nowfound

AI · May 7, 2026

LW

LaoTzu Writer Studio

Hello Hacker News! We bring to you today 2 things: 1. Our passion project - LaoTzu Writer Studio - a modern writing application 2. Thoughts on the abysmal state of Kickstarter - likely well known to you all, but having experienced it for the first time, it is disheartening So lets start with the good stuff: LaoTzu Writer Studio - LaoTzu helps you build the framework of a novel, but still leaves the writing for you to do. That means there are indeed AI elements - like our Guard section that flags inconsistent canon in your universe, or the analyze section that determines writing stats,…

Alternativestop 8% of May 2026

What it does

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hello Hacker News! We bring to you today 2 things: 1. Our passion project - LaoTzu Writer Studio - a modern writing application 2. Thoughts on the abysmal state of Kickstarter - likely well known to you all, but having experienced it for the first time, it is disheartening So lets start with the good stuff: LaoTzu Writer Studio - LaoTzu helps you build the framework of a novel, but still leaves the writing for you to do. That means there are indeed AI elements - like our Guard section that flags inconsistent canon in your universe, or the analyze section that determines writing stats, rhythm, mood, etc. - but there is no AI writing the story for you. That is an explicit intention - we want you to have support in your writing journey, but the story itself, that's still for you to do with your meat sticks on a keyboard. (To answer the question before its asked - no I did not use AI to write this post either - I just like dashes) Our main site is here - https://www.redwoodrhetorica.com/ - and there is a limited demo available online if you want to futz around with it. And our kickstarter is here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laotzustudio/laotzu-wri... We believe in this as a tool / workbench for writing and we're looking forward to evolving the app over time. The kickstarter is primarily for professional refinements of the platform so its less obvious that 1 guy with no sleep made this. We'd be much obliged if you joined the kickstarter, but we'd also just love testing and feedback as well - whatever you want to offer we'd appreciate. Kickstarter itself - My goodness. We've both been on the backer side of kickstarter for a while, so we were excited to kick off the campaign. Well, from day one we've seen folks backing and un-backing as bait for scams left and right. Folks trying to circumnavigate the boundaries of the platform to try and "help us out" with all sorts of shady promises. We are admittedly total amateurs when it comes to this, but it's been pretty off-putting to see the platform has, evidently, manifested a full on black market layer to it. Anyone else have experience with this? Any experienced heads want to opine on what they did to navigate kickstarter or kickstarter-esque platforms for their projects?

Does the same job

all alternatives →
  • AF
    App for learning how to write Japanese2012 · ▲55

    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…

  • PM
    Project Maya2012 · ▲88

    Project Maya has started! For those who haven't read about Maya, please look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103344 Our goal is to build an open source application that can run in your browser and on iOS/Android without being dependent on app stores. We currently have a working "sneak preview" version viewable over here: http://frontend2.com Want to dig into the source? https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-maya We recommend you to check it out in Google Chrome/iOS/Android. Our team currently consists of 5 people. If you think you'd be a good addition, please shoot me an email,…

  • SS
    Spotlight shows what your Claude Code/Codex are doingJun 2026 · backplanes.com · ▲8

    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…

  • SS
    Sparkmuse, story and beta of my side project2011 · ▲31

    TLDR: The beta of my my site, Sparkmuse, has begun. Please join me at http://www.sparkmuse.com/invitation/Hacker-News . The Story: Well here it is, the beta of Sparkmuse. I'm pretty happy to "get there", but I'm really just relieved. Don't get me wrong, I'm F'ING STOKED to get this in front of some more valuable eyeballs, especially the Hacker News crowd. Right now though, I'm just leaning back in a rickety old chair thinking "I did it." Several months ago I was pretty down on myself. I wanted to get out there and meet new people, do cool projects, explore new technologies, and just jump…

  • AS
    A smart, goal-driven writing app that helps you finish what you write2017 · ▲8

    Hey HN community, I run a small team of writers that built TheRightMargin, a new writing platform that focuses on your goals first and is aiming to be the smartest writing tool on the market. We launched last summer actually, but we're trying to make a push for some growth, so I thought I'd debut it here on HN! The #1 'writer's block' pain point this app solves is helping you figure out your next step. We have some neat tools to break down your writing project into milestones and task and a way to write side by side with your plan. We also have smart tips and a timer for writing sprints,…

  • WA
    "Why Am I Doing It?", (sort of) OhLife for developers2010 · ▲20

    Hello everyone! We just launched our project for the 48H non-stop Codebits Programming Contest which took place this last days in Lisbon, Portugal. When a new project starts, you get all motivated to get it done. Weeks pass and now you are all confused and wondering why the hell you are doing what you are doing. We hope to help you get those thoughts out of your mind and focus on what's important: getting it done. http://www.whyamidoingit.com "Why Am I Doing It?" (WAIDI) is a personal reminder of why you are doing whatever you are doing disguised as a web app. WAIDI will help people like us…

More ai this month

the category →
  • I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.

    AI · 17d ago · simedw.com

  • Astute585

    Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators

    AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com

  • Grok Bot547

    AI teammates that you can give real work to

    AI · 25d ago · x.ai

  • Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…

    AI · 26d ago · cactuscompute.com

  • Make your software self-driving

    AI · 30d ago · coldtea.ai

  • Soloop472

    Approval-first Agent OS for solo founders

    AI · 30d ago · soloop.io

Launched alongside, May 2026

the whole month →
  • Brew 905

    Like Claude design for email marketing

    AI · May 2026 · brew.new

  • Parallel agents, diff reviewer, and multi-model comparisons

    Dev tools · May 2026 · kilo.ai

  • StoreClaw805

    Grow your store profits with agents that know how to sell

    AI · May 2026 · storeclaw.ai

  • Give your agent a real number and voice to make calls.

    AI · May 2026 · pollyreach.ai

  • NW

    Hey HN, Henry here from Cactus. We open-sourced Needle, a 26M parameter function-calling (tool use) model. It runs at 6000 tok/s prefill and 1200 tok/s decode on consumer devices. We were always frustrated by the little effort made towards building agentic models that run on budget phones, so we conducted investigations that led to an observation: agentic experiences are built upon tool calling, and massive models are overkill for it. Tool calling is fundamentally retrieval-and-assembly (match query to tool name, extract argument values, emit JSON), not reasoning. Cross-attention…

    Life & fun · May 2026 · github.com

  • FM

    Dev tools · May 2026 · github.com