Alternatives
Products that do what A user powered copy editing tool (running on Ars Technica) does
I blew off a bunch of "serious" side work last month and built a tiny little embeddable editing tool that I've wanted to have for Ars Technica since, well, the beginning of internet time. It lets any random user make edit suggestions for writers/editors to consider and act on. I think it's pretty cool and it's gotten some good use over the last few weeks. Of note, it's uses a single-field signup form. Edit administration is currently email based, so all it needs is an email address to get people going. I'm sure I'm not the only person to ever do this, but I basically just turned it on one…
- 1OE
Hey hey! This is a tool I've worked on for a while, and it's reached the point I'm quite happy with the results! Comments and suggestions are appreciated :) Enjoy your day!
2023 · github.com
- 2FW
I’m specifically looking for a tool a user shared on here that facilitated writing for content by scrolling up and disappearing text as new text was inputted. I believe it was a HTML/JSS only solution - a small personal project. I’ve done a lot of focused searches, but haven’t been able to find this comment. That said, I love these sorts of projects. I know they’re a self-indulgence and often a distraction. I’m celebrating that for a moment, personally. Please share your favorites writing tools, the smaller and more personal the better.
2021
- 3HM
One year ago, I downloaded the news.arc code and decided that I would teach myself programming by building a better aggregator. At that time, I had some rudimentary HTML knowledge, and little FORTRAN under my belt. I knew that I wanted an aggregator that could support a wide range of submissions, and one that could scale without losing quality for the user. Hubski is what I have to show for my time and effort. The easiest way to describe Hubski is to say that it uses a commenting system akin to HN or Reddit, but uses a sharing scheme like Twitter. You have a personal feed comprised of the…
2011
- 4IC
Hi HN! I've been tinkering on a programmatically controlled typewriter. I've got a working prototype and it's been a lot of fun to play with. Of course I connected it to ChatGPT so I can chat with it, and I also have it acting as a clock, but it doesn't just type out the time. It writes a poem about the time. I'm posting this to gauge interest in purchasing one. It's all handmade, so I can't scale it up, but if enough people are into it, I might make a small batch. Or maybe sell it as a kit for the DIY crowd. Anyway, just wanted to put it out there and see what you all think. Thanks for…
2024 · notes.bayesup.date
- 5QG
This is a tool which lets you easily manage different versions of ideas, helpful for writing essays. I've found myself wanting this every single time I go through the drafting process when writing, and I've been frustrated every time I find myself accidentally working on an old draft just because there was a paragraph that I liked better. This solves it. I hope the community like this as much I enjoyed working on it! Note that it's currently a beta waitlist because there's some bugs with the undo/redo state management and so I want to dogfood it for a bit for reliability. It says April…
Mar 2026 · quillium.bryanhu.com
- 6AW
Hey, I've made a pdf reader with ai assistance, you can quickly ask questions about the text and the images, and it will have context about all of your reading material so you can ask questions freely, try it now, I'm in open beta to find bug and get feedback. upcoming features: - Highlighting - Highlighting with Notes - Bibliography - Automatic Reference file opening - Improved UX and robustness currenlty alot of bugs so please let me know if you found any. feedback appreciated
2025 · pdf-hub.com
- 7IH
Hey HN This project took almost two years and is probably one the best alternatives for tools like Miro and MindMeister Let me know what you think
Nov 2025 · nodeland.io
- 8AD
Hi all, I threw together a small prototype I am calling “Notepad.ai”. A new take on UIs for interacting with LLMs. While I enjoy using LLM’s in the chat format I wanted to see what it would be like to do it in a more long form style. It let’s you write in a pretty free form, much like Window’s Notepad, but you can choose to hit ctrl+[ to analyze the text with a preset prompt of your choosing. It has a few other small features. It’s WIP and very experimental. I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts. Video: https://youtu.be/ntdlgFmSxQY Live Demo:…
2024 · github.com
- 9BA
Writing is hard, and it's tempting to just let AI do the whole thing So I built an Obsidian plugin that keeps AI in its place Highlight a sentence, get some options, pick the one you like Sharpens your writing instead of automating it
Jun 2026 · rephrasethis.co
- 10
Hey yall, I built this for my makerspace. We wanted to let each other borrow things, but also didn't want to put up a big shiny sign saying "hey everyone, my garage has a super fancy oscilloscope just sitting there" and also didn't want to necessarily always need to say yes to everything. However, when I show it to people, they've been suggesting using it for other things like board games, or wedding equipment, etc. I'm still trying to find PMF, so please let me know what you think! For the stack, it's all Elixir + LiveView which is really nice, and then Fly.io, Fly's MPG, Tigris Data,…
25d ago · toolpool.garden
- 11IM
So hard to keep up with tooling and MLOps - I put it all in one place and got some tips from an experienced friend on what to use.
