to unlock.<p>Please have a try and tell me what you think. The game should run well on Firefox, safari and chrome on mobile and pc. It is available in F-Droid and on the play store, The source code is on GitLab. All links are in the game menu.
Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist
Hi HN ! This is an open source project I've been working on for a while. It's actually the third breakout-like game I've built. I really like the simplicity of the concept, having just one input (the puck horizontal position) and a simple gameplay that gives a low skill floor.<p>My girlfriend and I played a lot of the excellent LBreakoutHD, an open source breakout game that follows the traditional formula of having multiple lives, scoring points by breaking bricks and catching the good upgrades that spawn randomly and fall down, while avoiding bad upgrades.<p>She liked this game because it is non-violent, and doesn't make her sick like the first person 3D games. There are some issues though, it gets boring to break the last bricks, it's a bit unfair or slow sometimes, and the run length is too long with 30 something levels to clear for a high score.<p>I wanted to make a clone that would be fix those issues. I first tried to introduce more strategy by making the upgrades visible from the start, instead of them appearing randomly. You'd then strategize what to break first to earn more points. That first version is playable (<a href="https://breakout-v1.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout-v1.lecaro.me/</a>) but a bit too complex.<p>I then wanted to simplify the gameplay, but make the game multiplayer in split screen (<a href="https://breakout-v2.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout-v2.lecaro.me/</a>). Instead of bonus and malus, each brick drops some coins, and you need to catch them with the puck. This worked pretty well. You can play with the keyboard (A/D and LEFT/RIGHT keys) or mouse or both. The bomb explosions will blow coins around, including the coins of other players, and if you lose your ball, then a gap opens between your screen and the guy next to you, to give him a chance to lend you his ball. You can play using your phone as a controller by scanning the QR code, but make sure everyone is on the same Wi-Fi and that the the firewalls are down.<p>For my last version (<a href="https://breakout.lecaro.me/" rel="nofollow">https://breakout.lecaro.me/</a>) is focused on the game feel and juice. It is about breaking bricks and catching coins, like the v2, but you can now pick upgrades at the end of each level. Your score unlocks more upgrades and levels that are added to the pool for the next runs. There are currently 31 upgrades and 91 levels to unlock.<p>Please have a try and tell me what you think. The game should run well on Firefox, safari and chrome on mobile and pc. It is available in F-Droid and on the play store, The source code is on GitLab. All links are in the game menu.
Show HN: I made a site to tell the time in corporate