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Hi HN,

I’ve been working on Gaming Couch, a web-based game platform where up to 8 players use their smartphones as controllers to play real-time action mini-games on a central browser screen.

TL;DR:

- 18 competitive mini-games for up to 8 players

- Runs entirely in the browser

- Phones act as controllers (no apps, no accounts required)

- Focused on fast, chaotic, real-time party games (no trivia)

- Currently in public early access

Try it here: https://gamingcouch.com. Open the link on a computer, host a session, scan the QR code with your phone(s) and play!

What is it?

Gaming Couch is a party game platform where friends play short competitive action games together on one screen, using their phones as controllers (there's also support for physical gamepads if that's more your thing!)

I intentionally avoided trivia and text-heavy games. Many people don’t write or read English fluently, and I wanted games where reaction, timing, and chaos matter more than spelling.

It’s currently in early public access with 18 mini-games, all made by me and a two friends. All game rounds last ~1 minute, scores carry over, and after each round players vote on the next game. If you’re solo, 3 games support bots, but it’s best with a full couch of people as half the fun comes from the social aspect of playing together!

Why I built it:

For the last 15+ plus years, me and my friends have loved video game nights but organizing them has always been a PITA when you have more than 4 people playing:

- Different games were under different Steam accounts requiring downloads and installation.

- Extra controllers were missing (somebody forgot to bring theirs) or they wouldn’t pair.

- Consoles were expensive and not always available if we were on the road.

Once I started building it, other dev friends asked if they could make games for it too, which led me to realize this could also be a platform for small party games, especially for gamejam devs who don’t want to or have time to build multiplayer infrastructure from scratch. This is why supporting third-party games is the next major feature I’m working on.

Tech stack:

- Games run locally in the host’s browser (no streaming of games)

- Phones connect via WebRTC to the host session (1–10ms latency in ideal conditions with P2P connection)

- Fallback to TURN when direct P2P connection isn’t possible e.g. due to strict firewall settings in corporate networks or use of VPN's

- Website/Platform made with React + TypeScript

- Existing games made with Unity or just plain JS/TS.

- Backend: Supabase (Postgres + auth only, currently only used for optional user accounts)

How is it different from e.g. Jackbox, Airconsole or Nintendo?

Jackbox is absolutely great, but it’s heavily dependent on English literacy and "being funny" on the spot. I wanted something focused on fast, chaotic, real-time action games that work even if your friends speak different languages or just want to smash buttons. Also, I'm not a fan of their party pack model...

AirConsole is the most well known comparison to Gaming Couch in terms of technology and execution, but I feel there is a gap for a curated experience where the UI is unified, rounds are 60 seconds, and the competitive "meta-game" (scoreboards/voting) is baked into the platform. And in any case AirConsole was acquired by a car-software company and have pivoted their focus from couch gaming toward in-car entertainment.

Nintendo games are usually the gold standard in the party game category but the HW and games cost so much! With Gaming Couch, I want to keep the accessibility threshold as low as possible so everyone is able to play without upfront HW or SW costs.

What do you think of this? Are you an interested player or perhaps a developer who has had an idea to develop a fun 8 player mini-game but has been daunted by the idea thus far?

I made a web game inspired by Geoguessr and Wordle, where you get shown a 3D model of a random human protein each day, and you have to triangulate its gene name using similarity clues.

My background is in wet lab molecular biology and I intend this game to be engaging mostly to other biologists. But if you're outside the field, I'm interested to know if you can still solve it with browser use LLMs, and if you learned something interesting doing so. Let me know what you think.

I made it with Claude over the last 2 months. My coding experience is limited to basic python data analysis and figure making. I've seen people online asking, "Now that we have coding AI, why isn't there a deluge of awesome AI-generated apps made by non-coders?" - if this sounds like you, check out Geneguessr to understand what a web app by a non-coder looks like.

I might write more about the process if there's a demand, but what really unlocked the project for Claude was Linear MCP, where it could put each individual issue on a shared Kanban board. This, and Playwright MCP for testing on live site, were the two workhorses that got me through this. For bugs Claude couldn't one-shot, Linear was great for consolidating issue information so that I could dump it into ChatGPT Codex - it would usually think for like half an hour, output very confusing explanations, but the bug was gone.

