Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to ZakuChess, an open source web game built with Django, htmx and Tailwind
A while ago I started this side project to test if I could build a rich User Interface that would have about the same level of responsiveness than a "SPA-like" app, but using only htmx[1]... I still have plenty of stuff in my roadmap, but today it's in a playable state and I thought it could be interesting to share it - as it may be a nice demonstration of a relatively rich user interface powered by htmx :-) --> https://zakuchess.com As for the stack: it's built mostly with Django, htmx and Tailwind CSS. It uses a SQLite database, and is hosted (for free) at Fly. The characters'…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. ZakuChess, an open source web game built with Django, htmx and Tailwind launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
I recently dug up an old project in an attempt to improve on it. It's a code sandbox for playing around with HTMX in the browser, that runs a mock server within the sandbox iframe. The server "framework" is loosely based on Django, so if you're familiar with Django, you'll immediately understand what's going on. I recommend clicking through the examples. Github repo: https://github.com/lassebomh/htmx-playground Probably my favorite part is the lack of HTMX specific code. It's designed to mimic the client and server, but really nothing else. In principle, this means that…
2024 · lassebomh.github.io · its alternatives →
- 2
Hey all, I just wanted to share a project I've been working on for the past month. After years of heavy frameworks, I really like the idea of using htmx, but it’s a little too low level for me and needs a thin layer above it to facilitate things like components, better syntax with complex JS inside of an attribute, etc To try and solve this problem with a very minimal stack (golang + htmx) that I've been really enjoying, I'm building this project to cater to my needs and was thinking it would be useful for other developers.
2024 · htmgo.dev · its alternatives →
- 3TI
Hi HN! My name is Nick and this is my fun side project. Please lay it on me. HN can think of Tips.io as a cracked out Tailwind Playground that has page management and amazing AI integration. There are a few core ideas: 1) The HTML is the CMS There are no fields or restrictions. Just hover, click, and start tweaking any HTML. Also, certain elements you click will have special easy edit abilities: - auto creates an uploader, stock photo picker (or HTML) - auto creates an uploader, stock video picker (or HTML) - auto creates a big icon picker (or HTML) - auto creates a WYSIWYG Editor (or HTML)…
2024 · tips.io · its alternatives →
- 4IM
I had this idea rolling around in my head for the last couple of years, and I finally decided to build the damned thing just to get idea relief. The backend is a typical LAMP stack with the Symfony2 framework backing the P. Varnish sits in front of all the Chef managed Linode boxes. The site will work without Javascript (up until the checkout), and the style degrades really nicely depending on your viewport (try it out by resizing your browser). I'm open to all comments and critiques, so let me hear them. And if you are into graphic t-shirts, here is a code for a Hacker News 20% discount:…
2012 · getnifty.com · its alternatives →
- 5MA
A few months ago (82 days to be exact!) I posted a link on HN to my game, Meatshields. A bunch of you commented and played my game and gave me some wonderful feedback. Over the last few months I've been playing with many of you and implementing the best of everybody's suggestions. So, thank you, HN for all your help! I feel this is an extreme overhaul I couldn't have done without your input. Since then, I have: Dramatically improved our hosting platform (So it HOPEFULLY won't go down this time (oops.)), Added two new units, Rebalanced all existing units, Added many more maps, Improved the…
2017 · its alternatives →
- 6IM
Primarily built this to learn how NextJS works and also a bit about Tailwind CSS. Also has request caching using the WebCache API + expiration which is quite a hacky implementation. Let me know what you think! Source is at https://github.com/say4n/hn, pull requests welcome!
2023 · hn.sayan.page · its alternatives →
- 7
It's very early days for the project, but I wanted to share it to see if there is interest. It is the final piece of the FastAPI server-side rendering stack I started building with FastHX and htmy (the two dependencies of this project besides FastAPI). Think of it as a more powerful and convenient alternative to tools like FastHTML, powered by FastAPI (without any modifications). I hope you'll like it.
2025 · volfpeter.github.io · its alternatives →
- 8IM
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 →
- 9
Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon
2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Hello, This is something I've wanted to build for awhile (first bought the domain in 2020 (then lost it for a year+)). It's a tactics solver on each new tab page. There are 5 modes of play: Easy (<1200 elo) Medium (1200-1800) Hard (1800-2400) Expert (2400+) Speedrun (solve as many puzzles as possible in 60 seconds). I'm having a ton of fun with it, and definitely noticing improvements with actual games (definitely solved the most puzzles in my life while developing this extension). If you check it out, please let me know what you think. Any feedback is good!
Apr 2026 · leetchess.com · its alternatives →
- 11AN
Hello HN ! There’s been a lot of discussions [1,2] on how to build ReBAC [3] with Zanzibar and policy-as-code engines, but we (Permit) also think it’s important to talk about the interfaces on top of these implementations. We just launched a No-Code ReBAC interface - would love to know what you think. besides marrying the benefits of Policy as Code and Policy as Graph, the idea here is to create simple enough interfaces that everyone can use, so developers can set the stage and delegate the rest to others. We used Role-derivation as a concept to simplify a lot of the mechanics what should we…
2023 · its alternatives →
- 12
I've been having a blast making multiple mini apps that run in the browser. I've been trying to see how far I can go without having a backend and relying on other services. I wrote these for fun and wanted to know what folks think.
