Show HN Daily Selection (2025-07-16)
- Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL
- Beyond Z²+C, Plot Any Fractal
- We made our own inference engine for Apple Silicon
- The Card Caddie, free tool to optimize credit card points
- Encode Base64
- Pagy 2.0, a free drag-and-drop website builder
- Mochi Invaders – Like Space Invaders but for Practicing Japanese Kana
- BotBudget – AI Agent Cost Calculator
- RooAGI's Roo-VectorDB: A New PostgreSQL Extension for Vector Search
- Minesweeper game I built to be real-time Multiplayer
- RAGsplain – What does your RAG model see before it answers?
- I bulit Kanba, open source alternative to Trello, self-hostable PM tool
- Compare Speech APIs Live (OpenAI, Google, Deepgram, Soniox, etc.)
- Weekday clock, a clock for people who dont work or go to school
- LockIn – Track and visualize wasted time on iPhone
- Local Lens – MCP that captures logs and network reqs for debugging
- Phasers – emergent AI identity project using GPT-2 and memory shadows
Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL [Consumer Tech]
326 points, 68 comments
A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and reinforcement learning.
- Powered by GPT-4o for intelligent control
- Uses reinforcement learning for adaptive behavior
- Features soft, tentacle-like robotic design
Discussion Link, Original Link
Beyond Z²+C, Plot Any Fractal [Developer Tools]
60 points, 19 comments
A LaTeX-to-WebGL fractal graphing calculator that supports custom equations, animation, and Mandelbrot/Julia Set styles.
- Parses LaTeX to WebGL for custom fractal equations
- Supports animation by adding variables
- Works with Mandelbrot or Julia Set calculations
- Requires a graphics card or integrated graphics
- Example equations: sin(z²+c), c^z, z^{1.7}+c
Discussion Link, Original Link
We made our own inference engine for Apple Silicon [Developer Tools]
142 points, 42 comments
A Rust-based inference engine for Apple Silicon that outperforms llama cpp in all use cases.
- Written in Rust for performance
- Faster than llama cpp in all benchmarks
- Modular design allows adding support for any kernel and platform
- Open to community feedback
Discussion Link, Original Link
The Card Caddie, free tool to optimize credit card points [Finance]
4 points, 4 comments
A free tool to optimize credit card points by recommending the best card for each purchase.
- Tracks rewards categories to maximize points and perks
- Simple and easy-to-use interface
- Includes a Chrome extension for quick access
- Free to use with no cost
- Demo available on YouTube for guidance
Discussion Link, Original Link
Encode Base64 [Developer Tools]
3 points, 2 comments
Encode Base64
- Simple tool for Base64 encoding
- No additional features or text provided
Discussion Link, Original Link
Pagy 2.0, a free drag-and-drop website builder [Design]
5 points, 4 comments
Free drag-and-drop website builder with custom domain support.
- Free plan available
- Custom domain support
- Two years of development iterations
Discussion Link, Original Link
Mochi Invaders – Like Space Invaders but for Practicing Japanese Kana [Education]
3 points, 0 comments
Mochi Invaders is a Space Invaders-style game designed to help users practice Japanese kana.
- Space Invaders-inspired gameplay
- Focuses on practicing Japanese kana characters
- Interactive and engaging learning tool
Discussion Link, Original Link
BotBudget – AI Agent Cost Calculator [Finance]
3 points, 0 comments
BotBudget is a free calculator for forecasting expenses of AI agents across multiple LLM models and AI services.
- Multi-service workflows (LLM + STT/TTS + RAG + guardrails)
- Recent pricing data for major providers
- Built-in tokenizer for prompt estimation
- Cost projections with growth scenarios
- Shareable team links
Discussion Link, Original Link
RooAGI's Roo-VectorDB: A New PostgreSQL Extension for Vector Search [Developer Tools]
3 points, 0 comments
Roo-VectorDB is a PostgreSQL extension optimized for high-performance vector search, offering improved speed and scalability over existing solutions.
- Built on PostgreSQL for metadata search and relational database scalability
- Enhances PGVector with optimizations in search strategies and memory management
- Supports higher-dimensional vectors
- Benchmarked performance comparable or superior to Milvus in QPS
- Designed as a core storage component for AI-focused products
Discussion Link, Original Link
Minesweeper game I built to be real-time Multiplayer [Entertainment]
17 points, 5 comments
Real-time multiplayer Minesweeper game with collaborative and competitive features.
- Live multiplayer gameplay with multiple participants
- Scoring system that rewards correct moves
- Adjustable board sizes for different skill levels
Discussion Link, Original Link
RAGsplain – What does your RAG model see before it answers? [Developer Tools]
3 points, 1 comments
A tool to debug RAG models by visualizing retrieved context chunks before they are processed.
- Upload documents in various formats (PDFs, audio, YouTube links)
- Choose retrieval methods (semantic, keyword, or hybrid)
- View exact chunks of context and match scores
- Helps identify retrieval issues affecting model performance
- Open-source and free to use
Discussion Link, Original Link
I bulit Kanba, open source alternative to Trello, self-hostable PM tool [Productivity]
3 points, 0 comments
Open-source, self-hostable project management tool as an alternative to Trello.
- Open-source alternative to Trello
- Self-hostable for privacy and control
- Designed for project management tasks
Compare Speech APIs Live (OpenAI, Google, Deepgram, Soniox, etc.) [Audio]
6 points, 1 comments
Compare live speech recognition APIs from OpenAI, Google, Deepgram, Soniox, and others.
- Real-time comparison of multiple speech APIs
- Supports major providers like OpenAI and Google
- Helps evaluate accuracy and performance differences
Discussion Link, Original Link
Weekday clock, a clock for people who dont work or go to school [Life Assistant]
4 points, 3 comments
A clock designed for people who don't work or attend school, focusing on weekdays.
- Targets non-working or non-student individuals
- Emphasizes weekdays over weekends
- Simple, purpose-built design
Discussion Link, Original Link
LockIn – Track and visualize wasted time on iPhone [Productivity]
3 points, 0 comments
Track and visualize wasted time on iPhone.
- Tracks time spent on iPhone
- Visualizes wasted time data
- Helps users identify unproductive habits
Discussion Link, Original Link
Local Lens – MCP that captures logs and network reqs for debugging [Developer Tools]
3 points, 0 comments
Local Lens is a local debugging tool that captures browser logs, network requests, and backend server logs for analysis via an LLM.
- Captures browser console messages, network requests, and backend logs
- Exposes data to an LLM through an MCP/HTTP server
- 100% local with data stored in SQLite
- No external data sharing, ensuring privacy
Discussion Link, Original Link
Phasers – emergent AI identity project using GPT-2 and memory shadows [Developer Tools]
3 points, 0 comments
A lightweight AI identity experiment using GPT-2-mini to simulate emergent linguistic identity through recursive memory and prompting.
- Runs locally on modest hardware (CPU or 4GB GPU)
- Features recursive memory engine with shadow attention logic
- Includes self-referential prompting loops for simulated "mind"
- Human-readable JSON memory files and modular configuration
- Inspired by philosophy, recursion, and emergent identity
- GitHub repo with examples, presets, and starter script