The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: I recreated Windows XP as my portfolio
Years ago I stumbled across a basic version of this concept and it stuck with me. I knew if I was ever going to take on such a project, it would need to be flawless, but without coding experience it was just another idea that would never happen. By the end of 2024, as AI coding tools exploded everywhere, I finally had a way to make it real.<p>I started from zero knowledge and spent months collaborating with AI agents as a learning experience. Every pixel and every function went through me. The AI translated what I asked for into code, but every decision was human. I didn't use existing OS frameworks because the goal was learning how basic coding languages worked while also developing my skills with AI collaboration. Apart from basic libraries like xp.css and paint.js, it's all original code.<p>The result is a fully functional Windows XP recreation running in your browser. Complete experience with sounds, animations, and working applications. Even works properly on mobile, which required rebuilding everything to maintain the authentic feel without becoming unusable on touchscreens.<p>This project taught me more about coding and AI collaboration than I ever expected. Would love to hear your thoughts on the execution and any feedback on the technical approach.
Show HN: I recreated Windows XP as my portfolio
Years ago I stumbled across a basic version of this concept and it stuck with me. I knew if I was ever going to take on such a project, it would need to be flawless, but without coding experience it was just another idea that would never happen. By the end of 2024, as AI coding tools exploded everywhere, I finally had a way to make it real.<p>I started from zero knowledge and spent months collaborating with AI agents as a learning experience. Every pixel and every function went through me. The AI translated what I asked for into code, but every decision was human. I didn't use existing OS frameworks because the goal was learning how basic coding languages worked while also developing my skills with AI collaboration. Apart from basic libraries like xp.css and paint.js, it's all original code.<p>The result is a fully functional Windows XP recreation running in your browser. Complete experience with sounds, animations, and working applications. Even works properly on mobile, which required rebuilding everything to maintain the authentic feel without becoming unusable on touchscreens.<p>This project taught me more about coding and AI collaboration than I ever expected. Would love to hear your thoughts on the execution and any feedback on the technical approach.
Show HN: Open-sourcing our text-to-CAD app
Hey HN! I'm Zach from Adam (<a href="https://adam.new/">https://adam.new/</a>). We’re building an AI co-pilot for mechanical CAD software.<p>As part of our broader research, we built a browser-based Text-to-CAD app (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206</a>) and are now open sourcing it. This is a React SPA with a Supabase backend.<p>What it does:<p>* Generates parametric 3D models from natural language descriptions, with support for both text prompts and image references<p>* Outputs OpenSCAD code with automatically extracted parameters that surface as interactive sliders for instant dimension tweaking<p>* Exports as .STL or .SCAD<p>Under the hood:<p>* Separate agents for conversation and code generation; simple parameter tweaks bypass AI entirely using deterministic regex-based updates<p>* Runs fully in-browser by compiling OpenSCAD to WebAssembly and integrating Three.js with React Three Fiber for 3D rendering<p>* Supports BOSL, BOSL2, MCAD libraries and custom font support (Geist) for text in models<p>We’ve seen many developers trying to replicate this kind of functionality, so we’re releasing this to give the community a solid foundation to build on.<p>Future improvements:<p>* Expand geometry support - Move beyond CSG primitives to support curved surfaces, fillets, lofts, and constraint-driven modeling through CadQuery/Build123D<p>* Better spatial context - UI for face/edge selection and viewport image integration to give LLMs spatial understanding<p>* Enhanced capabilities - RAG on documentation and integration with more OpenSCAD libraries for features like proper threading<p>You can clone the repo and run it locally! Contributions are welcome, and we’ll keep merging PRs as they come in.