Game is free, no log-in required, sorry if you run into any mobile bugs - didn't test it much there.

https://geneguessr.brinedew.bio/

Arka (arka.so) is a AI analytics tool that lets you get insights + charts from any (structured or unstructured) data source. I built it because I was getting tired of writing SQL queries and creating Metabase charts at my last job.

I would love some feedback on our product:

How is the landing page / website

What use cases could this unlock for you?

We have some awesome tech behind the scenes and have some initial customers, but I am really keen on expanding towards a PLG motion where folks can sign up and get insights about their data fast.

Would love brutally honest feedback!

I wanted to share this fun craft activity for the holidays that I've been doing with my family over the last few years. I came up with these while cutting up some cans trying to make an aluminum version of paper spinners.

There are a variety of shapes that work, but generally bigger+lighter spinners are better. Also incandescent bulbs are the best, but LEDs work too.

They remind me of candle carousels I would see at my grandparents' house during Christmas. Let me know what you think!

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets AI assistants check domain availability in real-time.

Features: - Multi-source: Porkbun, Namecheap, RDAP, WHOIS - Price comparison across registrars - Social handle checking (GitHub, Twitter, npm, etc.) - Premium domain detection with pricing insights

Works with any MCP-compatible client.

Install: npx -y domain-search-mcp

I built a PyTorch framework that achieves ~40% effective parameter reduction with 1.58x training and 2.05x inference speedups on mid-sized models—while keeping accuracy almost intact.Key ideas: Dynamic tension thresholds aggressively prune low-importance weights (with rollback for stability) Vibration-based deferral skips low-signal computations Entropy scheduling + sparse conversion for hardware gains

It's a drop-in replacement for nn.Linear (CurvatureTuner) and works out-of-the-box on MLPs. Planning Transformer tests next.Benchmark on ~400k param MLP (synthetic data, 5 epochs): Baseline: Train 2.45s / Inf 0.0045s Enhanced: Eff params ~281k (40% reduction) / Train 1.55s (1.58x) / Inf 0.0022s (2.05x)

Repo (MIT): https://github.com/wwes4/AI_Accel_1.5x Feedback, forks, and real-dataset tests very welcome! Inspired by unconventional efficiency ideas.

I wanted to see how far I could go building a notes app using only what modern browsers already provide – no frameworks, no storage APIs, no build step.

What it does:

Single HTML file, no deps, 111 loc

Notes live in the URL hash (shareable links!)

Auto-compressed with CompressionStream

Plain-text editor (contenteditable)

History support

Page title from first # heading

Respects light/dark mode

No storage, cookies, or tracking

The entire app is the page source.

https://textarea.my/

i started the selenium project 21 years ago. vibium is what i'd build if i started over today with ai agents in mind. go binary under the hood (handles browser, bidi, mcp) but devs never see it. just npm install vibium. python/java coming. for claude code: claude mcp add vibium -- npx -y vibium v1 ships today. ama.

This article discusses the importance of implementing a safety net for AI language models like Claude, which can help prevent unintended behaviors or outputs. It highlights key considerations, such as model oversight, prompt engineering, and the need for comprehensive testing and monitoring.

We’ve been experimenting quite a bit with AI website builders and kept seeing the same pattern:

Sites often look finished to users — modern UI, fast loads, everything appears “done” — but when search engines crawl them, much of the main content isn’t actually present yet.

In many cases the issue isn’t SEO basics, keywords, or content quality. It’s simply when the HTML is generated and what Google receives on first visit.

We wrote up a calm, non-marketing explanation of what’s going on, how to spot it yourself (even if you’re not very technical), and why this keeps happening with many modern AI builders.

We’re also building a tool (Pagesmith) around this problem, but the article stands on its own and should be useful even if you never use our product.

Happy to answer questions or be challenged on any of the claims.

Hi HN

I built CineCLI — a cross-platform terminal app to browse movies, view details, and open torrents directly in your system torrent client.

