🛠️ Hacker News Tools

[Other] Show HN: Ark v0.5.0 – A Minimal, High-Performance Entity Component System for Go I’ve just released Ark v0.5.0, a lightweight Entity Component System (ECS) library for Go, built with a focus on performance and simplicity.<p>If you&#x27;re new to Ark: it&#x27;s a high-performance Go ECS library with a clean API and zero dependencies. Beyond its core ECS functionality, Ark stands out for ultra-fast batch operations and first-class support for entity relationships.<p>This release brings notable performance improvements to queries via smarter indexing, plus new methods for sampling random entities. The documentation has been expanded with a chapter on design philosophy and limitations, along with new examples covering advanced topics like entity relations, world locking, spatial indexing, and parallel simulations.<p>If you’re exploring ECS patterns in Go or looking for a an ECS that delivers performance without sacrificing usability, I’d love to hear your feedback. Contributions are welcome.<p>Changelog: github.com&#x2F;mlange-42&#x2F;ark&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;CHANGELOG.md

[API/SDK] Show HN: Robot MCP Server – Connect Any Language Model and ROS Robots Using MCP We’ve open-sourced the Robot MCP Server, a tool that lets large language models (LLMs) talk directly to robots running ROS1 or ROS2.<p>What it does - Connects any LLM to existing ROS robots via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Natural language → ROS topics, services, and actions (And the ability to read any of them back) - Works without changing robot source code<p>Why it matters - Makes robots accessible from natural language interfaces - Opens the door to rapid prototyping of AI-robot applications - We are trying to create a common interface for safe AI ↔ robot communication<p>This is too big to develop alone — we’d love feedback, contributors, and partners from both the robotics and AI communities.

[Package Manager] Show HN: Nixite – automatically install all your Linux software unattendedly Nixite generates a bash script to automatically install all your Linux software unattendedly. Nixite prevents prompts and picks the best installation method. Nixite supports Ubuntu-based systems and Arch-based systems. Nixite installs a nixite-updater script to update all package managers and software at once.

[Build/Deploy] Automate compile_flags for C/C++ projects on the Zig build system

[DevOps] Show HN: TailGuard – Bridge your WireGuard router into Tailscale via a container My elderly parents are behind a 5G connection in rural areas, and I help them manage their network from overseas. I found a reasonably priced 5G router that can do external antennas required for it to work, but the only reasonable ways to get access to it is either through OpenVPN or WireGuard, the latter of which is much more lightweight and preferred with the memory constraints of the device.<p>The problem with WireGuard is that it requires handling key management oneself, and configuring the keys to every device you want to access it from. It also doesn&#x27;t play nicely together with other VPNs, meaning I ended up connecting and disconnecting VPNs whenever I wanted to use them. This is especially evident on my phone, which only allows one VPN app at a time.<p>I was already using Tailscale as an easy way to handle homelab access with SSO, even if some computers are behind ISP CGNAT, and came up with this idea of spinning up a Docker container to connect the two. I found some suggestions for it online, but nothing ready to use. It ended up being more work than I expected to fine tune the routing, IPv6, firewall settings, re-resolving the DNS of the router on IP address changes etc.<p>I got it very stable eventually though, and wanted to share with everyone else. I think it&#x27;s cool to have the WireGuard router looking like any other Tailscale node in my tailnet now.

