The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week

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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>

Show HN: Small Transfers – charge from 0.000001 USD per request for your SaaS

Hi HN,<p>I built <i>Small Transfers</i>, a payments platform for SaaS / API makers who want to bill customers per request instead of pushing them into subscriptions or pre-buy packages.<p>Why?<p><pre><code> - Many customers hate subscriptions and/or want to use a service occasionally. - Traditional payment processors add a fixed fee to every charge, making charges below 1 USD impractical. - Stripe UBB tracks usage, but you still need to write your own auth, add spending limits, and each merchant charges cards separately (extra fees for customers). </code></pre> How it works?<p><pre><code> - Each merchant has a Small Transfers account linked to their Stripe account via Stripe Connect, which is used to transfer payouts to merchants. - Each customer has a Small Transfers account where we verify them using Google Sign-In, 3-D Secure, and Stripe Radar to minimise the chances of a customer not paying their balance. - Customers allow your service to identify and charge them via platform's own OAuth. This also removes the need for your service to implement its own auth. (Simple services don't even need their own database.) - Merchants call a simple REST API to authorize and capture a charge with a minimum amount of 0.000001 USD. Note that you can authorize more than you capture, allowing you to authorize the max amount your request might use, and then capture your actual cost plus margin (great for many use cases, e.g., AI). - The platform takes care of charging customers and sending payouts to merchants. - Merchants pay a flat 3% fee. Customers pay payment processing fees when they pay for their balance. </code></pre> There's a Next.js Starter project (<a href="https://github.com/smalltransfers/nextjs-starter" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/smalltransfers/nextjs-starter</a>) and a live demo (<a href="https://nextjs-starter.smalltransfers.com/" rel="nofollow">https://nextjs-starter.smalltransfers.com/</a>).<p>I've been dog-fooding the platform with my own service (<a href="https://unattach.com/" rel="nofollow">https://unattach.com/</a>) and would love your feedback, specifically:<p><pre><code> - The general approach and whether there is anything I should do differently. - Any concerns and how I could mitigate them. - Any other feedback. </code></pre> I'm also looking for more merchants to try out the platform, and can help you with the integration.<p>Thank you for your time! Happy to answer questions here.

Show HN: Small Transfers – charge from 0.000001 USD per request for your SaaS

Hi HN,<p>I built <i>Small Transfers</i>, a payments platform for SaaS / API makers who want to bill customers per request instead of pushing them into subscriptions or pre-buy packages.<p>Why?<p><pre><code> - Many customers hate subscriptions and/or want to use a service occasionally. - Traditional payment processors add a fixed fee to every charge, making charges below 1 USD impractical. - Stripe UBB tracks usage, but you still need to write your own auth, add spending limits, and each merchant charges cards separately (extra fees for customers). </code></pre> How it works?<p><pre><code> - Each merchant has a Small Transfers account linked to their Stripe account via Stripe Connect, which is used to transfer payouts to merchants. - Each customer has a Small Transfers account where we verify them using Google Sign-In, 3-D Secure, and Stripe Radar to minimise the chances of a customer not paying their balance. - Customers allow your service to identify and charge them via platform's own OAuth. This also removes the need for your service to implement its own auth. (Simple services don't even need their own database.) - Merchants call a simple REST API to authorize and capture a charge with a minimum amount of 0.000001 USD. Note that you can authorize more than you capture, allowing you to authorize the max amount your request might use, and then capture your actual cost plus margin (great for many use cases, e.g., AI). - The platform takes care of charging customers and sending payouts to merchants. - Merchants pay a flat 3% fee. Customers pay payment processing fees when they pay for their balance. </code></pre> There's a Next.js Starter project (<a href="https://github.com/smalltransfers/nextjs-starter" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/smalltransfers/nextjs-starter</a>) and a live demo (<a href="https://nextjs-starter.smalltransfers.com/" rel="nofollow">https://nextjs-starter.smalltransfers.com/</a>).<p>I've been dog-fooding the platform with my own service (<a href="https://unattach.com/" rel="nofollow">https://unattach.com/</a>) and would love your feedback, specifically:<p><pre><code> - The general approach and whether there is anything I should do differently. - Any concerns and how I could mitigate them. - Any other feedback. </code></pre> I'm also looking for more merchants to try out the platform, and can help you with the integration.<p>Thank you for your time! Happy to answer questions here.

