Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related?

by meander_water 228 comments 156 points
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228 comments

[−] skor 36d ago
A programming language to hack music, and anything else really https://github.com/audion-lang/audion

The idea came after I finished a permanent piece for a museum using MaxMsp and python. I always had this thought in the back of my mind that "I could express this so much easier in a few lines of code.."

here's the language spec: https://github.com/audion-lang/audion/blob/main/docs/LANGUAG...

I really liked how objects came out, I don't think it needs any more since I can do object composition.

There are some nice functions to generate rhythms and melodies with combinatorics, see src/sequences.rs and melodies.rs

Its a WIP but you can use it now to create music with whatever you want: hardware/daws/supercollider

supercollider is tightly integrated but not required. I havent had time to develop userland libraries yet but I'm working on it

[−] tuvix 32d ago
This is awesome! Last year I was working on a VST using NIH-Plug in Rust that could load in synth voices and effects written in Lua (executed using LuaJIT), this kind of reminds me of some of what I was doing (this is way cooler though).
[−] skor 31d ago
That does sound really cool!! Would really like to see that in action!
[−] mettamage 31d ago
Perhaps a silly question but any thoughts on Strudel?

https://strudel.cc/

[−] skor 31d ago
yes! with pleasure, I think its a great question ;)

Tidal/Strudel is awesome, the visual feedback, the simplicity of musical expression, that to me makes it a wonderful instrument. They are (broadly speaking) DSLs around functional pattern composition that abstract timing, structure, etc

Audion for comparison is a general-purpose imperative scripting language, a "for" loop is your sequencer, a "thread" is your separate instrument/voice, and timing is a primitive you control directly. Hence the "let's hack music" in the readme. So essentially its the inverse of Tidal/Strudel :) more like a brain than just an instrument.

With Audion, the intention is to provide a few things I was missing in other tools

1. An obvious way to program music/video/lighting/other-events, e.g. use a "for" or an infinite "loop" to trigger sounds & lighting, or a separate "thread" to read sensors on a performer

2. A full-stack: full access to the OS: Network, File I/O, Serial, OSC, MIDI, DMX, et.al., and the freedom to build your own abstractions on top

3. The freedom to mutate state and compose objects, your sounds can evolve and remember what happened before

4. Tight timing: beat-accurate scheduling in control-rate land (Max/MSP needs special care when sequencing outside audio rate), Audion now comes with Ableton Link sync, so it plays well with a full live setup

Right now Audion does not have a UI or visual feedback for seeing what is going on while live-coding, but the plan is to make a separate project/binary "audion-window" which will let you design any user interface you can think of for your audion project.

[−] paulmooreparks 36d ago
I'm building my own cloud (I actually typed claude instead of cloud there... wow). There's no IaaS or PaaS; it's much simpler. I wanted my own way of connecting to machines and the TCP services on those machines without having to install Tailscale (not allowed on a locked-down corporate PC) or pay for Azure or AWS or GCP or even Hetzner or Linode. I've got 10gbps fibre and a huge workstation at home, and I've got lots of laptops and VMs and other outboard stuff that I want to work in concert with that workstation, so I started building something I call Tela (Filipino for fabric; I was sitting in Ninoy Aquino International Airport waiting for a flight when I had the idea, and it's implemented as a network fabric).

https://github.com/paulmooreparks/tela

[−] InfraScaler 35d ago
You are rebuilding tailscale but requiring a centralised hub. I did the same in 2016 (pre-tailscale?) https://web.archive.org/web/20160304013451/https://wormhole....

I am not sure WireGuard existed at the time, and I used SoftEther and based it all on doing outbound tunnels to TCP/443* to avoid firewall blocks in corporate networks.

You could explore full P2P by leveraging UDP hole punching: https://cloudnetworking.pro/firewall-bypass-series-1-2/ https://cloudnetworking.pro/firewall-bypass-encapsulating-tr...

(WireGuard may already do it, dunno)

Also, fun fact, tela is also Spanish for fabric. Given the Filipino history, I guess it comes from there.