Show HN: Open-sourcing our text-to-CAD app
Hey HN! I'm Zach from Adam (<a href="https://adam.new/">https://adam.new/</a>). We’re building an AI co-pilot for mechanical CAD software.<p>As part of our broader research, we built a browser-based Text-to-CAD app (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206</a>) and are now open sourcing it. This is a React SPA with a Supabase backend.<p>What it does:<p>* Generates parametric 3D models from natural language descriptions, with support for both text prompts and image references<p>* Outputs OpenSCAD code with automatically extracted parameters that surface as interactive sliders for instant dimension tweaking<p>* Exports as .STL or .SCAD<p>Under the hood:<p>* Separate agents for conversation and code generation; simple parameter tweaks bypass AI entirely using deterministic regex-based updates<p>* Runs fully in-browser by compiling OpenSCAD to WebAssembly and integrating Three.js with React Three Fiber for 3D rendering<p>* Supports BOSL, BOSL2, MCAD libraries and custom font support (Geist) for text in models<p>We’ve seen many developers trying to replicate this kind of functionality, so we’re releasing this to give the community a solid foundation to build on.<p>Future improvements:<p>* Expand geometry support - Move beyond CSG primitives to support curved surfaces, fillets, lofts, and constraint-driven modeling through CadQuery/Build123D<p>* Better spatial context - UI for face/edge selection and viewport image integration to give LLMs spatial understanding<p>* Enhanced capabilities - RAG on documentation and integration with more OpenSCAD libraries for features like proper threading<p>You can clone the repo and run it locally! Contributions are welcome, and we’ll keep merging PRs as they come in.
Show HN: Swimming in Tech Debt
This is the first half of my book, “Swimming in Tech Debt”. It is available at a pre-launch sale price of $0.99 (<a href="https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book" rel="nofollow">https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book</a>).<p>I have been working on it since January 2024. It is based on some posts in my blog, but expands on my ideas quite a bit.<p>In September 2024, excerpts appeared in Gergely Orosz’s Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, which helped me get a lot of feedback that expanded the book from my initial idea. This half is about what I expected to do before that —- the rest of the book goes into team and CTO practices.
Show HN: Swimming in Tech Debt
This is the first half of my book, “Swimming in Tech Debt”. It is available at a pre-launch sale price of $0.99 (<a href="https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book" rel="nofollow">https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book</a>).<p>I have been working on it since January 2024. It is based on some posts in my blog, but expands on my ideas quite a bit.<p>In September 2024, excerpts appeared in Gergely Orosz’s Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, which helped me get a lot of feedback that expanded the book from my initial idea. This half is about what I expected to do before that —- the rest of the book goes into team and CTO practices.
Tell HN: Use "-f**k" to kill Google AI Overview
Not sure this is the right way to post this, but I'm sure quite a few people are as frustrated as I am by the AI enshittification of Google search and would like to know this.<p>I accidentally discovered in a fit of rage against Google Search that if you add an expletive to a search term, the SERP will avoid showing ads and also an AI overview.<p>The good thing is that it works also with the "-" (minus) operator, so you can make sure the expletive is actually not included in the result pages.<p>Try it yourself: search for a fairly generic query that gives you ads and AI overview, and add "-f*k" at the end, uncensored of course.<p>Enjoy a much better search experience.