Show HN: Term.everything – Run any GUI app in the terminal

I made a built-from scratch Wayland Compositor to display any GUI app* in the terminal! I think there is a lot of unexplored potential in custom Wayland compositors, a lot of really cool things you can embed existing applications into! So, I started with embedding apps into the terminal because that is the easiest input/output (output is just utf-8 and I use the great `chafa` library for that, and I just read from stdin for the input).<p>If you have any other ideas for cool Wayland compositors, let me know. I purposedly wrote 80% the app in Typescript to appeal to the most developers and attract cool contributions (I do all drawing with the familiar Canvas2D api, so if there is interest, I can also fork this out into a cool Terminal canvas, let me know!)<p>I have a blog post here about how I did it, but it’s pretty high level and non technical, so please ask if you have any questions.<p>[How I Did It](<<a href="https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/blob/main/resources/HowIDidIt.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/blob/main/resource...</a>>)<p>*technically only Wayland apps and x11 apps with Xwayland. But on Linux that’s mostly everything.

Show HN: Vicinae – A native, Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux

Hi HN!<p>I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power.<p>Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great.<p>To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can efficiently render tens of thousands of items. That gave me a lot of respect for Qt — it’s a powerful framework that mostly stayed out of my way.<p>A key feature is support for Raycast extensions (React + TypeScript), most of which can be installed and used directly inside the launcher (though not all features are implemented yet). There’s also a native API package (@vicinae/api) for writing Vicinae-specific extensions with additional capabilities. This required writing a custom React reconciler — surprisingly straightforward, though still unpolished.<p>Like Raycast, Vicinae ships with powerful built-in modules, but the goal isn’t to make a clone. I want it to grow into its own project that fits the FOSS model better, while staying compatible with the Raycast ecosystem. I also plan to bring it to other OSes eventually.<p>I’d love feedback on the technical approach, and suggestions for what would make this useful to you. Contributions are very welcome — I’ve already been pleasantly surprised by how quickly people started helping.<p>Docs: <a href="https://docs.vicinae.com" rel="nofollow">https://docs.vicinae.com</a> Repo: <a href="https://github.com/vicinaehq/vicinae" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vicinaehq/vicinae</a>

Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings

Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings

Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese

The idea is actually quite simple. As a Japanese learner and a coder, I've always wanted there to be an open-source, 100% free for learning Japanese, similar to Monkeytype in the typing community.<p>Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned.<p>But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion different color themes and fonts, to really hit it home and honor the app's original inspiration, Monkeytype?<p>And so I did. Now, I'm looking to find contributors and testers for the early stages of the app.<p>Why? Because weebs and otakus deserve to have a 100% free, beautiful, quality language learning app too！<p>For anyone interested, you can check it out at --> <a href="https://kanadojo.com" rel="nofollow">https://kanadojo.com</a> and let me know what you think ^ ^

Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese

The idea is actually quite simple. As a Japanese learner and a coder, I've always wanted there to be an open-source, 100% free for learning Japanese, similar to Monkeytype in the typing community.<p>Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned.<p>But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion different color themes and fonts, to really hit it home and honor the app's original inspiration, Monkeytype?<p>And so I did. Now, I'm looking to find contributors and testers for the early stages of the app.<p>Why? Because weebs and otakus deserve to have a 100% free, beautiful, quality language learning app too！<p>For anyone interested, you can check it out at --> <a href="https://kanadojo.com" rel="nofollow">https://kanadojo.com</a> and let me know what you think ^ ^

Show HN: I'm a dermatologist and I vibe coded a skin cancer learning app

Coded using Gemini Pro 2.5 (free version) in about 2-3 hours.<p>Single file including all html/js/css, Vanilla JS, no backend, scores persisted with localStorage.<p>Deployed using ubuntu/apache2/python/flask on a £5 Digital Ocean server (but could have been hosted on a static hosting provider as it's just a single page with no backend).<p>Images / metadata stored in an AWS S3 bucket.

Show HN: I'm a dermatologist and I vibe coded a skin cancer learning app

Coded using Gemini Pro 2.5 (free version) in about 2-3 hours.<p>Single file including all html/js/css, Vanilla JS, no backend, scores persisted with localStorage.<p>Deployed using ubuntu/apache2/python/flask on a £5 Digital Ocean server (but could have been hosted on a static hosting provider as it's just a single page with no backend).<p>Images / metadata stored in an AWS S3 bucket.