🛠️ Hacker News Tools

[CLI Tool] Show HN: Latex-wc – Word count and word frequency for LaTeX projects I was revising my proposal defense and kept feeling like I was repeating the same term. In a typical LaTeX project split across many .tex files, it’s awkward to get a quick, clean word-frequency view without gluing everything together or counting LaTeX commands&#x2F;math as “words”.<p>So I built latex-wc, a small Python CLI that:<p>- extracts tokens from LaTeX while ignoring common LaTeX “noise” (commands, comments, math, refs&#x2F;cites, etc.)<p>- can take a single .tex file or a directory and recursively scan all *.tex files<p>- prints a combined report once (total words, unique words, top-N frequencies)<p>Fastest way to try it is `uvx latex-wc [path]` (file or directory). Feedback welcome, especially on edge cases where you think the heuristic filters are too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

[DevOps] Show HN: 127 PRs to Prod this wknd with 18 AI agents: metaswarm. MIT licensed A few weeks ago I posted about GoodToGo <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46656759">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46656759</a> - a tool that gives AI agents a deterministic answer to &quot;is this PR ready to merge?&quot; Several people asked about the larger orchestration system I mentioned. This is that system.<p>I got tired of being a project manager for Claude Code. It writes code fine, but shipping production code is seven or eight jobs — research, planning, design review, implementation, code review, security audit, PR creation, CI babysitting. I was doing all the coordination myself. The agent typed fast. I was still the bottleneck. What I really needed was an orchestrator of orchestrators - swarms of swarms of agents with deterministic quality checks.<p>So I built metaswarm. It breaks work into phases and assigns each to a specialist swarm orchestrator. It manages handoffs and uses BEADS for deterministic gates that persist across &#x2F;compact, &#x2F;clear, and even across sessions. Point it at a GitHub issue or brainstorm with it (it uses Superpowers to ask clarifying questions) and it creates epics, tasks, and dependencies, then runs the full pipeline to a merged PR - including outside code review like CodeRabbit, Greptile, and Bugbot.<p>The thing that surprised me most was the design review gate. Five agents — PM, Architect, Designer, Security, CTO — review every plan in parallel before a line of code gets written. All five must approve. Three rounds max, then it escalates to a human. I expected a rubber stamp. It catches real design problems, dependency issues, security gaps.<p>This weekend I pointed it at my backlog. 127 PRs merged. Every one hit 100% test coverage. No human wrote code, reviewed code, or clicked merge. OK, I guided it a bit, mostly helping with plans for some of the epics.<p>A few learnings:<p>Agent checklists are theater. Agents skipped coverage checks, misread thresholds, or decided they didn&#x27;t apply. Prompts alone weren&#x27;t enough. The fix was deterministic gates — BEADS, pre-push hooks, CI jobs all on top of the agent completion check. The gates block bad code whether or not the agent cooperates.<p>The agents are just markdown files. No custom runtime, no server, and while I built it on TypeScript, the agents are language-agnostic. You can read all of them, edit them, add your own.<p>It self-reflects too. After every merged PR, the system extracts patterns, gotchas, and decisions into a JSONL knowledge base. Agents only load entries relevant to the files they&#x27;re touching. The more it ships, the fewer mistakes it makes. It learns as it goes.<p>metaswarm stands on two projects: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;steveyegge&#x2F;beads" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;steveyegge&#x2F;beads</a> by Steve Yegge (git-native task tracking and knowledge priming) and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;obra&#x2F;superpowers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;obra&#x2F;superpowers</a> by Jesse Vincent (disciplined agentic workflows — TDD, brainstorming, systematic debugging). Both were essential.<p>Background: I founded Technorati, Linuxcare, and Warmstart; tech exec at Lyft and Reddit. I built metaswarm because I needed autonomous agents that could ship to a production codebase with the same standards I&#x27;d hold a human team to.<p>$ cd my-project-name<p>$ npx metaswarm init<p>MIT licensed. IANAL. YMMV. Issues&#x2F;PRs welcome!

