IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

End of an era for me: no more self-hosted git

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Generating summary…

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

BotShield

Summary

  • A lightweight, self‑hosted reverse proxy that detects and blocks AI‑driven scrapers using ML‑based request pattern analysis, TLS fingerprinting, and user‑agent heuristics.
  • Provides real‑time analytics, customizable honeypot endpoints, and a simple API for integrating with Nginx/Caddy or as a standalone service.
  • Gives self‑hosted site owners a cost‑effective alternative to Cloudflare’s paid bot protection.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Self‑hosted webmasters, open‑source project maintainers, small business owners
Core Feature AI‑bot detection & blocking, honeypot traps, analytics dashboard
Tech Stack Go (proxy core), TensorFlow Lite (ML model), Docker, Prometheus + Grafana
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue‑ready: $9/mo for premium analytics & auto‑updates

Notes

  • “Cloudflare will even do it for free.” – users want cheaper, self‑hosted solutions.
  • “I think the point of the post was how something useless (AI) and its poorly implemented scrapers is wrecking havoc…” – BotShield directly addresses this frustration.
  • The honeypot feature can lure scrapers into a trap, providing data for further analysis and deterrence.

ScrapePay

Summary

  • A pay‑per‑crawl gateway that sits in front of any website, charging scrapers per request while allowing normal users free access.
  • Integrates with existing CDN or reverse proxy setups; offers token‑based authentication and rate limiting.
  • Enables site owners to monetize scraping traffic and offset hosting costs.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Content publishers, API providers, self‑hosted sites with high scrape traffic
Core Feature Per‑request billing, token issuance, dynamic rate limiting
Tech Stack Node.js (gateway), Stripe API, Redis (rate‑limit store), Docker
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue‑ready: $0.01 per scrape + subscription for analytics

Notes

  • “Cloudflare launched a product to do that last year: pay‑per‑crawl.” – ScrapePay offers a self‑hosted alternative.
  • “I think the big nasty AI bots use 10s of thousands of IPs distributed all over China.” – By charging per request, site owners can recover costs from abusive traffic.
  • “Some run git over ssh, and a domain login for https:// permission manager etc.” – ScrapePay can be configured to allow authenticated users while charging unauthenticated scrapers.

StaticGuard

Summary

  • A build tool that converts dynamic web applications (e.g., Git repos, blogs, forums) into static sites with minimal, well‑defined endpoints.
  • Automatically removes deep commit URLs, generates a strict robots.txt, and injects a “scraper trap” that returns 404 for unknown paths.
  • Reduces server load, mitigates bot traffic, and improves resilience against AI scrapers.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Open‑source project maintainers, personal bloggers, small CMS users
Core Feature Static site generation, URL pruning, robots.txt & honeypot integration
Tech Stack Python (build scripts), Jinja2 templates, GitHub Actions, Netlify/Surge for hosting
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • “I made the same switch partly for ease of maintenance, but a side benefit is it's more resilient to this horrible modern era of scrapers…” – StaticGuard delivers that benefit.
  • “The scrapers found the domain through cert registration in minutes, before there were any backlinks.” – By limiting exposed URLs, the attack surface shrinks dramatically.
  • “Make only the HEAD of each branch available.” – StaticGuard implements this principle automatically, preventing deep scraping of commit histories.

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