Features: - Search movies from the terminal - Rich UI with ratings, runtime, genres - Interactive & non-interactive modes - Magnet handling via system default client - Linux/macOS/Windows support - No ads, no tracking

GitHub: https://github.com/eyeblech/cinecli PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/cinecli/

Would love feedback from terminal + Python folks

The Shi-Mo Protocol is a decentralized, open-source protocol that aims to enhance web accessibility and inclusivity by allowing users to customize websites to their individual needs, such as adjusting font size, color contrast, and other accessibility features.

HTML2PNG.dev is a free online tool that allows users to convert HTML pages into high-quality PNG images, enabling easy sharing and integration of web content on various platforms.

Hi HN,

I’m one of the maintainers of Bridge Anonymization. We built this because the existing solutions for translating sensitive user content are insufficient for many of our privacy-concious clients (Governments, Banks, Healthcare, etc.).

We couldn't send PII to third-party APIs, but standard redaction destroyed the translation quality. If you scrub "John" to "[PERSON]", the translation engine loses gender context (often defaulting to masculine), which breaks grammatical agreement in languages like French or German.

So we built a reversible, local-first pipeline for Node.js/Bun. Here is how we implemented the tricky parts:

0. The Mapping

We use XML-like tags with ID’s that uniquely identify the PII, `<PII type=”PERSON” id=”1”>`. Translation models and the systems around them work with XML data structures since the dawn of Computer Aided Translation tools, so this improves compatibility with existing workflows and systems. A `PIIMap` is stored locally for rehydration after translation (AES-256-GCM-encrypted by default).

1. Hybrid Detection Engine

Obviously neither Regex nor NER was enough on its own.

- Structured PII: We use strict Regex with validation checksums for things like IBANs (Mod-97) and Credit Cards (Luhn). - Soft PII: For names and locations, we run a quantized `xlm-roberta` model via `onnxruntime-node` directly in the process. This lets us avoid a Python sidecar while keeping the package ‘lightweight’ (still ~280MB for the quantized model, but acceptable for desktop environments).

2. The "Hallucination" Guard (Fuzzy Rehydration)

LLMs often "mangle" the XML placeholders during translation (e.g., turning `<PII id="1"/>` into `< PII id = « 1 » >`). We implemented a Fuzzy Tag Matcher that uses flexible regex patterns to detect these artefacts. It identifies the tag even if attributes are reordered or quotes are changed, ensuring we can always map the token back to the original encrypted value.

3. Semantic Masking

We are currently working on "Semantic Masking"—adding context to the PII tag (like `<PII type="PERSON" gender="female" id="1" />` ) to preserve (gender) context for the translation. For now, we are relying on a lightweight lookup-table approach to avoid the overhead of a second ML model or the hassle of fine tuning. So far this works nicely for most use cases.

The code is MIT licensed. I’d love to hear how others are handling the "context loss" problem in privacy-preserving NLP pipelines! I think this could quite easily be generalized to other LLM applications as well.

Puncker-RT is a real-time, open-source micropunching system that enables the fabrication of micron-scale features on various materials. The project provides a comprehensive toolkit for designing, controlling, and monitoring the micropunching process, making it a valuable tool for researchers and engineers working in the field of microfabrication.

I built WebPtoPNG after getting frustrated with converters that throttle uploads or phone data; everything runs straight in the browser, and never asks for a signup.

Hi everyone! My name's Luke and I made the original Jmail here alongside Riley Walz. We had a ton of friends collaborate on building out more of the app suite last night in lieue of DOJ's "Epstein files" release.

Please AMA!

Started off as a fun touch-screen theremin, and evolved into a full-fledged sequencer/groove box. Features hand feature detection to play the instrument and control effects.

Warning: Under heavy development! Still somewhat raw, but good enough to play around with :)

Hey HN, I built this because standard to-do lists let me hoard tasks forever. I wanted a 'use it or lose it' mechanic. The Tech: SvelteKit (Static) Dexie.js (IndexedDB wrapper) for client-side storage Web Audio API for the procedural sounds No account required, no server tracking (except privacy-preserving PostHog). Source code is messy but the logic is simple. Would love feedback on the offline-sync strategy.

