Alternatives
Products that do what I made a language tool that forces you to talk does
Hey HN! I created Hanasu.ai after my 9-5 job as a side project. Previously I'd used Duolingo to learn Japanese, but failed spectacularly when I actually spoke with my roommate from Tokyo. Now, after OpenAI improved their Realtime audio model in December and reduced pricing, I spent my entire winter break building. So how does it work? Just choose a daily topic and converse with the AI model: (1) Didn't catch a phrase? Double tap to reveal a transcript. (2) Couldn't understand? Double tap for translations powered by Google. (3) Can't recall that intricate Chinese/Japanese character? Just…
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I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News. Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention. There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com. It's only for Android so far. The free version includes…
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Hey there HN! I believe the future of AI communication will be more voice and less text. Low-latency realistic voice interactions are finally becoming feasible. I've built a few voice-first apps on Retell AI using Elevenlabs voices. This one uses Claude Haiku for responses and Mixtral to switch between posts and comments. The AI knows about the top 30 posts and their comments on Hacker News right now. After a Google sign-in you can try it free for 10 minutes. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
2024 · callhackernews.com
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My girlfriend relocated to Bangalore from Pune and was struggling to talk to cab drivers. So I built this simple app to instantly translate voice. The app even auto-detects the other person's language; ideal for when you have set the language to "Tamil" when the other person was actually speaking in "Kannada" and you didn't realize it. I used OpenAI's Whisper and TTS for this.
2025 · whisperglot.ai
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Hi! I created a platform that lets you have real video call lessons with an AI teacher that's available 24/7. What do you think? What should I improve? www.kylian.ai What we offer: - Full video conferencing: see and speak with your AI tutor in a natural setting - Structured lessons with clear objectives and progression - Interactive whiteboard for visual explanations - Real-time translations and grammar feedback - Cultural insights integrated into conversations - Progress tracking to monitor your improvement - Practice exercises and scenarios - Customizable lesson content What makes us…
2025 · kylian.ai
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Hi HN! I'm Amber (13) and my dad Raj, and we built Nityasha AI from Guna, India. After my dad's 12 years of failed startups (2012-2023), we created a personal AI assistant that handles email, coding help, research, and planning in one conversational interface. I started coding at 9 on a 4GB RAM laptop. We failed 8 times before this—coupon sites, freelancing platforms, consulting. Nityasha is different: it uses Thesys generative UI for visual charts, includes Study Mode with Socratic teaching, and integrates everything so you don't need 10 tabs open. 500+ active users now. We just launched…
Oct 2025 · ai.nityasha.com
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Hi HN, Today, we're launching Glowby Basic, our open-source, customizable AI assistant powered by OpenAI API. It allows you to easily recreate and adapt your own assistant for various needs, with multilingual voice capabilities. Key features include autonomous decision-making, customizable pre-set questions, support for 30+ languages, and effortless prompt switching for different tasks and scenarios. We've made interactions with LLMs and AI-related APIs open-source to encourage collaboration and enhance transparency. Try our live demo (no sign-up required) and explore the GitHub repo linked…
2023 · github.com
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I built an open-source tool for learning anything using AI: - Type what you want to learn - It creates a full interactive course for you Move from beginner to mastery of any subject, even complex things like Quantum Physics It has three formats: - Explanation: bite-sized lessons that you swipe like TikTok/Instagram - Practice: solve problems in real-world situations - Quiz: test your knowledge in Duolingo-like lessons - Language courses have a different format covering vocabulary, reading, and listening skills It's more hands-on than reading a long textbook or watching a video Plus, it…
May 2026 · zoonk.com
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Hello Hacker News, I've built a platform that lets anyone create their own voice-based AI tutor. To showcase what the platform can do, I've created a voice-based AI tutor for Stanford's famous CS229 Machine Learning course. I took the course myself and know how challenging it can be, so I built this to make it easier to follow and stick with. It's free for now (as long as budget lasts) -> https://vivaverbalis.com/ml The goal of my app is simple: Whether you're a student, teacher, or just curious, you can instantly spin up a conversational AI tutor, and share it, with whoever…
2025 · vivaverbalis.com
