Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

I got laid off at the end of April and have been building my own personal dream tool since, it's a skeuomorphic carpentry simulator with an agent MCP. You start with real wood specs and a shop full of miter saws, router tables, table saws and the like. Think of it like Sketchup but no extruding rectangles. It's been really fun to build with. Agents can create parametric procedures so e.g. stick framing becomes a simple function call for the next agent, building a flywheel. There is full agent-human parity in every surface, so there is a human UI for the procedures too. Every operation is yaml, so agents pick it up pretty quickly. Agents can also file feature requests when they reach for a tool that doesn't exist. You can export to 3d printing files, video walk-through, step files, get a BOM and a cut plan, view your project in life-size with AR. There is a notion-like interface for authoring build guides... a lot going on. If you're a woodworker/software engineer you might enjoy it. You can add the MCP to your agent of choice, send a picture, description, sketch or whatever; say "build this with Sawdust" https://sawdust.diy

Lots of fun projects being listed. I'm working on Preloop(https://preloop.dev), a way to run your unmodified Github Actions locally or self-hosted in isolated cross-platform microvms(uses smolvm which uses libkrun vmm).I got frustrated with Github Actions reliability and inability to run or test my workflows locally so i re-wrote the runner and reverse-engineered the control plane so it follows the exact runner protocol the offficial runner does. Each job runs in a microvm that boots in 400ms from a packed image. Also supports a way to pause on every failure so you or your agent can immediately shell at that point, fix and retry(in a new environment) to verify. Also supports the full DAP protocol so you can interactively step/forward/investigate context at each step/job. Try it out: https://github.com/preloopdev/preloop

A microvm sandbox for AI agents because absolutely nobody else is working on that, but I am more insane than other people so that is my edge :-) It boots an upstream Linux kernel with a config that can be defined by the user (doesn't take long to compile BTW, it's a small config). The workload runs in a container so it is compatible with devcontainers and stuff like that. I use all the fancy stuff for observability e.g. eBPF gadgets and try to encourage agents to use these tools. All network and storage activity is monitored. It can all be blocked or recorded. It has a HTTPS proxy and network traffic can be recorded and played back from a content addressable store. It can (in theory) send local directories to a remote sandbox, let an agent inside the sandbox make changes and then the user (or another agent) can inspect the changes made to the filesystem before accepting them back into the local directory. It can be run as a cluster with multiple nodes, including a central orchestrator which has a web UI and I am currently implementing a terminal viewer, so I can run agents inside sandboxes then interact with them on the terminal via the web UI. The entire thing is distributed as two self contained executables (at least it would be if the GitHub CI/CD was configured correctly). I also included a bit of Sci-fi writing in my README. Also it is riddled with bugs, but I am really just seeing if it can work at all at this stage. https://github.com/richiejp/darkaifactory

My two biggest projects are: https://www.idlequest.net/ - a from-scratch recreation of the 1999 MMORPG classic EverQuest, featuring a real-time MMO server written in Go, a 3D game browser-based client built with Babylon.js, and the clasic UI recreated using React. You can play it both as a regular MMORPG but also in "idle mode" where it basically plays itself. This had up to 70 players online at once a while back which was really cool, though its popularity is in a bit of a lull right now. There are still tons of bugs and stuff that isn't fully implemented (and balance issues) but it's still fun for most people who have nostalgia for it. https://www.newyokosuka.com/ - an unofficial Shenmue MMO experience. Based on the 1999 Sega Dreamcast game Shenmue, it's playable entirely in your browser! It's basic world exploration with forklift shenanigans, some basic dialogue systems, and a basic combat system test, but I'm about to push an update that includes all cutscenes and story progression as well. The story part is taking a bit of time because I'm having to mold it to fit in an MMO context. But it's a fun project to work on and the Shenmue community loves it so far.

I've been building the most advanced automotive diagnostic app on the market I used to be a mechanic, and spend a lot of my free time working on project vehicles, motorcycles, tractors, trucks etc. I wanted a tool to track the tasks I needed done, then a way to easily access VIN info for parts search, then I DMV records, and finally built an iphone app to scan the OBD2 diagnostic codes and hook them up to a custom ai diagnostic prompt. It's been a blast to work on, I need to focus on marketing it and get some users that aren't close friends, but it's been serving my purposes this summer so far. I've seen nothing with anywhere close to this depth of diagnostic reporting. https://crewchief.cc https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crewchief-auto/id6760673109