A reading list for top Hacker News posts grouped monthly. Shows top posts by month with read/unread tracking. Set a monthly goal (15, 25, 50), mark posts as you go, see your progress.

Features: - Monthly view sorted by points (surfaces the best, not just the newest) - Mark as read/unread, or hide permanently - Syncs across browsers via your own private GitHub Gist - No server, no account, no tracking – just open the HTML file - Works offline, state persists in localStorage

Try it out here: [https://www.readhn.top/]

This article provides a curated list of 'Awesome ChatGPT Prompts', a collection of prompts and examples to help users get the most out of the ChatGPT language model, covering a wide range of topics and applications.

I wanted to try Confer — Moxie Marlinspike’s private AI chat — but I don’t have a Mac lying around. Since it requires isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(), and most Linux setups don’t qualify, I put together a minimal platform authenticator that works with what I have: a TPM and a fingerprint reader.

It’s a small bridge: Chrome extension + Go backend, using the TPM for key storage and fprintd for user verification.

Write-up: https://vitorpy.com/blog/2025-12-25-confer-to-linux-tpm-fido... Code: https://github.com/vitorpy/tpm-fido2-prf

Nothing fancy. No guarantees — it was a quick hack. But if it helps someone else get Confer working on Linux :)

Tabs, spotlight-like window finder, borders, etc... High Niri parity

Hey HN, I'm Andres. I've been building Kapso as a solo founder, and just crossed 4,000 developers, all organic.

WhatsApp has 3B+ users and 98% open rates. You'd expect developers to be building tons of stuff on it, especially when the US is the fastest-growing market in WhatsApp usage.

But it’s not happening… And I'd bet it's because the DX is painful.

Every team needs to build the same features again and again. Meta fires webhooks for everything. There's valuable data in there for debugging, but no way to make sense of it without building your own tooling.

That’s why I built Kapso. What you get:

- Working WhatsApp API + inbox in 2 minutes, not days - Full observability: every webhook parsed, every message tracked, actual debugging tools - Multi-tenant platform: generate a setup link, customer connects their Meta account, done - Workflow builder for deterministic automations and AI Agents - WhatsApp Flows: build mini apps inside WhatsApp using AI + serverless functions - Docs that work for humans and LLMs

We're up to 95% cheaper than Twilio, with a generous free tier (2,000 messages per month).

We also open source several tools: a TypeScript client for the WhatsApp Cloud API, a reference WhatsApp Inbox implementation, and a voice AI agent for WhatsApp.

GitHub: https://github.com/gokapso/

Happy to answer questions!

https://kapso.ai/

I missed clippy and bonzi buddy, so I spent the past few days reversing and implementing microsofts old agent format (acs) and wrote a small viewer on top of it (wasm + typescript)

You can check out the code here as well: https://github.com/Ell/bonzi

I built Pivor because I wanted a simple, self-hosted CRM without cloud lock-in or per-seat pricing.

Features: Clients, Contacts, Communications tracking (emails, calls, meetings, tasks), dark mode.

Stack: Laravel 12, Livewire 3, Tailwind CSS 4. Runs on SQLite by default, supports MySQL/PostgreSQL. Docker ready.

AGPL-3.0 licensed.

https://github.com/Lexaro-Software/pivor

Looking for feedback!

I was looking for some fun project to play around with the latest Gemini models and ended up building this :)

Enter your username and get:

- Generated roasts and stats based on your HN activity 2025

- Your personalized HN front page from 2035 (inspired by a recent Show HN [0])

- An xkcd-style comic of your HN persona

It uses the latest gemini-3-flash and gemini-3-pro-image (nano banana pro) models, which deliver pretty impressive and funny results.

A few examples:

- dang: https://hn-wrapped.kadoa.com/dang

- myself: https://hn-wrapped.kadoa.com/hubraumhugo

Give it a try and share yours :)

Happy holidays!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632

Hey HN! During this holiday season, I got the idea to update a small game I made 4 months ago.

Now, the ant collects snowflakes instead of apples to eat. The background trees have been replaced. I also added a small snowfall animation :)

Happy holidays everyone!