* I know I know, TCP in TCP is a bad idea https://cloudnetworking.pro/tcp-over-tcp-is-a-bad-idea/

[−] paulmooreparks 34d ago
Thanks! Yes, Tela already does UDP hole-punching. I made Tela because I wasn't allowed to install Tailscale on my new corporate laptop, and no other available solution seemed to tick the right boxes. It started as a simple way to RDP to my home workstation, but then I realised that if I could do that, I could finally pull my ad-hoc home cloud into one tool. The hub model is very much by design, for organisational purposes. The hole-punching feature gives me the P2P speed (and even STUN, if available). An upcoming version will allow hub-to-hub topologies.

It should have occurred to me that tela is also Spanish, since about every third word I hear in a Tagalog sentence seems to be of Spanish origin.

[−] InfraScaler 34d ago
Does tela create an L3 network? if that's the case, what do you do to avoid IP addressing clashes? In Wormhole I decided by default to use CGNAT addressing (100.64.0.0/10)

I did not go too far unfortunately, so I did not face problems such as discoverability (do you have to know/remember all the IP addresses from the devices connected? DNS? etc).

[−] noodlebreak 31d ago
You should add this comment in your project's readme - because this is far easier to understand why the project even exists.
[−] kunley 36d ago
Working on an audio streaming platform powering an indy internet radio. Looks like Icecast & friends show its age and a similar product can be easily built with the functionality cast down to simply robust streaming & handling "timed playlists". I enjoy every bit of knowing exactly what happens in the code. It's not open source atm, but will be. It's in Go, is a pleasure to write and the deployment takes minimal amount of resources.

Other project is to continue a bit stalled progress of a configuration language BCL - add functions, more structures and fix some hidden scoping issues. Making languages is an endless fun. https://github.com/wkhere/bcl

[−] adrianhon 36d ago
My friend and I are building Strandfall, a highly physical outdoor larp (live action role playing game) that uses custom spatial computers: https://strandfall.com

Players are survivors of a global disaster that has unleashed mysterious, deadly storms. For three hours, they investigate the origin of the storms and make fateful decisions about their future as individuals and as a community.

We received Immersive Arts funding, which means we can run it in Edinburgh later this year. Here's an excerpt from our 2025 grant application about exactly what those are:

--

Our “storm sensors” are novel spatial computers designed for outdoor usage over long distances. They will house ePaper displays, LoRa (long range) radios, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS chips in a 3D-printed enclosure to provide a low-tech way to augment the reality of the park. These computers will be cheaper, more rugged, longer-lived, and more capable than smartphones, deployable to locations with zero cellular service and no battery charging options.

The sensors will be mounted on top of camera tripods for deployment. Runners will carry them through the park, then position and aim them in the correct direction, as co-ordinated by “operators” using walkie talkies. This will let players feel like they are really setting up important equipment, scanning historical sites for clues (like surveyors), and establishing laser communication links. Lacking colourful touchscreens, the sensors will be less distracting for runners, helping them focus on their surroundings. Essentially, they are a highly tactile and deeply realistic way of immersing players in a post-apocalyptic setting, since such devices – not smartphones – are the most likely to be used.

[−] boricj 36d ago
I'm working on ghidra-delinker-extension [1], which is a relocatable object file exporter for Ghidra.

The algorithms needed to slice up a Ghidra database into relocatable sections, and especially to recover relocations through analysis are really tricky to get right. My MIPS analyzer in particular is an eldritch horror due to several factors combining into a huge mess (branch delay slots, split HI16/LO16 relocations, code flow analysis, register graph dependency...).

The entire endeavor requires an unusual level of exacting precision to work and will produce some really exotic undefined behavior when it fails, but when it works you feel like a mechanic in a Mad Max universe, stripping programs for parts and building unholy chimeras from them, some examples I've linked in the readme. It has also led to a poster presentation to the SURE workshop at ACM CCS 2025 in Taiwan as a hobbyist, an absolutely insane story.

[1] https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-delinker-extension

[−] ragebol 36d ago
Building a bouldering wall at home, for the kids.

A bunch of square panels with a grid pattern to mount hold on, with the panels hanging on french cleats (with a locking system, #TODO) so the panels are easily removable so I can hang something like planters on the wall as well with the same french cleats.

