The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: Vibe Linking
A vibrator helped me debug a motorcycle brake light system
A vibrator helped me debug a motorcycle brake light system
Show HN: Dayflow – A git log for your day
Hi HN! I've been building Dayflow, a macOS app that automatically tracks what you're actually working on (not just which apps you have open).<p>Here's what it does:<p>- It creates a semantic timeline of your day;<p>- It does it by understanding the content on your screen (with local or cloud VLMs);<p>- This allows you to see exactly where your time went without any manual logging.<p>Traditional time trackers tell you "3 hours in Chrome" which is not very helpful. Dayflow actually understands if you're reading documentation, debugging code, or scrolling HN. Instead of "Chrome: 3 hours", you get "Reviewed PR comments: 45min", "Read HN thread about Rust: 20min", "Debugged auth flow: 1.5hr".<p>I was an early Rewind user but rarely used the retrieval feature. I built Dayflow because I saw other interesting uses for screen data. I find that it helps me stay on track while working - I check it every few hours and make sure I’m spending my time the way I intended - if I’m not, I try to course correct.<p>Here’s what you need to know about privacy:<p>- Run 100% locally using qwen2.5-vl-3b (~4GB model)<p>- No cloud uploads, no account<p>- Full source available under MIT license (<a href="https://github.com/JerryZLiu/Dayflow" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/JerryZLiu/Dayflow</a>)<p>- Optional: BYO Gemini API key for better quality (stored in Keychain, with free-tier workaround to prevent training on your data)<p>The tech stack is pretty simple, SwiftUI with a local sqlite DB. Uses native macOS apis for efficient screen captures. Since most people who run LLMs locally already have their tool of choice (Ollama, LLMStudio, etc.), I decided to not embed an LLM into Dayflow.<p>By far the biggest challenge was adapting from SOTA vision models like Gemini 2.5 Pro to small, local models. My constraints were that it had to take up <4GB of ram and have vision capabilities. I had to do a lot of evals to figure out that Qwen2.5VL-3B was the best balance of size and quality, but there was still a sizable tradeoff in quality that I had to accept. I also got creative with sampling rates and prompt chunking to deal with the 100x smaller context window. Processing a 15 minute segment takes ~32 local LLM calls vs 2 Gemini calls!<p>Here’s what I’m working on next:<p>Distillation: Using Gemini's high-quality outputs as training data to teach a local model the patterns it needs, hopefully closing the quality gap.<p>Custom dashboards where you can track answers to any question like "How long did I spend on HN?" or "Hours until my first deep work session of the day<p>I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you've struggled with productivity tracking or have ideas for what you'd want from a tool like this.
Show HN: Dayflow – A git log for your day
Hi HN! I've been building Dayflow, a macOS app that automatically tracks what you're actually working on (not just which apps you have open).<p>Here's what it does:<p>- It creates a semantic timeline of your day;<p>- It does it by understanding the content on your screen (with local or cloud VLMs);<p>- This allows you to see exactly where your time went without any manual logging.<p>Traditional time trackers tell you "3 hours in Chrome" which is not very helpful. Dayflow actually understands if you're reading documentation, debugging code, or scrolling HN. Instead of "Chrome: 3 hours", you get "Reviewed PR comments: 45min", "Read HN thread about Rust: 20min", "Debugged auth flow: 1.5hr".<p>I was an early Rewind user but rarely used the retrieval feature. I built Dayflow because I saw other interesting uses for screen data. I find that it helps me stay on track while working - I check it every few hours and make sure I’m spending my time the way I intended - if I’m not, I try to course correct.<p>Here’s what you need to know about privacy:<p>- Run 100% locally using qwen2.5-vl-3b (~4GB model)<p>- No cloud uploads, no account<p>- Full source available under MIT license (<a href="https://github.com/JerryZLiu/Dayflow" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/JerryZLiu/Dayflow</a>)<p>- Optional: BYO Gemini API key for better quality (stored in Keychain, with free-tier workaround to prevent training on your data)<p>The tech stack is pretty simple, SwiftUI with a local sqlite DB. Uses native macOS apis for efficient screen captures. Since most people who run LLMs locally already have their tool of choice (Ollama, LLMStudio, etc.), I decided to not embed an LLM into Dayflow.<p>By far the biggest challenge was adapting from SOTA vision models like Gemini 2.5 Pro to small, local models. My constraints were that it had to take up <4GB of ram and have vision capabilities. I had to do a lot of evals to figure out that Qwen2.5VL-3B was the best balance of size and quality, but there was still a sizable tradeoff in quality that I had to accept. I also got creative with sampling rates and prompt chunking to deal with the 100x smaller context window. Processing a 15 minute segment takes ~32 local LLM calls vs 2 Gemini calls!<p>Here’s what I’m working on next:<p>Distillation: Using Gemini's high-quality outputs as training data to teach a local model the patterns it needs, hopefully closing the quality gap.<p>Custom dashboards where you can track answers to any question like "How long did I spend on HN?" or "Hours until my first deep work session of the day<p>I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you've struggled with productivity tracking or have ideas for what you'd want from a tool like this.