Jun 2026 · joeheyming.github.io · its alternatives →
- 13IH
Hello HN, I had some christmas free time over the last two weeks (Merry Christmas btw ;-)) and used that time to completely recreate the website of my app[1]. I used all the fancy new tools. I didn't know some of them when I started. What was my goal? * Pretty website * Blazing fast * Mobile first * SSR * Webp support * Generally all the best website practices (high lighthouse score) What did I use? * Tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com/) * Tailwind Components (https://tailwindui.com/) * React (https://reactjs.org/) * ViteJs…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 14
Hey HN! I think _hyperscript is an insanely cool language, and while designed for simple front-end DOM interactions, I thought it would be a cool back-end scripting language as well. So, I slapped together a TODO app with a _hyperscript bootstrapping script based on the original repository's node-hyperscript example. My repo isn't clean, just something I worked out over a weekend to prove the concept, also an excuse to play with htmx. :) Please read the README, and let me know how, if anyone's interested, I can work in some of my tweaks to the original repository. I'm kind of a noob with…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15WW
Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community
2016 · its alternatives →
- 16AS
http://az.ht/ui/build/curr/window.html http://az.ht/ui/build/curr/datatable.html http://az.ht/ui/build/curr/tabs.html http://az.ht/ui/build/curr/layout.html http://az.ht/ui/build/curr/accordion.html Github: https://github.com/elgs/azui I have been working on these web ui components in the past few months. Now they seem to start working. I was not a front end developer. The reason I was determined to write these components is…
2018 · its alternatives →
- 17
Hi, this has been a labor of love over the last few days =) Can't wait to hear you feedback and of course AMA!
2023 · blog.airsequel.com · its alternatives →
- 18
I made a starter template for creating Haskell web-applications using HTMX, AlpineJS, Servant, TailwindCSS and Lucid (HASTL) - I really enjoy working in this stack and I think it brings together a lot of cool technologies with the awesomeness of Haskell doing all the heavy lifting I also tried to make it "production ready" by adding build and test tools e.g. it comes with simple Make targets and with unit and integration tests that use testcontainers to spin up the database and web application to test against. It's based on the awesome servant-persistant example by Matt Parsons…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19AW
I’ve spent the last few days prototyping a browser-based game engine stack designed for instant-load, "Roblox-for-Teens" style deployment. The goal is to lower the floor for AA indie devs who want high-fidelity physics and instant web distribution without the overhead of Unity or a heavy Godot export. The Stack Engine: A headless WASM/WebGPU implementation. I’m currently using custom flags and selective streaming to bypass standard browser memory and execution limits. Physics: I’ve ported Jolt (Guerrilla Games) but modified the solver to mimic the original Blam! engine (Bungie/Halo…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
- 20BA
rts-blog : A blog about creating an RTS in WebGL
2017 · emnh.github.io · its alternatives →
- 21YA
Inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38037180, this is done sort of as a learning journey since I've never built an app from scratch using Next.js and tailwindcss before. This is done over 2 days so it's quite bare in terms of features i.e. read-only but I would still like to share this project. Let me know what you guys think and feel free to provide any feedback!
2023 · hackernews-next-wilsonoh.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 22
Hey HN, After GPT-3 created waves in the tech industry, a lot of AI tools were emerging and with that, some AI website builders But the results seemed way too generic to us. It felt like the developers were rushing to catch the wave instead of building a proper tool We took our time, did months of RnD and finally came up with something better than what others in the market are doing. It’s got better design output. While it’s still in beta, I wanted to show HN what we did. Will appreciate the feedback when you guys try it out. Here is the link to signup for the beta:…
2024 · dorik.com · its alternatives →
- 23
MineDemo▲8Hi all! This is Ara, an indie builder and solo founder. The idea of MineDemo was born when I was create a demo video for a hackathon last month and I was thinking what if I can walk on top of what I show and pointing things around? So this week when I got sometime, I created this little tool called MineDemo. It's totally free, supports 20+ avatars and decors + drag and drop text; you can copy paste a link or use screen share. Avatar is controlled by keyboard (WSAD) and hands are controlled by Q and E. It may have some little bugs here and there so please let me know if you have any feedback.…
Feb 2026 · minedemo.mygictools.com · its alternatives →
- 24KY
Hey HN! I wanted to practice "vibe coding" and see how far and fast I can go by only prompting, without actual coding. I decided to make a simple CLI app that scrapes web docs into a single md file (I was annoyed that LLM keeps writing Tailwind 3 code for a Tailwind 4 project). In just a couple of hours, the CLI app was ready! Then iterated on arguments for another couple of hours. Result: https://github.com/vladstudio/web2llm Then I decided to go further and "productize" the CLI by making a web app for it. Another half-day, and the web app is ready!…
2025 · web2llm.dev · its alternatives →
Also compare
- I made a HTMX Playground 100% in the browser alternatives
- htmgo - build simple and scalable systems with golang + htmx alternatives
- Tips.io – A Tailwind playground with AI, page management, and theming alternatives
- I mixed selling t-shirts with a little bit of game theory alternatives
- Meatshields – An in-browser turn-based strategy game alternatives
- I made yet another UI to browse HN alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →