Alternatives
Products that do what Gnosis, a knowledge base for what the code can't tell you does
For the past few years, I've been frustrated at how we document our products. The code can tell you what you ended up doing, maybe why you ended up doing it (if your team is disciplined about comments/documents), but it can't tell you why you didn't do what you didn't do. Time and time again, I've seen teams try to change something to a better way, only to realize why it was done the "worse" way in the first place. Documenting decisions not taken is just really hard, ADRs help but doing it for everything is just too noisy and time-consuming. What's more, most of the decisions just…
- 1IP
Hey HN, I just wanted to share that after five months of intense work and countless caffeine-fueled writing sessions, "Master Software Architecture: A Pragmatic Guide" is now available. Writing this book was a crazy time. I entirely focused on it, and it took exactly 753 hours of writing, editing, and image editing & resizing(!) until the premiere. Yes, the last one (images) was a killer. If you ever think about writing a book, reserve a lot of time for it unless someone else does it for you. As a result, I am handing you the nearly 400-page book. It is a guide that will help you connect all…
2024 · leanpub.com
- 2IB
Hi HN, A lot of the dev teams I have worked with had a lot of issues with their documentation. In fact, some of my easiest clients to get were from clients that had "black box" solutions that devs no longer at the company had created. Personally, writing documentation is like grinding nails on a chalkboard. I have been having a lot of fun with building solutions that can run in a distributed way, not something a dev needs to run themselves. And after a significant amount of testing and building out several different solutions, I finally have a solution that is easy to set up and runs in the…
Dec 2025 · codesummary.io
- 3SS
Hola HN! Long time lurker, sometimes commentor, first time poster here. I’ve been working alongside my two co-founders and a few colleagues on a project I’m excited (and a little nervous) to share with you all! Like many of us, I’ve lived a tortured existence with AI coding (is it vibes?) over the past few months - I think November was a big moment with this. But, one thing I’ve noticed after building orchestration layer after orchestration layer is that the thing I always came back to was “what the hell is Claude Code actually doing?” Perhaps it’s because of the time Claude Code got…
Jun 2026 · backplanes.com
- 4BP
We got tired of not being able to accurately answer "When will this be done?" and "Will anyone be required to work overtime on the current schedule?", or spending too much time in meetings and standups trying to answer those questions. Just opened up for beta. Would love some opinionated developers to guide future improvements (or feedback on the general idea).
2022 · projectburndown.com
- 5LI
Hi HN! I kept hearing about Lisp and why it was special but didn't have a great place to start. I wanted something self-contained that helped me develop intuition rather than fluency. My hope is this is helpful for casual programmers, professionals from other fields who interact with code, or engineers who haven't had much exposure to interpreters or compilers. Hope this helps anyone else who's curious about getting a sense of Lisp and what makes it special with a limited time investment! Feedback or other cool Lisp things welcome :)
2022 · github.com
- 6LA
Hello HN, I am building a devtool to understand existing codebases. The idea originates from my time at big tech as well as various attempts to get involved in open source projects. When I was in college I wanted to improve my coding skills by contributing to opensource projects. I would pickup a bug or feature request but I always found myself stuck at the very first step. I did not understood where and how to begin contributing. I once submitted a patch in firefox which was labeled "Good first issue" but that was still very handheld. The assigner told me exactly which files I need to…
2024 · lucidcode.ai
- 7
- 8CV
I worked as a software engineer at Amazon, SAP, and on open source. In all 3 places I have struggled with the friction of understanding codebases before I can make a contribution. I think this brain-fatiguing process can be improved. I am trying to solve it with a tool I built over the last 4 years called CodeCanvas: https://docs.code-canvas.com CodeCanvas visualizes codebases through interactive diagrams linked directly to source code. Users can record 'simulations' to demonstrate data flow and business logic. I’ve also recently added an LLM chat where it takes only the relevant…
2025 · pie-crepe-38f.notion.site
- 9
The thing you half-knew but never saw written down.
Jun 2026 · afroakito.github.io
- 10IB
Hi HN, I've been working on this for a while and it was hard to decide when to stop, either on the way information is presented or when to stop with adding entries. It's not meant as a blog, but rather as a reference that keeps growing. Link: https://thehardparts.dev Currently I've created 4 main section: - Failure Modes: ways project go wrong - Red Flags: early signals that are worth taking seriously - Tech Decisions: common and not so common trade-offs for hard choices - Playbooks - guided approach for situations that repeat I've also focused on creating links between them to…
Apr 2026 · thehardparts.dev
- 11IB
The main goal of this was to be able to not just run multiple Claude Code sessions at once, but actually manage them and keep track of what I was doing. Sometimes this is multiple attempts on the same task, sometimes I work several tasks at once. Really I was just sick of twiddling my thumbs waiting for the coding agent to finish, and I wanted it to be easy to work on/review/test another change while I waited.
2025 · github.com
- 12LB
Howdy friends! Tell me if this is an atrociously terrible idea - I've been working on building a leetcode for clientside devs so we can practice React and Javascript interview questions in a more concise way, I call it clientside.dev I just finished a beta version of it yesterday and plan on releasing it with many more problems on Jan 1st but it's there if you wanna play with it open to any ideas / feedback however mean or nice it may be :)
2022 · vacation-call-335691.framer.app
- 13PA
I have worked with AI assistants for a while, and while I am really excited about it, there were times when I felt really frustrated. LLM would end up in a loop with no end. This is when I started experimenting with creating work plans. Initially simple todo list, but it felt like "product vibing", so a bit more sophisticated later on. I started seeing value in it. The one day it hit me. Why not use the same GitOps principles to managing product tickets? I started playing with that and really liked the way it worked. After a chat with a friend of mine, I realised that a standard or a spec…
2025 · productascode.org
- 14TM
Figured I'd track the popular coding agents to see merge and approval rates. At first I was tracking Opened vs. Approved, but realized most people aren't approving; they just merge. I haven't found a way to reliably track the other agents (Jules, Devin, etc), since they don't have a standardized branch naming convention. Interesting to watch this over time. Open to ideas.
2025 · github.com
- 15IB
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
- 16PC
Built this with my roommate over the weekend. At the end of the game, GPT will share its reasoning for each choice, which yields some funny results and explains why its so hard to win. Enjoy!
2023 · codenames-with-gpt.netlify.app
- 17CA
I built this because I was tired of creating pull requests in 20 repositories just to change a single line of workflow job version. With Infra as AI, just mention the change. Agents work on all repos in parallel, read the docs, make a bunch of PRs and fill in the description. You can see the demo of the actual dashboard in the landing. Let me know your thoughts :) It means a lot to me!
Sep 2025 · infrastructureas.ai
- 18DC
I built this tool a couple days ago to temporarily hide your prints & comments. I wanted to focus on the core logic without having to constantly delete/add prints and comments. Lmk if you like it ;)
2024 · marketplace.visualstudio.com
- 19NI
Hi HN, I’m Alex of Nots.io (https://nots.io) Nots is a SaaS for engineering teams aimed to help keep project docs up-to-date by linking them to the source code. The problem: During my career, I saw so many times, how the company’s docs and internal knowledge pile up in some knowledge base, wiki, google docs or simply in .md files in the repo. And after a while, everything turns into a mess. It’s hard to find the right document and determine whether it actually covers the code developers are working on right now. When you find something, it’s tedious to detect if the document is not…
2020
- 20TD
Hello HN, I'd like to share an idea and a library that implements it. As a fan of "Specification by Example" (as described in Gojko Adzic's renowned book), I faced numerous challenges trying to introduce these ideas at work or in hobby projects. Surprisingly, the most challenging part was writing specifications and examples in Gherkin/Cucumber syntax and producing readable living documentation out of them. I believe that the Given... When... Then... format is not the best for user-facing documentation. Personally, I find novel-like narratives, filled with code examples, design…
2025 · github.com
- 21VN
I got the idea of [mindmap.so](http://mindmap.so/) out of my own frustration of managing my personal notes in Notion and Miro in parallel. I have built it 3 months back on top of excalidraw, posted it in Reddit a couple of times, and never looked back (was using it only for personal use). Little did I know that the small and nimble tool that I created has crossed 2000+ users (was so surprised when I saw the dashboard last week). It was all organic and word of mouth . Having 2000+ users trusting a product is no easy feat. That’s when I thought may be I should put some more…
2024 · mindmap.so
- 22IM
Based on the feedback from my closed beta customers and a lot of answers on this thread http://www.quora.com/Management/What-are-common-mistakes-that-new-or-inexperienced-managers-make/answer/Ian-McAllister, I decided to pivot my product to make a nimble performance documentation tool for managers to document the good/bad feedback to their reportees at one place. I am currently doing this by generating an email address that managers can 'cc' while emailing any feedback to their team members. All the feedback that is collected is visualized as a timeline…
2015
- 23
Agents start blind every session. dizz gives them a memory.
Aug 2026 · github.com
- 24GS
I've worked on several projects writing and implementing specifications (particularly CLN): I've found the specs I write are much better when I quote them in the implementation, so I can see what implementers need to know. Also, when specs change in development, it's almost trivial to find where to update the code. This project is a formalization of my various hacky scripts which ensure the requirements are accurately quoted, and give coverage if any are missing. Not a major Opus, but I hope someone else finds it useful!
Jul 2026 · greatspectations.org
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