Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

7 Prevalent Themes in the HN discussion

# Theme Representative quote (author)
1 AI‑driven narrative games / TTRPG simulators “It ended up being somewhat of a cross between a Telltale game, a Visual novel, and a TTRPG.” – frostbyrne

“The biggest challenge has been making sure the AI GM can stay coherent and organized… I have an agent that manages arcs across each tier.” – frostbyrne
2 AI coding‑harness and plugin ecosystems “I’m working on what I call a Software Delegate… It treats agentic coding like a durable CI‑style process.” – vroni

“I’ve started a repo of functional ‘emotions’ that can be injected into agents to counteract mis‑aligned behaviour.” – jondwillis

“I’ve built probity – a library that blocks agents from breaking rules across Claude, Codex, Copilot.” – nizoss
3 Automated asset generation & reuse pipeline “I have a private vs public flag for assets… I’m using embeddings to parse if an asset already exists in the public pool and reuse it.” – frostbyrne
4 AI evaluation, benchmarking & visual analytics “I’m working on a helic­al 3‑D renderer of OHLC data for S&P 500 … It encodes volume in candle thickness.” – division_by_0

“BuilderMark calculates how much of your code is written by agents.” – davidcann
5 Personal AI‑powered assistants & data trackers “I’m building a voice‑first universal audio guide (artsplain.com).” – cryo32

“I’m building Lexeme – a SaaS that tracks how LLMs cite your product and tells you what to fix first.” – sagi21805
6 AI‑assisted hardware / sensor projects “I’m working on a voice‑first, interactive universal audio guide.” – cryo32

“I’m using a TI dev board with c7x and c66 DSP cores for PEQ and FIR room correction … Will try a virtual bass array next.” – recursive-call
7 Open‑source AI tools and community side‑projects “I’m building Betterleaks – the successor to Gitleaks with GitHub scanning and CEL filtering.” – zricethezav

“I’m working on Mesaphore – an Excel‑like spreadsheet backed by Parquet that will eventually replace Excel’s limits.” – microflash

Only the most‑referenced themes are listed; each entry includes a short, directly‑quoted excerpt from the HN discussion to illustrate the theme.


🚀 Project Ideas

ArcFlow

Summary

  • Provides a context‑aware narrative engine that manages world, character, and scene arcs for AI‑driven TTRPG style games.
  • Solves the railroading and coherence problems highlighted by frostbyrne and jondwillis.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Indie game developers, TTRPG hobbyists, AI‑driven storytellers
Core Feature Automatic arc tracking, scene pre‑generation, and rule‑based deviation handling
Tech Stack Node.js (NestJS), React, Rust (for token‑budget calculations), OpenAI / Anthropic APIs
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Subscription (Free tier for 10 concurrent games, $15/mo for pro)

Notes

  • Directly addresses frostbyrne’s comment “I need to manage arcs across each tier… avoid railroading”.
  • Would be a natural extension for platforms like Orpheus, giving them a stable engine. ## ReuseAI Assets

Summary

  • Caches and reuses AI‑generated game assets across campaigns by detecting visual/audio similarity.
  • Tackles frostbyrne’s “asset generation is expensive” pain point.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Indie devs, AI‑GM projects, tabletop simulators
Core Feature Asset fingerprinting, CDN storage, reusable flag system, public vs private pools
Tech Stack Python (FastAPI), PostgreSQL, TensorFlow (CLIP embeddings), AWS CloudFront
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Pay‑as‑you‑go API tiered by asset requests (Free 10k/mo, $0.001 per extra)

Notes

  • Mirrors blinkbat’s suggestion and frostbyrne’s reuse idea.
  • Users like privacy‑focused tools; this adds a federated reuse pool.

PrivacySearch

Summary

  • A federated, privacy‑first search engine index that aggregates results from self‑hosted providers (e.g., DuckDuckGo, Searx) without tracking.
  • Provides an alternative to Uruky’s privacy concerns and the call for ethical outreach.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Privacy‑conscious users, EU‑based startups, indie devs looking for ethical search
Core Feature Index mirroring, no‑logging meta‑search, optional paid “priority query” slot
Tech Stack Go (gRPC), Elasticsearch clones, Docker, Cloudflare Workers for edge routing
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Revenue‑share with participating providers, $5/mo for custom provider hosting

Notes

  • HN users repeatedly mentioned “ethical outreach” and “privacy‑first search engine”. This builds on that gap.

AgentContext

Summary- Library that standardizes context window management for LLM‑driven agents, handling token budgeting, rule enforcement, and modular “arc” modules.

  • Addresses jondwillis’s call for a unified harness and the need for consistent context.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience AI‑engineers building MCP agents, Claude Code plugins, GPT‑based harnesses
Core Feature Token‑budget allocator, rule‑engine for forced actions, plug‑in hooks for arcs
Tech Stack TypeScript (npm), Rust (for deterministic token accounting), OpenAPI spec
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: SaaS for managed context service $9/mo per project

Notes

  • Directly mirrors jondwillis’s “ai harness plugin build system” and the fragmentation discussion.
  • HN community values reusable tooling to avoid reinventing context handling.

Streamline Dashboard

Summary

  • Minimalist, cross‑platform dashboard for monitoring Linux host metrics and Docker containers with a single page view.
  • Fulfills austin‑cheney’s desire for “more informative and resource efficient” OS monitor.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience DevOps engineers, Linux hobbyists, small‑team ops
Core Feature Real‑time CPU, memory, disk I/O, network, per‑container stats; exportable JSON
Tech Stack React, WebSocket (Node.js), Prometheus Node Exporter, Tailwind CSS
Difficulty Low
Monetization Revenue-ready: Hobby (Free open source, optional $3/mo for premium widgets)

Notes- The original HN thread about “task manager that works on Linux … docker … streaming sockets

Read Later