2025 · readyforagents.com
- 12IB
Hey HN! Last week I was working on a website and needed a way to synchronise visuals with live music. I've used MIDI controllers for this before, but I am travelling right now and don't have mine with me. So I had the crazy idea to build a browser extension that uses the keyboard as input and includes a sequencer. I gave myself 24 to work on it. It ended up taking longer (of course), specially since I ended up creating a demo, a small landing, docs, and an intro video. Took me one week from idea to launch (pushed quite a bit tbh). Features: - Works as a browser extension. Atm distributed…
2024 · minitap.io
- 13IB
Hey so I am making my own book reader and wanted to share it with y'all on hackernews and I saw a submission talking about DRM free books[0] so I decided to submit this submission on Hackernews to show what I am upto :-D I prefer minimalism so I have created three different flavors of it depending upon the particular use-cases and I have linked the most minimalist one as the submission. If someone is interested in a Epub/pdf reader, I have recently made one: https://epub.mirror.forum/ After making that, I was also feeling the need of having standard book downloads and…
Jun 2026 · epub.mirror.forum
- 14IB
I’ve always liked fast online tools for jotting notes or organizing thoughts — but most “productivity” sites either save data to the cloud, require sign-ups, or are full of distractions. So I built an online productivity tools website, a small collection of browser-based tools. It includes an online notepad where you can write and save notes right in your browser, a cornell notes tool available in more than 20 languages, and more coming soon like a pomodoro timer and a simple blank page for focused writing. Everything works entirely in-browser using localStorage — no accounts, no cloud sync,…
Oct 2025 · onlinenotep.ad
- 15IB
As a high school student, I love LLMs and the execution of Apple's Appel Intelligence Writing Tools, but was disappointed that nothing like that existed for Windows. So, I created Writing Tools, a better than Apple Intelligence open-source alternative that works system-wide on Windows! Key features: - Uses Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash model for superior AI-assisted writing (much better than the tiny 2B parameter Apple Intelligence model) - Works in any application with a customizable hotkey - Proofreads, rewrites, summarizes, and more - Free and privacy-focused (your API key stays local, no…
2024 · github.com
- 16IB
Hey HN! Software engineer here. As an amateur youtuber, I've been struggling with thumbnails, especially since I don't have any design or editing skills. Decided to give it a try and make my own automatic thumbnail generator. Me being an ADHD person, made sure that there's no parameter tuning and shape choosing and fuss like that, just simply give prompt and generate thumbnail. Increased my CTR from 1.2% to 2.3% (faceless fantasy books niche on youtube) Thumbnail X (completely free for now) - https://thumbnailx.com/ Just wanna add that this is by no means a perfect thumbnail…
2025 · thumbnailx.com
- 17AF
https://github.com/inoda/private_journal Built this to use myself, and I'm curious if anybody would be interested in using it. I'm also wondering if anybody has tips to make it more secure (I'm super super new to encryption and whatnot). The security is probably a bit overkill since chances are that nobody cares about what I'm journaling, but it is fun to implement from a code standpoint.
2019
- 18AB
Recently, I found myself having to read the book "C++ primer" and I just couldn't do it. Maybe my attention span is too little now with Claude and Codex, maybe I'm lazy... but I just couldn't get myself to focus. While reading, I needed something to do. I wanted to talk to the text, I wanted to leave notes, I wanted to use to use my keyboard to quickly flip through pages. The only good available option on a Mac was "Preview" and it was ok, but definitely not there. So I built Quincy primarily for myself. With it you can - "Talk" to the page you're reading, create a quiz about the page, and…
Jun 2026 · tryquincy.live
- 19II
I can't say "I created a tool" because obviously I only had an idea, then asked Cursor to implement it and 15 minutes later it was ready ;) Often I found I was manually replacing em dashes with hyphens in AI-generated text before I use them in copy, PR descriptions etc. It still feels like a shame to flare the text "you wrote" was not really human made. To automate these removals, here it is: super tiny online page. I made it for myself, but whoever wants, you can use it as well. I am not going to monetize it or promote more than this post.
May 2026 · undsh.com
- 20MP
I got a bit carried away writing an editor so I could draw some pixel art for starting my blog and ended up with some pwsh spaghetti that's quite fun to use.
2022 · shaunlawrie.com
- 21FS
Initial quick launch! Run your account through this free analytical tool. Would appreciate feedback on features you would like to see.
2024 · delta-analysis.com
- 22IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026
- 23IB
I’ve spent the last 2.5 months building a product that runs LLM-powered code reviews on my pull requests — and I just launched it. The tool is built specifically for solo developers. You install it on your repo, trigger a scan by creating a pull request, and it leaves structured review comments using OpenAI under the hood. Funnily enough, I used the dev version of this app to review its own pull requests while building it. It helped me spot bugs, simplify structure, and keep quality high — all with minimal need for another human in the loop. Things I want to try out in the next months : -…
2025 · codii.dev
- 24WI
I've been wondering how I could use LLMs to help me write, without taking my own voice away. I arrived at a workflow where the AI has strict instructions not to give me any text, just to give me tips, but it was clunky to see which parts of the text the critique referred to. To solve it, I made Lucid. I made it mostly for myself, but I added a "bring your own key" system for others to use it. I hope you like it!
May 2026 · writelucid.cc
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