[Other] GitHub experience various partial-outages/degradations

[Code Quality] Show HN: HoundDog.ai – Ultra-Fast Code Scanner for Data Privacy Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m one of the creators of HoundDog.ai (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hounddogai&#x2F;hounddog" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hounddogai&#x2F;hounddog</a>). We currently handle privacy scanning for Replit&#x27;s 45M+ creators.<p>We built HoundDog because privacy compliance is usually a choice between manual spreadsheets or reactive runtime scanning. While runtime tools are useful for monitoring, they only catch leaks after the code is live and the data has already moved. They can also miss code paths that aren&#x27;t actively triggered in production.<p>HoundDog traces sensitive data in code during development and helps catch risky flows (e.g., PII leaking into logs or unapproved third-party SDKs) before the code is shipped.<p>The core scanner is a standalone Rust binary. It doesn&#x27;t use LLMs so it&#x27;s local, deterministic, cheap, and fast. It can scan 1M+ lines of code in seconds on a standard laptop, and supports 80+ sensitive data types (PII, PHI, CHD) and hundreds of data sinks (logs, SDKs, APIs, ORMs etc.) out of the box.<p>We use AI internally to expand and scale our rules, identifying new data sources and sinks, but the execution is pure static analysis.<p>The scanner is free to use (no signups) so please try it out and send us feedback. I&#x27;ll be around to answer any questions!

[Other] Show HN: Sklad – Secure, offline-first snippet manager (Rust, Tauri v2) Hi HN, I’m Pavel.<p>I built Sklad because, as a DevOps engineer, I was frustrated with how I handled operational data. I constantly need access to SSH passwords (where keys aren&#x27;t an option), specific IP addresses, and complex CLI one-liners. I realized I was storing them in insecure text files or sticky notes because standard clipboard managers felt too bloated and password managers were too slow for my workflow.<p>I wanted a &quot;warehouse&quot; for this data—something that lives quietly in the system tray, supports deep hierarchy, works completely offline, and looks industrial.<p>The app is built with Rust and Tauri v2. The core technical challenge was mapping a local JSON tree structure directly to a recursive native OS tray menu. This allows you to navigate nested folders just by hovering, without opening a window.<p>For security, I implemented AES-256-GCM encryption with Argon2 for key derivation. When the vault locks, the sensitive data is wiped from memory, and the tray menu collapses to a locked state.<p>It was an interesting journey building this on the Tauri v2 Beta ecosystem. I’d love to hear your feedback on the implementation, especially regarding the Rust-side security logic.<p>Repo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Rench321&#x2F;sklad" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Rench321&#x2F;sklad</a>

[Other] Building a Telegram Bot with Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects and Grammy

[Other] Show HN: Is AI "good" yet? – tracking HN sentiment on AI coding A survey tracking developer sentiment on AI-assisted coding through Hacker News posts.

[Other] Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery My wife was planning to open a micro-bakery. We looked at production management software and it was all either expensive or way too generic. The actual workflows for a small-batch manufacturer aren&#x27;t that complex, so I built one and open-sourced it.<p>Craftplan handles recipes (versioned BOMs with cost rollups), inventory (lot traceability, demand forecasting, allergen tracking), orders, production batch planning, and purchasing. Built with Elixir, Ash Framework, Phoenix LiveView, and PostgreSQL.<p>Live demo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;craftplan.fly.dev" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;craftplan.fly.dev</a> (test@test.com &#x2F; Aa123123123123)<p>GitHub: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;puemos&#x2F;craftplan" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;puemos&#x2F;craftplan</a>

[API/SDK] Show HN: Voiden – an offline, Git-native API tool built around Markdown Hi HN,<p>We have open-sourced Voiden.<p>Most API tools are built like platforms. They are heavy because they optimize for accounts, sync, and abstraction - not for simple, local API work.<p>Voiden treats API tooling as files.<p>It’s an offline-first, Git-native API tool built on Markdown, where specs, tests, and docs live together as executable Markdown in your repo. Git is the source of truth.<p>No cloud. No syncing. No accounts. No telemetry.Just Markdown, Git, hotkeys, and your damn specs.<p>Voiden is extensible via plugins (including gRPC and WSS).<p>Repo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;VoidenHQ&#x2F;voiden" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;VoidenHQ&#x2F;voiden</a><p>Download Voiden here : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;voiden.md&#x2F;download" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;voiden.md&#x2F;download</a><p>We&#x27;d love feedback from folks tired of overcomplicated and bloated API tooling !