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For a while I've wanted to try out the new AI voices for long-form narration, but everything I found required a subscription that didn't justify my limited usage. I came across the open Kokoro model [0] and the voices are very good -- good enough to listen to for hours without the fatigue I got from legacy, robotic TTS voices. The model is 82m parameters and designed to run fast, but I still struggled to get reasonable times from CPU inference on my 12-core laptop. I thought a cloud-based GPU service would let me generate audiobooks fast enough to feed my own self-hosted library, and that…
Jun 2026 · ebookaloud.com
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Hi HN, As a huge manga fan and a translator by training, I've always been in awe of the incredible amount of work that fan translators put in. The process isn't just about translation; it involves manually cleaning the original text from the bubbles, redrawing the background art (inpainting), and then carefully placing the translated text back in (typesetting). It's a true labor of love, but it's incredibly time-consuming. I wondered if modern AI could help automate the most tedious parts of this workflow. So, I built AIFandom. It's a web tool where you upload your manga pages, and it…
Oct 2025 · aifandom.app
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I really struggle to keep my notes organised, and often can't make any sense of hand written notes after meetings. I did some experiments with Claude and ChatGPT where I blast random thoughts at them during a meeting or brainstorming session and then have them output a nice document that pulls it all together at the end. It worked incredibly well but it was a bit cumbersome to keep sending messages to the chat and telling the ai each time what to do. So I took the idea and built a tool, it makes it easy to throw random notes and voice recordings (images and document support on the way) and…
2025 · scatternote.com
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I'm a Machine Learning engineer. Struggled with consistency for months on my goals, life etc, so I built something to help myself (zropi.com) but that surprised me or shocked me literally. It’s an AI companion that feels alive: chats like a person. Pauses, emotions, personality. Sends voice notes when it's excited about something or whenever it wants (has its like own mind). Shares photos of itself. But the memory It remembers EVERYTHING. Not just facts context, preferences, random things I mentioned. Last week I asked "how's that thing I told you about going?" and it knew exactly what I…
Jan 2026 · zropi.com
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Hey HN! I've been working on a side project to create an audio transcription API based on the OpenAI whisper model. Sign up link: https://whisperapi.com I tried to make the API really easy to use and get setup with. Also, because the Whisper model is so good, turns out I can offer the service for about 75% cheaper than what seems like the industry average. I'm always looking to make improvements, so would appreciate any feedback anyone has!
2022 · whisperapi.com
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Hi HN, I created this site recently and need som feedbacks. Please give it a try, let me know if you see anything to need to be improved or added. Below is the summary of https://hichatbot.ai What is HiChatbot? - HiChatbot is an AI-powered chatbot that can answer your questions about documents, text, and videos. You can upload a document, text, or provide a video link to HiChatbot and have a Q&A chat with the content. What are some of the things I can do with HiChatbot? You can use HiChatbot to: - Summarize the main points of a document - Get more details about a specific topic in…
2023 · hichatbot.ai
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I've been fascinated by the Japanese language and culture for a while now, and I wanted to create a simple, no-fuss way for beginners to get started. So, I built *[Nihongo](https://nihongo.site/)*, a free and open-source web app designed to help you learn the fundamentals of Japanese in about a month. The name of the app, Nihongo (日本語), is the Japanese word for the "Japanese language." You can check it out here: *[https://nihongo.site/](https://nihongo.site/)* And for those who like to tinker, the code is available on GitHub:…
2025 · nihongo.site
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Hi HN, I’m excited to share LocoStudio (http://locostudio.ai), a local-first AI chat app for Mac that lets you chat with AI models both locally and in the cloud—all in one place. Why I built it: I wanted a private, fast, and flexible way to use the latest AI models without sending my data to the cloud. Most AI chat apps are either cloud-only (raising privacy concerns) or have clunky interfaces for local models. LocoStudio aims to make local AI chat as easy and powerful as using ChatGPT, but with your data staying on your device. What it does: - Private, local-first: Run open models…
2025 · locostudio.ai
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Hi HN, I built ChatOne while working on a project and constantly switching between AI models like GPT-4 and newer ones like Claude 3.5. I kept wondering if I was missing out on better answers, so I created ChatOne to get responses from multiple models at once and compare them easily. -Teddy
2024 · chatone.io
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