Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Rune is now open source

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Three prevalent themes in the discussion

  1. Open‑source licensing & contributor compensation
  2. Many commenters praised the GPLv3 license and the novel profit‑sharing model.
  3. fishgoesblub: “Lovely to see … under the GPLv3, and not some crap like MIT.”
  4. anigbrowl: “The open ledger and profit‑sharing for contributors might be an even more interesting innovation than the IDE itself.”
  5. ernestrc (author): “We’re still working on the legal details, but should have something finalized in the coming weeks.”
  6. _bent warned about financial incentives, showing the topic sparked debate.

  7. Cross‑platform packaging & distribution

  8. Users repeatedly asked about availability on Fedora, Flatpak, Homebrew, and similar systems.
  9. purpleidea: “I will try this as soon as there is a package in Fedora… That's my personal subjective bar to choosing a new EDITOR.”
  10. criticalfault: “what about flatpak?”
  11. ernestrc: “I've been using Arch Linux and macOS… It could be a good option until Rune is popular enough… also working on a cask for homebrew.”
  12. Conan_Kudo: “Since it's written in Go, you might want to reach out to the Fedora Go SIG…”.

  13. Editor usability, features & remote work experience

  14. Discussion centered on keyboard modes, theme support, demo videos, and remote editing (SSH/Tailscale).
  15. bobajeff: “One thing I would like to see on the home page is a video showing it being used… Also would like to see how it looks in a light theme… keyboard driven… modal or modeless?”
  16. ernestrc replied: “Three modes, vim, emacs and standard…”, “I hate being in front of a camera” (video), “Not great… I prefer dark themes” (light theme).
  17. rao‑v: “Could this (optionally) just run over Tailscale…?”
  18. ernestrc: “SSH is always an option… we embed tsnet in Rune and use headscale as the coordination server.”
  19. natnatenathan: Highlighted desire for document viewers and task lists, showing broader IDE expectations.

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

RuneShowcase

Summary

  • Generates short, high-quality demo videos and light/theme screenshots for open-source editors/IDEs automatically from a config file.
  • Core value proposition: eliminates the manual effort of recording videos and creating theme galleries, helping projects attract users faster.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Maintainers of open-source editors, IDEs, and developer tools who need polished marketing assets
Core Feature CLI tool that launches the editor in headless mode, runs a predefined script, captures video (via ffmpeg) and screenshots for light/dark themes, then assembles a short demo clip
Tech Stack Go (for cross‑platform CLI), Docker/xvfb for headless UI, ffmpeg, optionally puppeteer/goquery for theme switching
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: SaaS subscription ($10/mo per project) for cloud rendering; open‑source CLI free for self‑hosted

Notes

  • HN commenters asked for a video showing Rune in use and a light‑theme preview; this tool solves exactly that (see bobajeff’s request).
  • Could spark discussion on best practices for developer‑tool marketing and lower the barrier for new projects to get visibility.

PeerEdit

Summary

  • A peer‑to‑peer real‑time collaboration library that uses CRDTs over Tailscale or direct SSH tunnels, removing the need for a trusted central coordination server.
  • Core value proposition: developers can co‑edit code securely and privately, addressing trust concerns raised about centralized servers.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Teams and individual developers who want collaborative editing without trusting a third‑party server (e.g., remote pair programming, classroom settings)
Core Feature CRDT‑based text sync plugin that works over any TCP tunnel; integrates with popular editors via Language Server Protocol or extension APIs
Tech Stack Go (for cross‑platform backend), libp2p or ctunnels for transport, Yjs or Automerge for CRDT, editor extension shims in TypeScript/Go
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Hosted relay service with free tier and paid plans for higher bandwidth ($5/user/mo)

Notes

  • rao‑v expressed reluctance to trust a coordination server and suggested using Tailscale or SSH; PeerEdit offers exactly that option.
  • Enables discussion about decentralized collaboration tools and could be adopted by projects like Rune, Zed, or VS Code for trust‑less pairing.

DocTask

Summary

  • An editor/terminal extension that provides an integrated HTML/markdown preview pane, live task list with inline commenting, and a unified terminal view.
  • Core value proposition: gives developers a single‑screen workspace for prototyping, documentation review, and task tracking, reducing context switching.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers who frequently switch between editor, browser, and task tools (e.g., web frontend devs, documentation writers)
Core Feature Split‑view layout: editor on left, live preview/comments on right, task board at bottom; supports markdown, HTML, and JSX preview with hot reload
Tech Stack TypeScript/VSCode extension API (or NeoVim Lua plugin), using Monaco/WebView for preview, XState for task state, xterm.js for terminal
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby (open‑source extension; optional premium team sync service could be added later)

Notes

  • natnatenathan described needing a document viewer for HTML prototypes and a task list for projects/agents; DocTask directly fulfills that request.
  • Provides practical utility for many HN readers who use terminal‑centric workflows and would love to see integrated preview/comments without leaving their editor.

Read Later