[Other] Show HN: Zuckerman – minimalist personal AI agent that self-edits its own code Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m building Zuckerman: a personal AI agent that starts ultra-minimal and can improve itself in real time by editing its own files (code + configuration). Agents can also share useful discoveries and improvements with each other.<p>Repo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zuckermanai&#x2F;zuckerman" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zuckermanai&#x2F;zuckerman</a><p>The motivation is to build something dead-simple and approachable, in contrast to projects like OpenClaw, which is extremely powerful but has grown complex: heavier setup, a large codebase, skill ecosystems, and ongoing security discussions.<p>Zuckerman flips that:<p>1. Starts with almost nothing (core essentials only).<p>2. Behavior&#x2F;tools&#x2F;prompts live in plain text files.<p>3. The agent can rewrite its own configuration and code.<p>4. Changes hot-reload instantly (save -&gt; reload).<p>5. Agents can share improvements with others.<p>6. Multi-channel support (Discord&#x2F;Slack&#x2F;Telegram&#x2F;web&#x2F;voice, etc).<p>Security note: self-edit access is obviously high-risk by design, but basic controls are built in (policy sandboxing, auth, secret management).<p>Tech stack: TypeScript, Electron desktop app + WebSocket gateway, pnpm + Vite&#x2F;Turbo.<p>Quickstart is literally:<p><pre><code> pnpm install &amp;&amp; pnpm run dev </code></pre> It&#x27;s very early&#x2F;WIP, but the self-editing loop already works in basic scenarios and is surprisingly addictive to play with.<p>Would love feedback from folks who have built agent systems or thought about safe self-modification.

[Database] Sqldef: Idempotent schema management tool for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite

[Testing] Show HN: Apate API mocking/prototyping server and Rust unit test library

[Other] Coding Agent VMs on NixOS with Microvm.nix

[Other] Rewrote our Python API gateway in Go and nobody cares

[DevOps] Show HN: Minimal – Open-Source Community driven Hardened Container Images I would like to share Minimal - Its a open source collection of hardened container images build using Apko, Melange and Wolfi packages. The images are build daily, checked for updates and resolved as soon as fix is available in upstream source and Wolfi package. It utilizes the power of available open source solutions and contains commercially available images for free. Minimal demonstrates that it is possible to build and maintain hardened container images by ourselves. Minimal will add more images support, and goal is to be community driven to add images as required and fully customizable.

[Other] Genode OS is a tool kit for building highly secure special-purpose OS

[Other] Show HN: Quorum-free replicated state machine built atop S3 Hi HN,<p>I’m sharing the alpha release of S2C, a state machine replication system built atop S3.<p>The goal is to enable a distributed application to maintain consistent state without needing a quorum of nodes for availability or consistency.<p>The idea came from a side project that was using S3 and where I needed strongly consistent distributed state but wanted to avoid adding a separate consensus dependency. I initially tried to use S3 directly for coordination, but it became messy. Eventually, I realized I need a replicated state machine with a deterministic log, and then it ended up as a standalone project.<p>To mitigate S3&#x27;s latency and API costs, it uses time- and size-based batching by default.<p>S2C supports: - Linearizable reads and writes (with single node) - Exactly-once command semantics (for nodes with stable identities) - Dynamic node joins and cold-start recovery from zero nodes - Split-brain safety without clocks or leases - Snapshotting, log truncation, etc.<p>Of course, it trades latency and S3 operation costs for operational simplicity - not meant to replace high-throughput Raft rings. And clearly, only usable in architectures that already use S3 (or compatible with similar guarantees).<p>It has passed chaos&#x2F;fault-injection tests so far (crashes, partitions, leader kills); formal verification planned.<p>It’s still alpha, but I’d love for people to try it, experiment, and provide feedback.<p>If you’re curious, the code, and an extensive deep dive guide are here: [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;io-s2c&#x2F;s2c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;io-s2c&#x2F;s2c</a>]

[CLI Tool] We have ipinfo at home or how to geolocate IPs in your CLI using latency

[Other] Show HN: Foundry – Turns your repeated workflows into one-click commands

[Other] Claude Code's GitHub page auto closes issues after 60 days