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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Xkcd Excuse

Generate your own excuse in a nifty comic style!

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Xkcd Excuse launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1XA
  2. 2MW

    This is a little project I've been working on for a while in order to better learn Python. Although IRC may not exactly be the most exciting medium, I still find it to be fun and useful, this interest lead me to writing a bot. In doing this I realized that what would actually be more interesting would be if I had a framework. There may already be such a thing, certainly there are IRC libraries, but I don't know if they're well-suited to deploying bots. At any rate if for no other reason than the fact that I am relatively new to programming and eager to learn I decided to build a framework.…

    2011 · its alternatives →

  3. 3YA

    I must say I was encouraged to post my project here when I saw the positive response to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780731 Before you make any comments, please keep in mind that the project is written for fun. I'm not forcing anyone to use it. In fact, nobody should use the current unstable version in a serious project. Here is the link: http://github.com/bsg/libserv Please share your thoughts. All criticisms are welcome, even the harsh ones. p.s. The project is still a work-in-progress.

    2012 · its alternatives →

  4. 4AD
  5. 5IM

    This is our entry in the "spontaneous event creation" ring. I'd love to hear what HN readers think!

    2011 · shoutfast.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6XM
  7. 7
    Yeamt▲22

    Sick of AI tools and endless work? Try 30 seconds of chaos

    2025 · game.yeamt.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8MS

    Hi all, I have always wanted to create a community dedicating to creating the work place more positive. Right now, it's only jokes. I am working on a revision of this that will just place the community page right in front and do away with the landing page. I welcome and appreciate any cheesy thoughts, critiques or suggestions you might have. In the pipeline: jokes, quotes and ideas on how to make the work place more positive! -V.

    2012 · officecheese.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9E

    Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

    2024 · excalihub.dev · its alternatives →

  10. 10M4

    Well HN, I've finally produced something I think is worthy of sharing, but I didn't do it "in a weekend". Yeah, it's an iOS puzzle game. And yeah, it's a game I built because I wanted to play it rather than based on market research, so all this sort of makes it the antithesis of a popular HN post. But whatever. Still hoping for some of that patented (har har) expert HN feedback. Critique any part of it except the music. Also, PM me for upgrade codes, or I can post some here if there's any interest. Download (it's free):…

    2012 · its alternatives →

  11. 11IM
  12. 12PG

    Start a tweet with @letpgfinish, and it will be finished as if by Paul Graham himself. This was a weekend project I undertook with a couple of friends just for fun. The original one was @letkanyefinish, so you might like to try that out too... in fact, it seems to work much better (funnily enough, there's a definite inverse relationship between literacy of bot and literacy of its human counterpart). Anyway, the output is based on pg's essays and various tweets/quotes. Having used HN silently for a while, we thought we'd share this - so hope you enjoy :)

    2014 · its alternatives →

  13. 13XN

    Hey HN, I just started learning Android this week in my free time and the XKCD Now comic inspired my first Android app! The app adds a large, transparent widget of the Now Comic to your android device. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stdiostudios.now I will be posting my source on Github in the near future.

    2014 · its alternatives →

  14. 14X1

    2017 · staab.github.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15IM

    I spent the past few weeks making an open source cloud code editing environment with an AI copilot and multiplayer collaboration! It's fully self-hostable in 5-10 minutes. There's a lot of minor improvements to be made, and some are already listed in the Github issues. Let me know what you think and feel free to try it out.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16MS

    @cmpyl Tweet a line of python at it (right now it works best with math) and it'll tweet back at you the return value. Ex: https://twitter.com/#!/cmpyl/status/186850674053615616 Pretty useless little bot but it will be cool to see what sort of wild one liners it finds.

    2012 · its alternatives →

  17. 17MA

    Hey any astrophysicist reading hn there? Was sick in august (yeah isn't that nice) and made a small python fits table viewer for the terminal with textual. It would be great to have people try it so if you find any issue I can improve it. If you have no FITS file but would like to try regardless there are some test file in `/test`. Ciao!

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18QA

    Hey HN, Today I'm launching Quorbo (www.quorbo.com): a simple letter-revealing game (think Wheel of Fortune with some twists) where you get 6 turns to guess the day's quote! It's my first post-parenthood side project and first web game. Being a working dad has caused me (for the first time, believe it or not) to focus on simplicity. Up until about a year ago, endless free time secretly plagued me... because I love _building_, and more free time meant: more room to add complexity. Not anymore! Quorbo is the first of my initial batch of three simple word games, and I can't wait to make more.…

    2023 · quorbo.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19IM

    Hey there HN, I took a page from Wordle's mechanisms and made this game for fun for some friends and I. Check out Wheredle and let me know what you think of it! ↙ ↗ ↘ https://wheredle.xyz

    2022 · wheredle.xyz · its alternatives →

  20. 20IB

    Fully leaned into vibe coding this time around. Started on v0, at some point ejected into running locally (getting v0's exported folder to run locally was a challenge), then iterated with Cursor over the course of a few hours. Really neat how much can be accomplished just conversationally these days.

    2025 · macrodata-refinement.arjit.me · its alternatives →

  21. 211R

    I wanted to find a product idea to build. "Build things people want," right? So I thought, why not literally find people saying what they want? I wrote a script to collect thousands of Reddit posts where people are looking for a solution or complaining about a problem. Then I used GPT to filter out the noise and score each one based on how viable the idea seemed. Threw together a simple search interface so anyone can explore them. I was planning to build a more advanced paid version of this, but figured I'd share the raw version first to see if it's actually useful to anyone.

    Nov 2025 · search.reddit-business-ideas.workers.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 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 · its alternatives →

  23. 23IM

    Yes, there's no reason for this to exist, it is just funny.

    2025 · try.freemind.ai · its alternatives →

  24. 24IB

    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 · its alternatives →

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