[Other] Show HN: Shellcast.tv – Stream your vibe coding

[Other] Show HN: Vicinae – a native, Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux Hi HN!<p>I’ve always been a fan of application launchers, and I was impressed by the approach the Raycast team took — especially their extension system. About six months ago I started building something similar for Linux, aiming to integrate deeply at the OS level and give extensions a lot of power.<p>Vicinae is written in C++ with Qt Widgets. I chose Widgets over QML for more imperative control of the UI, especially around extension handling. So far that’s worked well — modern C++ is great.<p>To support my goals I built a number of custom widgets, including a fully virtualized list that can efficiently render tens of thousands of items. That gave me a lot of respect for Qt — it’s a powerful framework that mostly stayed out of my way.<p>A key feature is support for Raycast extensions (React + TypeScript), most of which can be installed and used directly inside the launcher (though not all features are implemented yet). There’s also a native API package (@vicinae&#x2F;api) for writing Vicinae-specific extensions with additional capabilities. This required writing a custom React reconciler — surprisingly straightforward, though still unpolished.<p>Like Raycast, Vicinae ships with powerful built-in modules, but the goal isn’t to make a clone. I want it to grow into its own project that fits the FOSS model better, while staying compatible with the Raycast ecosystem. I also plan to bring it to other OSes eventually.<p>I’d love feedback on the technical approach, and suggestions for what would make this useful to you. Contributions are very welcome — I’ve already been pleasantly surprised by how quickly people started helping.<p>Docs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.vicinae.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.vicinae.com</a> Repo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vicinaehq&#x2F;vicinae" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vicinaehq&#x2F;vicinae</a>

[Other] Show HN: Superagents – connect spreadsheets to any database, API or MCP server Hi HN, I’m Eoin, founder of Sourcetable (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sourcetable.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sourcetable.com</a>).<p>Today, we’re launching Superagents. You can now connect your spreadsheet to any database, API or MCP server on the Internet. All of that data is available inside your spreadsheet, and you can use AI to analyze it and build models, reports and visualizations.<p>The reason I started the company is because I spent 10 years at startups across engineering and operations roles and realized that Excel and Sheets weren&#x27;t architected for the modern information environment. This creates a tremendous amount of nuisance and busywork cobbling together SaaS tools, reporting suites, and the misery of endless coordination meetings to make it all happen. (Boo meetings!)<p>Spreadsheets aren’t just a business application: they’re the original thinking tool. The quality of these tools has a downstream impact on analytical thinking and creativity writ large, so this is a problem worth solving. Fast forward to today, we’re a 6 person team taking on Excel, Sheets and ChatGPT, so we’re excited to hear what you think!<p>Who are Superagents for? Analysts, operators, and anyone doing data-centric work in spreadsheets. We see a tonne of finance people, of course, but also students, researchers and mom &amp; pop shops. Sourcetable&#x27;s superagents democratize data access and analysis, which is nice because our company’s mission is to make data accessible to everyone.<p>Why “Superagents”? Because they can plan and orchestrate other task-specific agents to complete your work for you. We have a lot of different AI tools and agents inside Sourcetable, but there’s a whole lot more on the Agentic Web. Superagents are like the conductor that coordinates them all and calls on them when needed. Also, it’s a fun feature name (thanks, Alyssa!)<p>If you remember the linked-data dream of the semantic web movement, that future is now: all of your business data is available and connected in Sourcetable.<p>How does it work? Sourcetable is running a python virtual machine under the hood. Everything is sandboxed, and there are hundreds of AI tools and libraries our AI can access. Superagents are also doing code-gen on the fly to solve problems. The closest system we have found is Replit’s sandboxed operating systems. Beyond that Mixtral, ChatGPT and Anthropic offer some limited data connectivity features, except these AI chat services lack the storage, compute, and code execution that Sourcetable and Replit provide. This is all very new.<p>How is this different to your previous data connectors, etc? We started out using ETL services to sync data and provide a GUI-driven PowerBI like experience in your spreadsheet. This was useful for people who knew SQL and how to write joins to combine fragmented data, but for everyone else (read: practically everyone), this solution just didn’t provide the frictionless, self-serve experience that we wanted.<p>Our choices were to switch the GTM motion or change the product, so we shelved that reporting suite and focused on our AI spreadsheet and waited for models to catch up with our ambitions. Now that they have, we’re re-launching Sourcetable with our original goal in mind: building a spreadsheet-based operating system for the Agent Web, with fully networked data access for <i>everyone</i> on your team.<p>AI is the great UX enabler.<p>Caveats:<p>* We heavily use Postgres, Google Analytics, Stripe and Google Search Console with Superagents.<p>* We haven’t tested every endpoint on the Internet. We find that mainstream, well documented applications work best.<p>* Yes, you can write data back to 3rd party applications and databases. We generally advise against this unless you understand the risks involved in giving AI write-access to your data.<p>Bonus round:<p>* All data connectors added during this launch week are FREE. (Regular AI messaging limits still apply.)<p>Product Feedback? eoin@sourcetable.com

