IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Show HN: Things to Do API

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Theme 1 – Immediate usability and appeal
Users praise the tool’s slickness and quick results:

“super slick! got results quickly and am getting more interesting and in the know kind of events than other tools” – lap248

Theme 2 – Maintenance concerns tempered by enthusiasm
Commenters acknowledge the effort required to keep the service current, yet remain eager to adopt it:

“This feels hard to maintain and keep up‑to‑date, but I would definitely use it! Great idea.” – egonschiele

Theme 3 – Public‑service vision for a core human problem
Several see the project as a low‑cost, donation‑funded public good akin to Wikipedia or MusicBrainz:

“Solving this issue a core problem for humanity, and it goes hand in hand with the need for a public service. I'm actually working to do this at ultra low cost as a public service like Wikipedia or musicbrainz. I'll be publishing global costs to serve and letting people donate to support.” – fellowniusmonk

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

EventWiki: Community‑Curated Event Encyclopedia

Summary

  • A collaborative platform where anyone can add, edit, and verify local and niche events, keeping the database fresh without a central team.
  • Core value proposition: provides up‑to‑date, interesting event listings that users discover faster than with existing tools.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Event enthusiasts, community organizers, and casual users seeking unique happenings
Core Feature Wiki‑style event pages with version history, moderation tools, and geo‑search
Tech Stack React frontend, Node.js/Express backend, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch for search, Docker
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users praised the slick results and desire for a maintainable solution (“super slick! got results quickly…”, “This feels hard to maintain and keep up-to-date, but I would definitely use it!”).
  • Encourages discussion on open knowledge sharing and could evolve into a public service similar to Wikipedia or MusicBrainz.

Low‑Cost Event Crawler Network

Summary

  • A distributed scraping framework that volunteers run to ingest event data from public sources, normalizing it into a shared open repository.
  • Core value proposition: keeps event listings current at minimal operating cost, addressing the maintenance burden highlighted by commenters.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, data volunteers, and small event platforms needing fresh data
Core Feature Modular crawlers with scheduler, deduplication pipeline, and API endpoint for consuming normalized events
Tech Stack Python (Scrapy/FastAPI), Redis queue, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes (optional), GitHub Actions for CI
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Directly responds to egonschiele’s concern about maintenance (“hard to maintain and keep up-to-date”) by spreading the workload.
  • Aligns with fellowniusmonk’s vision of an ultra‑low‑cost public service; costs can be published and donations solicited to cover hosting.

Open Event API as a Public Service

Summary

  • A freely accessible, self‑hostable API that serves aggregated event data, accompanied by a hosted instance funded by donations.
  • Core value proposition: offers developers a reliable, up‑to‑date event feed without the operational overhead, fostering ecosystem growth.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Hackers building event‑related apps, startups, and researchers
Core Feature Read‑only REST/GraphQL endpoint with filtering by location, category, and date; includes data provenance and update timestamps
Tech Stack Go (Gin) or Rust (Actix) for API, PostgreSQL with PostGIS, GraphQL engine (Hasura optional), Prometheus/Grafana for monitoring
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue‑ready: donation‑based hosting with optional premium support tiers

Notes

  • Mirrors fellowniusmonk’s plan to publish global serving costs and accept donations, making the service sustainable as a public good.
  • Would be welcomed by HN commenters who want a slick, maintainable solution (“super slick! got results quickly…”) and see the need for a community‑driven data source.

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