It might be placebo, but it feels like the results are actually better sorted.<p>Edit: edited to avoid HN pro-expletives filter :D
Show HN: I made an Animal Crossing style letter editor
I made a simple open-source letter editor inspired by Animal Crossing NH. Took me forever to look over each card, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. You can even click the bottle in the bottom right to see a random letter design shared by other users! Now to see how long it stays up...<p>Check out the source code here: <a href="https://github.com/IdreesInc/Animal-Crossing-Letter-Generator" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/IdreesInc/Animal-Crossing-Letter-Generato...</a>
Show HN: I made an Animal Crossing style letter editor
I made a simple open-source letter editor inspired by Animal Crossing NH. Took me forever to look over each card, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. You can even click the bottle in the bottom right to see a random letter design shared by other users! Now to see how long it stays up...<p>Check out the source code here: <a href="https://github.com/IdreesInc/Animal-Crossing-Letter-Generator" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/IdreesInc/Animal-Crossing-Letter-Generato...</a>
Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT
The use of the em dash (—) now raises suspicions that a text might have been AI-generated. Inspired by a suggestion from dang [1], I created a leaderboard of HN users according to how many of their posts before November 30, 2022—that is, before the release of ChatGPT—contained em dashes. Dang himself comes in number 2—by a very slim margin.<p>Credit to Claude Code for showing me how to search the HN database through Google BigQuery and for writing the HTML for the leaderboard.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933</a>
Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT
The use of the em dash (—) now raises suspicions that a text might have been AI-generated. Inspired by a suggestion from dang [1], I created a leaderboard of HN users according to how many of their posts before November 30, 2022—that is, before the release of ChatGPT—contained em dashes. Dang himself comes in number 2—by a very slim margin.<p>Credit to Claude Code for showing me how to search the HN database through Google BigQuery and for writing the HTML for the leaderboard.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933</a>
Show HN: Sosumi.ai – Convert Apple Developer docs to AI-readable Markdown
I got tired of Claude hallucinating Swift APIs. It does a good job at Python and TypeScript, but ask it about SwiftUI and it's basically guessing.<p>The problem? Apple's docs are JavaScript-rendered, so when you paste URLs into AI tools, they just see a blank page. Copy-pasting works but... c'mon.<p>So I built something that converts Apple Developer docs to clean markdown. Just swap developer.apple.com with sosumi.ai in any Apple docs URL and you get AI-readable content.<p>For example:<p>- Before: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/double" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/double</a><p>- After: <a href="https://sosumi.ai/documentation/swift/double" rel="nofollow">https://sosumi.ai/documentation/swift/double</a><p>The site itself is a small Hono app running on Cloudflare Workers. Apple's docs are actually available as structured data, but Apple doesn't make it obvious how to get it. So what this does is map the URLs, fetch the original JSON, and render as Markdown.<p>It also provides an MCP interface that includes a tool to search the Apple developer website, which is helpful.<p>Anyway, please give this a try and let me know what you think!
Show HN: Sosumi.ai – Convert Apple Developer docs to AI-readable Markdown
I got tired of Claude hallucinating Swift APIs. It does a good job at Python and TypeScript, but ask it about SwiftUI and it's basically guessing.<p>The problem? Apple's docs are JavaScript-rendered, so when you paste URLs into AI tools, they just see a blank page. Copy-pasting works but... c'mon.<p>So I built something that converts Apple Developer docs to clean markdown. Just swap developer.apple.com with sosumi.ai in any Apple docs URL and you get AI-readable content.<p>For example:<p>- Before: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/double" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/double</a><p>- After: <a href="https://sosumi.ai/documentation/swift/double" rel="nofollow">https://sosumi.ai/documentation/swift/double</a><p>The site itself is a small Hono app running on Cloudflare Workers. Apple's docs are actually available as structured data, but Apple doesn't make it obvious how to get it. So what this does is map the URLs, fetch the original JSON, and render as Markdown.<p>It also provides an MCP interface that includes a tool to search the Apple developer website, which is helpful.<p>Anyway, please give this a try and let me know what you think!
Show HN: PageIndex – Vectorless RAG
Not all improvements come from adding complexity — sometimes it's about removing it.<p>PageIndex takes a different approach to RAG. Instead of relying on vector databases or artificial chunking, it builds a hierarchical tree structure from documents and uses reasoning-based tree search to locate the most relevant sections. This mirrors how humans approach reading: navigating through sections and context rather than matching embeddings.<p>As a result, the retrieval feels transparent, structured, and explainable. It moves RAG away from approximate "semantic vibes" and toward explicit reasoning about where information lives. That clarity can help teams trust outputs and debug workflows more effectively.<p>The broader implication is that retrieval doesn't need to scale endlessly in vectors to be powerful. By leaning on document structure and reasoning, it reminds us that efficiency and human-like logic can be just as transformative as raw horsepower.