[Other] Source code for the X recommendation algorithm

[Other] A new experimental Go API for JSON

[Other] Show HN: Run any GUI app in the terminal with term.everything

[Other] Show HN: Tablemd – canvas-based Markdown table editor I created a canvas-based Markdown table editor, which provides a novel (I think) editing experience. I&#x27;d love for people to try it out, or bookmark it for the next time they want to insert a one-off table into a Markdown-formatted comment. My design goals were 1) frictionless user input and 2) fast startup time.<p>Some good-to-knows:<p>- Can be used on mobile<p>- Table data is saved locally to the browser (nothing is sent to a server)<p>- I only tested this on a MacBook, so let me know if the trackpad calibration feels off

[CLI Tool] Show HN: Attempt – A CLI for retrying fallible commands Hi HN,<p>Here&#x27;s a tool I wrote for retrying fallible commands. Nothing groundbreaking here, this is a tool that&#x27;s been made many times (and several have been submitted to Show HN). Though this one does have a more comprehensive feature set than most. I hope one or two people will find it useful.<p>I wrote `attempt` for two reasons:<p>- To have a more featureful alternative to `wait-for-it.sh` for use in Docker Compose. Specifically to apply migration scripts to a database that may not be up yet. I wanted to be able to inspect the error messages from my migration tool &amp; retry on connection errors.<p>- To test a hypothesis I had that a good way to make a CLI was to copy the API of a good library (in this case, `tenacity`). I want to write a blog post at some point to discuss this at length, but the tl;dr is that I believe it was a success.<p>Here are some usage examples: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxbondabe.github.io&#x2F;attempt&#x2F;usage.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maxbondabe.github.io&#x2F;attempt&#x2F;usage.html</a><p>There may not be much to discuss for such a small tool, but I am open to all feedback and am happy to answer any questions.<p>Cheers,<p>Max

[Other] Using Emacs Org-Mode With Databases: A getting-started guide

[Other] Show HN: I made a simple ASCII-art analog clock in Emacs Just a toy, showing how easy it is to leverage built-in Emacs features (most notably Artist mode, which provides a set of functions for creating ASCII-art vector graphics) and things like trigonometric functions and timers to create something nice.<p>A short blog post mentioning some background (and showing a screenshot): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mbork.pl&#x2F;2025-09-08_Emacs_Artist_clock#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mbork.pl&#x2F;2025-09-08_Emacs_Artist_clock#</a>.

[Other] NPM debug and chalk packages compromised <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;advisories&#x2F;GHSA-8mgj-vmr8-frr6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;advisories&#x2F;GHSA-8mgj-vmr8-frr6</a>

[Other] Show HN: DevSwarm, run multiple AI coding assistants in parallel We wanted to run multiple AI coding assistants in parallel and swap models easily (Claude Code, local, Codex, etc.) without messing with the current branch.<p>DevSwarm is a mac&#x2F;windows desktop app that runs assistants on separate git branches so you can stay in the loop and compare&#x2F;merge safely. Not an IDE, an Augmented Development Environment (ADE); open any branch in your IDE with a click. We’ve been dogfooding it for months, including DevSwarm. Try it in minutes: download, open a repo, start two assistants. Free beta.

[Other] Logging in Go with Slog: A Practitioner's Guide

[Other] Go for Bash Programmers – Part II: CLI Tools

[Other] A clickable visual guide to the Rust type system