Show HN: Software Freelancers Contract Template
I started working as a freelancer [in Finland] a year ago and was surprised to learn that no decent contract template was available for direct assignments. There were some free contract templates available for intermediated assignments, but not for direct assignments. The "golden standard" of contract templates in Finland is an extremely heavy-handed and expensive template that costs ~500€ PER YEAR to use. Personally at the time I decided to just do a DIY contract for my first freelancing project.<p>Over time, as I got more engaged in the Finnish freelancing community, I realized that many people struggled with the same issue. After discussing this in our freelancing co-op Ohjelmistofriikit, we decided to invest both time and money into solving this problem. We decided right from the start that we were gonna open source everything and give it out for free.<p>We first developed a traditional document template in collaboration with a law firm. After that we developed a web generator that makes it easy to fill out the template. The user flow of the generator is designed to eliminate boilerplate-type work (such as hiding sections instead of showing "skip this section if condition X does not apply to you") and also to reduce mistakes users might make when editing a traditional document template (such as copypasting something incorrectly).<p>Although the legalese is designed for the Finnish jurisdiction, the contract template can be useful as an example for similar work in other jurisdictions.<p>Go ahead and draft a contract right there in your browser!
Show HN: Software Freelancers Contract Template
I started working as a freelancer [in Finland] a year ago and was surprised to learn that no decent contract template was available for direct assignments. There were some free contract templates available for intermediated assignments, but not for direct assignments. The "golden standard" of contract templates in Finland is an extremely heavy-handed and expensive template that costs ~500€ PER YEAR to use. Personally at the time I decided to just do a DIY contract for my first freelancing project.<p>Over time, as I got more engaged in the Finnish freelancing community, I realized that many people struggled with the same issue. After discussing this in our freelancing co-op Ohjelmistofriikit, we decided to invest both time and money into solving this problem. We decided right from the start that we were gonna open source everything and give it out for free.<p>We first developed a traditional document template in collaboration with a law firm. After that we developed a web generator that makes it easy to fill out the template. The user flow of the generator is designed to eliminate boilerplate-type work (such as hiding sections instead of showing "skip this section if condition X does not apply to you") and also to reduce mistakes users might make when editing a traditional document template (such as copypasting something incorrectly).<p>Although the legalese is designed for the Finnish jurisdiction, the contract template can be useful as an example for similar work in other jurisdictions.<p>Go ahead and draft a contract right there in your browser!
Show HN: Tips to stay safe from NPM supply chain attacks
Hi everyone, given the recent increase of attacks on the NPM supply chain, I've put together a list of tips and tricks to help developers stay secure on this specific topic: <a href="https://github.com/bodadotsh/npm-security-best-practices" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bodadotsh/npm-security-best-practices</a><p>I'd love for you to check it out, and contribute your own insights and best practices to make this a comprehensive resource for the community.<p>Cheers!
Show HN: I wrote an OS in 1000 lines of Zig
Show HN: I wrote an OS in 1000 lines of Zig
Show HN: Zedis – A Redis clone I'm writing in Zig
Writing Redis from scratch in Zig.
Show HN: WeUseElixir - Elixir project directory
Show HN: WeUseElixir - Elixir project directory
Show HN: Asxiv.org – Ask ArXiv papers questions through chat
I built this yesterday to help understand papers I'm interested in. It's using the gemini 2.5 flash lite model, but you can run it yourself[1] and switch to 2.5 pro for better results.<p>Happy to answer any questions or take suggestions on how I can improve it!<p>1. <a href="https://github.com/montanaflynn/asxiv" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/montanaflynn/asxiv</a>
Show HN: The text disappears when you screenshot it
Show HN: CLAVIER-36 – A programming environment for generative music
CLAVIER-36 is a programming environment for generative music. Programs are laid out in a two-dimensional grid, and evolve over time according to a fixed set of rules. The system is much like a cellular automaton, in that most of the rules governing the evolution of the system are local.<p>C36 programs describe sequences of discrete events in time. The environment includes a primitive sampler, as a self-contained means of interpreting these events as sound. For full expressivity, though, the system is best used as a generator of data for interpretation by an external musical instrument, such as a synthesizer.<p>The project was very directly inspired by Orca (<a href="https://100r.co/site/orca.html" rel="nofollow">https://100r.co/site/orca.html</a>). It began as my own from-scratch implementation of Orca and diverged over time.<p>It's written in C, and compiled to WASM for the browser.<p>See the following pages for more info:<p>about page: <a href="https://clavier36.com/about" rel="nofollow">https://clavier36.com/about</a><p>user manual: <a href="https://clavier36.com/manual" rel="nofollow">https://clavier36.com/manual</a><p>tutorial video: <a href="https://youtu.be/rIpQmJVMjCA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/rIpQmJVMjCA</a>
Show HN: A store that generates products from anything you type in search
Show HN: A store that generates products from anything you type in search
Show HN: I made a generative online drum machine with ClojureScript
After two years of development, I'm super excited to release Beat Maker! This is my take on what I hope is the best free, web-based drum machine.<p>My goal was to build something that was not only fun and easy to use for beginners but also powerful enough for serious producers. I did extensive research on existing drum machines, analyzed their UX, and tried to build something that adds something new.<p>It's a nearly 100% client-side app, written in ClojureScript, and is a PWA so you can install it to your home screen for an app-like experience.<p>Besides the standard grid editor, Beat Maker has some unique features that I think HN readers might find interesting:<p>- Procedural sample generation. One annoying thing about writing beats is searching through folders full of samples. I wanted to improve this and so I added the ability to generate new samples with a single click, giving you an infinite supply of unique drum samples.