No AI, a bit of computers to draw things out in CAD, but otherwise just manual building stuff.

[−] recursivedoubts 36d ago
I am working towards a big new release of my web scripting language, hyperscript:

https://hyperscript.org

Hoping to release next Monday

[−] yuppiepuppie 36d ago
Ive been working on the HN Arcade :) https://hnarcade.com

Its always fun to see what games people are building - and some of the lesser known ones are amazing!

[−] the__alchemist 36d ago
I'm building OSS structural biology libraries in Rust (+ CUDA), and a GUI application that ties them together. It is kind of an integration of functionality traditionally in separate tools: Viewing, editing, therapeutic properties + pharmacokinetics, molecular dynamics etc.
[−] DamnInteresting 36d ago
I'm working on the next update of Omiword[1], an ongoing daily word game previously discussed on HN[2]. I'm building an alternate stand-alone app version with access to all of the archived puzzles. It's slow going since it's just one of many side-projects I like to work on, but that's the tinkerer's dilemma.

Yes, I know that [insert LLM here] could do a lot of that conversion for me in mere minutes. No thank you. I'm doing it, in part, for the doing.

[1] https://omiword.com

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43654350

[−] flossly 36d ago
JDBC does not allow pipelining (a Postgres only feature).

It can reduce the number of db round-trips a lot, especially when using Supabase+RLS (or other systems that require frequent setting of configuration values that are basically fire-and-forget).

Meet Bpdbi, a library with first-class pipelining, which provides a Postgres db driver (that's binary only, as the legacy text-based protocol is no longer needed, it just takes up space) and exposes an API that's more close to Jdbi's that to JDBC's (developer friendly).

https://github.com/bpdbi

It has an extensive benchmark that shows it's on par or faster compared to other db connectivity stacks.

[−] joenot443 36d ago
I'm still working on Nottawa (https://nottawa.app) - free live audioreactive visuals for everyone.

It's a node based workstation for generating live visuals using shaders, webcams, local files, and more. 100+ effects and source types.

Nottawa's aimed somewhere between the Resolume and TouchDesigner market. VJs and musicians who are interested in live visuals but don't have the time or funds to dive into a pro setup.

It's built in C++ with OpenFrameworks, ImGui, BTrack, and more. Right now I'm doing a front-end rewrite in SwiftUI which bridges back to C++ while keeping all the rendering in OpenGL.

[−] zc4242 36d ago
I'm building a good intermittent fasting app for iOS using SwiftUI and native Apple APIs for the most "Apple" experience possible. The app is 100% free and without ads.

https://apps.apple.com/si/app/fast-slow-fasting-tracker/id67...

[−] flockaroo 36d ago
"Cars on Mars" ...a scifi racing/shootout/exploring game with portals into stylized worlds - all content is purely made from math+code https://store.steampowered.com/app/4269050/Cars_on_Mars/
[−] geekysquirrel 36d ago
So great to see how much stuff there is going on outside of AI!

I've been working (on and off for over a decade) on a way to manage my unwieldy photo and video collection. I experimented with so many tools before but ultimately nothing ticked all my boxes so I wrote my own. Admittedly lots of niche stuff like proper support for UTC time, stereo photos and partial dates and things like 100% offline face detection and custom tag hierarchies and querying without a database. Each time I add a new feature I'm having a blast :)

https://gitlab.com/geekysquirrel/memo2

[−] danish00111 32d ago
Building Questly — story-driven practice for real-world conversations which you play like a game. The core insight: people know what to do in hard situations. They freeze because they've never practiced the actual moment. Questly is the reps. https://questly.academy/
[−] ostefani 36d ago
I am working on a network scanner in Go. No AI there, just probes and packets

https://github.com/ostefani/subnetlens

[−] alfanick 36d ago
LEGO. I build LEGO, because I like it and it puts a smile on my face :)
[−] sntran 36d ago
Between job searches, I'm working on implementing the WHATWG Web APIs on top of Elixir.

https://github.com/sntran/web

I love Elixir but I had been a JS developer by trade. Bridging that interface keeps my brain focusing on building instead of splitting between JS and Elixir.

