No Hype AI – get oriented in using LLM tools for software engineering
Hey HN! When I started looking into LLMs and agents for software development and introducing them at work, I quickly realised that a person new to the topic faces a real barrage: - all the hype (AGI, engineers getting replaced by AI etc.) - conflicting opinions in virtually every discussion—for every person saying they’ve 10x-ed their productivity, there is a comment decrying LLMs as an utter failure - a lot of jargon (MoE, MCP, RAG, distillation, quantisation etc. etc.) - a profusion of models, IDEs/IDE extensions, CLI agents, other tools etc. Sorting through all of this can be quite…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN! When I started looking into LLMs and agents for software development and introducing them at work, I quickly realised that a person new to the topic faces a real barrage: - all the hype (AGI, engineers getting replaced by AI etc.) - conflicting opinions in virtually every discussion—for every person saying they’ve 10x-ed their productivity, there is a comment decrying LLMs as an utter failure - a lot of jargon (MoE, MCP, RAG, distillation, quantisation etc. etc.) - a profusion of models, IDEs/IDE extensions, CLI agents, other tools etc. Sorting through all of this can be quite tricky for somebody coming in fresh! HN users have been discussing LLM tools for a long time of course, but many programmers I know still haven’t _really_ tried anything other than an LLM web UI and haven't been following the progress of tools much. So my goal for this project was to provide a balanced overview of the topic, point people to substantive resources on eg. context management and productivity effects, and cover the concerns and risks as well (from prompt injection to shady training data sourcing). I hope it's useful!
Does the same job
all alternatives →

- AGAiaiai.guide: Plain-English mental model for LLM apps, tools and agentsApr 2026 · aiaiai.guide · ▲7
I’ve been building LLM tooling for a small VC fund and found myself explaining the same mental model over and over to non-technical people around me: how a stateless LLM becomes a chatbot, how tool use works, what an agent is mechanically, and why context windows shape all of it. I never found a guide that covered that full chain at the level I wanted, so I wrote one. It’s nine short chapters, each building on the last. Deliberately simplified: the goal is a useful mental model, not a textbook. Feedback, corrections, and contributions welcome: github.com/ymyke/aiaiai
- HLHarnessing LLMs for automated UI testing2024 · github.com · ▲8
At testup.io we have been working for a while to bring artificial intelligence to the field of test automation. Just a few years ago, the primary challenge laid in accurately identifying UI elements following minor structural changes, such as updates to IDs or paths. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) raised the bar for what it meant to be smart. Now, we anticipate the robot to do lots of things autonomously, such as retry in cases of unresponsiveness or handle minor error reports. A more challenging, but soon expected feature, would involve the test robot navigating your web shop…
- WBWe built an AI Website builder with better output2024 · dorik.com · ▲8
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:…
- ASAsk Steve Chrome Extension – Get AI help where you work2024 · asksteve.to · ▲9
Hi HN! When I was the Product Management lead for HR Tech at Google, I thought there were several opportunities to integrate LLMs into our tools to make employees more efficient. Managers could get summaries of peer reviews, recruiters could quickly generate personalized outreach letters to candidates, etc. But I had 3 big problems: 1. Third Party Systems: A lot of work happens in Salesforce, Workday, SAP, etc. And we had no way of modifying that code to integrate what we wanted. 2. Legacy Systems: A lot of the tools in our portfolio were oooold, and nobody really wanted to go in and mess…
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
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com


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


Launched alongside, July 2025
the whole month →
Trickle - Magic Canvas ▲1,064The 1st Agentic Canvas for building apps visually with AI
AI · 2025 · trickle.so
- TB
Life & fun · 2025 · trytender.app
- TY
Today marks ten years, 3653 consecutive days, of running at least one mile every day under the USRSA rules [1]. To celebrate, I built an interactive dashboard that turns a decade of GPX files into charts you can explore. Running has truly changed my life: I've made lifelong friends, explored beautiful places, and more importantly invested into my own health and fitness, which I'm starting to see the positive benefits as I get older. The stack is pretty simple: a NextJS app, with a Postgres database to keep all my running data, and all the stats are pre-computed and cached in Redis, so I…
Dev tools · 2025 · nodaysoff.run
- DA
Made this website as an exercise in vibe-coding and GCP. It was posted about a few times around the internet, on sites like Morning Brew (https://www.morningbrew.com/issues/business-buzzkill), MetaFilter (https://www.metafilter.com/209703/Draw-A-Fish), boingboing.net, etc. I think it's cute! I built a basic CNN trained against penises and swastikas, and then anything that doesn't hit the 63% confidence score gets sent to a mod queue, a vibe-coded fish-tinder…
Dev tools · 2025 · drawafish.com