* Generative beat creation. If you're looking for inspiration, Beat Maker can generate entire patterns for you as a starting point. You can then edit and tweak the beat to your liking. Great for solving the "blank canvas" problem and giving you something good to start from.
* Advanced export options. This is where it really shines for producers. You can export your work as:
* A standard WAV loop
* Individual stems (ZIP)
* A MIDI file
* A ZIP file of all your samples as WAVs
* A SoundFont (.sf2) drum kit from your generated samples
* An Impulse Tracker (.it) file for use in trackers like Renoise, OpenMPT or a Polyend
* Pocket Operator/Volca sync. It can output a sync signal on the left audio channel to sync with these hardware devices for perfect timing.
* Per-Note FX. You can add effects like volume slides, repeats, and start volume changes to individual notes for more complex drum phrases incorporating flam and roll.<p>As an old school tracker guy, I'm particularly excited about the Impulse Tracker export mode. I was surprised to discover how many DAWs (including hardware like Polyend) can import this format. Of course, you can also pull up Impulse Tracker on DOSBox, or the more modern re-implementation, Schismtracker for that retro experience.<p>By the way, the beat generator feature is not trained on any artists or anything like that. It's an algorithm I built from scratch myself.<p>The audio engine is built on a declarative audio graph (using `virtual-audio-graph`), inspired by React's virtual DOM, which makes managing the Web Audio API much cleaner. If you're building web based audio apps I highly recommend checking out this library.<p>I'd love for you to try it out and let me know what you think. Feedback (and the inevitable bug reports) most welcome! Thank you!<p>P.S. Also, here's a video summary: <a href="https://youtu.be/qVmEn9z3H24" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/qVmEn9z3H24</a>
Show HN: I made a generative online drum machine with ClojureScript
After two years of development, I'm super excited to release Beat Maker! This is my take on what I hope is the best free, web-based drum machine.<p>My goal was to build something that was not only fun and easy to use for beginners but also powerful enough for serious producers. I did extensive research on existing drum machines, analyzed their UX, and tried to build something that adds something new.<p>It's a nearly 100% client-side app, written in ClojureScript, and is a PWA so you can install it to your home screen for an app-like experience.<p>Besides the standard grid editor, Beat Maker has some unique features that I think HN readers might find interesting:<p>- Procedural sample generation. One annoying thing about writing beats is searching through folders full of samples. I wanted to improve this and so I added the ability to generate new samples with a single click, giving you an infinite supply of unique drum samples.
* Generative beat creation. If you're looking for inspiration, Beat Maker can generate entire patterns for you as a starting point. You can then edit and tweak the beat to your liking. Great for solving the "blank canvas" problem and giving you something good to start from.
* Advanced export options. This is where it really shines for producers. You can export your work as:
* A standard WAV loop
* Individual stems (ZIP)
* A MIDI file
* A ZIP file of all your samples as WAVs
* A SoundFont (.sf2) drum kit from your generated samples
* An Impulse Tracker (.it) file for use in trackers like Renoise, OpenMPT or a Polyend
* Pocket Operator/Volca sync. It can output a sync signal on the left audio channel to sync with these hardware devices for perfect timing.
* Per-Note FX. You can add effects like volume slides, repeats, and start volume changes to individual notes for more complex drum phrases incorporating flam and roll.<p>As an old school tracker guy, I'm particularly excited about the Impulse Tracker export mode. I was surprised to discover how many DAWs (including hardware like Polyend) can import this format. Of course, you can also pull up Impulse Tracker on DOSBox, or the more modern re-implementation, Schismtracker for that retro experience.<p>By the way, the beat generator feature is not trained on any artists or anything like that. It's an algorithm I built from scratch myself.<p>The audio engine is built on a declarative audio graph (using `virtual-audio-graph`), inspired by React's virtual DOM, which makes managing the Web Audio API much cleaner. If you're building web based audio apps I highly recommend checking out this library.<p>I'd love for you to try it out and let me know what you think. Feedback (and the inevitable bug reports) most welcome! Thank you!<p>P.S. Also, here's a video summary: <a href="https://youtu.be/qVmEn9z3H24" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/qVmEn9z3H24</a>