Still a lot to do, but I love the progress so far. This puts the joy of building something back to me.

[−] scoofy 36d ago
I’ve talked about it many times here, but I’m slowly building golfcourse.wiki, a golf wiki, because the golf world focuses all it’s attention on “the best” golf course, and the vast, vast, vast majority of interesting courses get zero attention.

I thought it was a website that should exist during the pandemic, so I built it. It’s been slowly growing ever since, because most of the time you really only need to add the info once.

[−] mhrmsn 36d ago
I recently started with Paperless-ngx and wanted to also include archive serial numbers (ASNs) for all paper documents using small label stickers, so I built a small tool to create and print ASN label sheets. It's free, no sign up, no ads and just runs in the browser:

https://asnlabels.com

If you're also using Paperless-ngx with ASNs or use them for something else, feedback welcome :)

[−] edelind 31d ago
A new habit tracker, which aims to cover any possible need a user can have https://tapastracker.app/
[−] neverminder 36d ago
I'm building my woodworking workshop. It's gonna take a long long time for AI to invade this area if ever. It's very therapeutic and works as an escape from all the AI craze.
[−] sakamotosan 36d ago
VERDURE is still a creative plant-generation sandbox where you grow and sculpt stylized trees.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4069810/VERDURE/

[−] biswajitkar01 32d ago
I am working on an interesting calculator called minusplus.app ( -+ ).

This is an infinite canvas calculator. Where you click anywhere and type numbers, Press space or enter, and it will automatically calculate. You can tag, add comments, and MinusPlus has some great shortcuts, which make it efficient to calculate.

I am an SAP Finance consultant, and have to do a lot of calculations daily. And after using this, I can't go back to any other normal calculator.

[−] injidup 36d ago
A replacement for CMake/Ninja using golang.

https://github.com/bradphelan/nuke-engine/blob/trunk/USERGUI...

After a day of hating on CMake generator expressions I just wanted a proof of concept that something better is possible.

An example build is https://github.com/bradphelan/nuke-engine/blob/trunk/example...

[−] networkOne 35d ago
I am building nOne, the first subjective layer of the Internet, or more accurately, a permission layer underlying the engines/platforms/automation. Although it does pertain to AI, its more than that... it is a permission system for email, AI, and cognitive inputs (undisclosed automation, what you permit in your feeds, etc). It encompasses the entirety of the digital realm.

We have created a permission system within our social worlds... time to apply the same standards to the digital realm.

https://network1.site

[−] fredley 36d ago
Playdate games! Super constrained/lo-fi/retro and really a joy to program without AI.

Hyper Vector is dropping on Catalog next week!

[−] ewf 29d ago
Embed Workflow (https://embedworkflow.com). Embeddable workflow builder for SaaS platforms. Your users design and run their own workflows inside your product.

5+ years now, bootstrapped. I still write most of the code. The product itself isn't AI, it's orchestration. Visual builder, triggers, delays, webhooks, execution logic. Some of our users do wire up AI models or agents through it, but the core is just helping non-technical people build automations for our clients product.

[−] omgtehlion 36d ago
I'm scratching my own itch: building a yet another audio signal generator for smartphone. I need some extra functionality that is not available elsewhere, and impose some limitations "just because": it must be bare minimal PWA.

But actual app does not matter, the main take away for me is: it is easy and fast to write bloatware (esp. with AI), but not that easy to distill to what is really needed. And what looked like a weekend project, a couple of hours max (with help of AI), now lingers for 2+ weeks on-and-off on evenings (of manual effort).

[−] richard_shelton 36d ago
I am building educational 16-bit game console for low-cost FPGA chips.

https://github.com/true-grue/Brus-16

[−] ambewas 36d ago
still working on https://stringscales.com - fun sideproject to visualize guitar scales on a configurable fretboard, with interactive note highlighting to a backingtrack.

The backingtrack is what I'm actively improving right now. It's just a pad running now, but it will turn into a full track with bass/drums/piano/... and will feature a comprehensive chords based editor so you can add and save your own progressions with a logged in account.

[−] sinansari 30d ago
Simplyhra.com

When I was early in my startup, health insurance terminology and finding company sponsored health insurance as a founder of 2 employee company sucked.