Show HN: Turn Markdown into React/Svelte/Vue UI at runtime, zero build step
Show HN: A zoomable, searchable archive of BYTE magazine
A while ago I was looking for information on a obscure and short lived British computer.<p>I found an article[1] in the archives of BYTE magazine[2] - and was captivated immediately by the tech adverts of bygone eras.<p>This led to a long side project to be able to see all 100k pages of BYTE in a single searchable place.<p>[1]: <a href="https://byte.tsundoku.io/#198502-381" rel="nofollow">https://byte.tsundoku.io/#198502-381</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184</a>
Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework
A few weeks ago a friend sent me grug-brain XSLT (1) which inspired me to redo my personal blog in XSLT.<p>Rather than just build my own blog on it, I wrote it up for others to use and I've published it on GitHub <a href="https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework</a> (2)<p>Since others have XSLT on the mind, now seems just as good of a time as any to share it with the world. Evidlo@ did a fine job explaining the "how" xslt works (3)<p>The short version on how to publish using this framework is:<p>1. Create a new post in HTML wrapped in the XML headers and footers the framework expects.<p>2. Tag the post so that its unique and the framework can find it on build<p>3. Add the post to the posts.xml file<p>And that's it. No build system to update menus, no RSS file to update (posts.xml is the rss file). As a reusable framework, there are likely bugs lurking in CSS, but otherwise I'm finding it perfectly usable for my needs.<p>Finally, it'd be a shame if XSLT is removed from the HTML spec (4), I've found it quite eloquent in its simplicity.<p>(1) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817</a><p>(2) <a href="https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework</a><p>(3) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988271">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988271</a><p>(4) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185</a><p>(Aside - First time caller long time listener to hn, thanks!)
Show HN: Sping – An HTTP/TCP latency tool that's easy on the eye
I've frequently found myself using [nvitop](<a href="https://github.com/XuehaiPan/nvitop" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/XuehaiPan/nvitop</a>) to diagnose GPU/CPU contention issues.<p>The two best things about it are:<p>- It's easy to install if I can access pip in the container<p>- It makes a compelling screenshot (which helps me communicate with coworkers.)<p>With those two lessons in mind: Here is Sping!<p>Purpose: Help observe and diagnose latency issues at layer 4+ (TCP/HTTP/HTTPS)<p>Two good things about it:<p>- It's easy to install if you have pip. (Available at [service-ping-sping](<a href="https://pypi.org/project/service-ping-sping/" rel="nofollow">https://pypi.org/project/service-ping-sping/</a>) on PyPi)<p>- It makes a compelling screenshot.<p>Not sure if this is the kind of thing that anyone else would be interested in. But I've enjoyed making it and intend to keep using it.
Show HN: Base, an SQLite database editor for macOS
I recently released v3 of Base, my SQLite editor for macOS.<p>The goal of this app is to provide a comfortable native GUI for SQLite, without it turning into a massive IDE-style app.<p>The coolest features are<p>- That it can handle full altering of tables, which is quite finicky to do manually with SQLite.<p>- It has a more detailed display of column constraints than most editors. Each constraint is shown as an icon if active, with full details available on clicking the icon.<p>This update also adds support for attaching databases, which is a bit fiddly with macOS sandboxing.<p>I'd love to hear any feedback or answer any questions.
Show HN: Clearcam – Add AI object detection to your IP CCTV cameras
This runs YOLOv8 + bytetrack with Tinygrad detections (depending on user config) are saved and can be sent to the companion iOS app along with a notification, all video processing is done locally, all footage is encrypted before leaving your computer, and the sending notifications + videos part is optional.
This uses tinygrad, so it runs well on my apple silicon macs and should be able to run on a lot of hardware (or will be able to when I remove other deps).