So I launched Simplyhra, it basically helps you reimburse your personal marketplace health insurance premium, cobra premium if you are in your old employers plan and your eligible expenses like pharmacy, copays, coinsurance, blood tests, imaging etc.

It's very straight forward, especially when compared to navigating group plan landscape.

PS: DM me for discount code if anyone needs health coverage or wants your company to pay for your existing coverage.

[−] t_mahmood 36d ago
I'm working on a daily journal app using rust and iced. Where you can quickly jot down your thoughts or information in a single line

All data are stored in text file, following the most general markdown formats, so it's easy to just open the text file and change.

Also, it supports TODO, and looking to add support for reminders, scripting support, calculation, tabular data using CSV, etc.

UI is complete keyboard driven.

Core intention is, managing your journals in single line, with really fast keyboard access, and stored in text file

[−] hagbard_c 36d ago
I recently made a 'notification-driven RPC' app for Android to help me help others:

Notifactor (Android App)

A lightweight native Android app that intercepts notifications on the device and triggers actions based on configurable rules.

The app uses Android's NotificationListenerService API. Once granted notification access it receives a callback for every notification posted on the device. It then checks each notification against configured rules and runs the configured action.

Why would you want this?

I don't know why you would want this but I can tell you why I made it: to make it easier to control some functions on Android devices used by people I often help using them in some way. My mother's Android TV (which I use to communicate with her through Linphone), phone and tablet sometimes stop doing the right thing. I live about 1300 km to the north of where she lives so I can't just hop on my bike to fix things. Thus far I relied on a set of Termux scripts on these devices to keep a reverse ssh tunnel open to an endpoint on my server but this has a number of drawbacks: the tunnel is not always there when I need it due to WiFi dropouts and other similar problems and the constant connection uses battery power on the phone and tablet. If only I could cause the tunnel to be created when I need it and brought down when it is not needed... Well, that is possible using Notifactor by sending a notification on a specific channel (ntfy refers to these as topics) whereupon Notifactor runs a Termux script which manages the tunnel (etc.).

[−] grmnygrmny2 36d ago
Thank you for this!

I’m making a digital ESP32 powered synthesizer at https://subalpinecircuits.com/. It’s been a ton of fun, learning so much about every part of the process (and I don’t use LLMs). Currently I’m learning FreeCAD and figuring out what my case design will be. Woodworking, CAM and DFM is a whole other world for a software guy!

[−] cammasmith 36d ago
Built a SQL interface for DynamoDB. I was tired of constantly trying to find workarounds for querying on a NoSQL database, so I built a direct interface for DynamoDB, which I'm calling DynamoSQL. With it, you can use standard SQL (even JOINs) on DynamoDB. I'm really excited about it, and I'm starting beta trials this week.

https://dynamosql.com

[−] chromaport 29d ago
I’m building Chromaport — a low-latency remote desktop for gaming, work, and collaboration. It lets you stream your own PC or cloud machine to other devices with a focus on responsiveness and input feel.

It’s still early, but the goal is basically making remote machines feel local, especially for interactive use cases like gaming and creative work.

https://chromaport.com

[−] exossho 35d ago
I'm building a YouTube for recipes. Basically it is YouTube clone, but improved to follow the actual recipe (ingredients, steps, etc.)

Was frustrated with discovering and following online recipes (blogs are fludded with SEO content, YouTube is not optimized for recipes).

So I gave it a try to build something I wanted.

https://www.cookcook.it

[−] austinjp 36d ago
A crossword puzzle generator, just for fun. Grid generator in Python because it's easy to hack around and grid generation doesn't need to be particularly fast. Go for populating the grid with words because with large grids there are combinatorial explosions, and Go's speed is beneficial.

Not source-available yet because it's a bunch of hacks (particularly the Python) but maybe one day.

[−] mattrighetti 36d ago
I’ve just released v2 of https://kintoun.app which is something I’ve been working on for quite a while now.

It’s an iOS client for Cloudflare and it covers a lot of resources with this last release.

Next bit of work is to clean the swift sdk a bit and make it open source, it’s been heavily inspired by the python-cloudflare sdk.