Evidence-first research
Turn product pages, reviews, and discussions into Mac app research you can verify before you buy.
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Koi.rest – watch some fish and regain your balance
Hi there. My name is Paul. I’m a developer, an explorer and I’ve got ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed. This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress. While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use. It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now. So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself. Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make. I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough". I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it. So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy. Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head? So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond. The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together. I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Any nerds out there who've read a lot of research papers?
Which are the most memorable abstracts you have read? I know I am a jackass who usually vibecodes my way through assignments but even I don't want to write a cookie-cutter intro for my paper. I wanna write something that stays with the reader. What paper has stuck with you, what made it memorable?
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Ember: Life archive journaling software. local first and native, supports dayone and apple journal import. [Free lifetime license to beta users]
I'm Nandha, the developer of Ember. Five months ago I posted about Ember here. So here's the update on ember. **The first 500 beta users get Ember Plus for life.** After those spots are gone, beta users will still get **1 year of Plus free** at launch. **Problem** I've lost nearly 5 people I know. Not lost like they're gone. Lost like I forgot their name. The girl I helped sell lemonade on the side of the road. The first person who had a crush on me. The stories of how we met are slowly eroding. Journal apps are about you. Personal CRMs are about networking. I wanted a private place where every person who mattered gets their own space: how you met, the stories you lived together, and a quiet nudge when someone you care about starts to fade. **What it does** * Write like you always would. Type @ and a name to tag someone, and that entry becomes part of their story. * People live in worlds (Family, Work, College). Someone can be in two, like a colleague who became a friend. * Four ways to hold a person, thanks to a comment on my last post: Tending (fades if you lose touch), Rooted (never fades, like family), Seen (a meaningful one-time encounter), and Quiet (faded, and at peace with it). * Quick log with ⌘L when you don't want to write a full entry. * A graph of everyone, an "on this day" feed, and search that understands time ("Christmas with Jane", "last summer"). * Import from Day One, Apple Journal, and your Contacts. Export to Obsidian, Bear, or a full JSON archive. Your d
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: I built a seriously detailed free financial planner
Hi, I spent the last 2.5 years building a super detailed financial planning tool called FinZot (US focused). It helps with questions like deciding when to retire, how much to spend in retirement, how to optimize taxes. I believe it is much more detailed than other free tools or free tiers. It even contains an embedded Excel-inspired domain specific language for customizing the sizing of income/expense, etc. The entire planning engine is free. Runs in your browser (Rust/WASM). No sign-up is necessary. Your data does not leave your browser unless you create an account. There are a couple of paid features in the app which are mostly just quality of life features and AI integration. The AI integration is via a Claude connector that gives Claude access to the full planning engine. Links: https://app.finzot.com/plan/6VXFMte2tRMp81sRKhYgXM/results/n... finzot.com
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Radix – Visual UI for agentic programming
Hey HN, I'm Jordan from Radix. Radix is a UI tool for programming agents. You prompt your agent to generate a workspace for a task you're working on and get an interactive widget that persists locally on disk. I built Radix because I always needed tools while I was writing code: tools to test little experiments, to play around with UI, to visualise results etc. Sometimes these would end up as python tools that read and plotted data, or separate React apps spun up just to test a single feature. Lately obviously I've been using Claude artifacts but these are quite limited. I wanted a system where it was easy to leave comments or adapt an artifact without having to give vague descriptions back to the agent, and where ideally I could actually shift away from a chat window as the main interface. I've got a pro version of Radix which I will launch soon. This current version is entirely free and is definitely a beta -- there will be rough edges! Note: There's no telemetry or data captured. Your messages run entirely through your own agent. I require a key but that's just to get an idea of how many people are using it. Everything is stored locally (the workspaces are actually just React apps which you can edit "artisanally" if you want). If you have any questions please reply here or email me hello@radix-os.com Thank you!
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
CamDial: USB webcam settings on the Mac that come back by themselves after sleep or a reconnect
Hi, developer here. I make CamDial, a menu bar app for USB webcam settings. It went live on the Mac App Store last week. **Problem** USB webcams keep exposure, white balance and focus in volatile memory. Mac sleeps, hub switches, you bump the cable, and the camera is back on factory auto. macOS keeps no record of what you set. I got tired of redoing my camera before every call, so I built the thing that remembers it for me. CamDial sets exposure, white balance, focus and zoom on the camera itself over USB, saves the look as a preset, and puts it back when the camera reconnects. You get a quiet notification with an undo. No virtual camera, so Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and FaceTime all get the same picture, and you can adjust it mid-call. Values are in kelvins and fractions of a second, not percentages. Controls your camera does not support are hidden with an explanation, not greyed out. **Comparison** Webcam Settings (Mactaris) is the app most people find first, and it earned that. Same hardware controls, same 50/60 Hz anti-flicker. It was last updated in October 2019, runs under Rosetta, shows percentages, has no live preview, and presets are recalled by hand (there is a reapply timer). CamDial is Apple Silicon native, has a live preview, and reapplies on reconnect by itself. Logi Tune is Logitech's current app and it is maintained. It does things CamDial cannot: firmware updates and Logitech-only controls like the Brio field of view. If you need those, keep it. But it only sees
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Critic – Review code with the agent that wrote it
Hey HN, I'm Shreyash from Feyn. We help companies build custom models from their data. Today we're releasing Critic, a change review platform that lets you engage directly with the AI that wrote the code. Agents write most of our code. While that has made us more productive, understanding a change and its consequences has become incredibly difficult. As our company adopted more agentic tools, we found it harder to loop people in on the impact of a PR and the state of a project. We built Critic to fix this. Critic lets AI agents present their code, annotate key blocks, and include relevant evidence (like screenshots and instructions to run locally). Anyone viewing that change can talk directly to the agent that wrote it. See a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2--lytmOtQ . Critic works through a plugin for Codex or Claude Code. When your agent writes code, the plugin asks it to also write a narrative describing the story behind the change, and highlight any assumptions, decisions, or complex code. You can then view the change at critic.run or have your agent pull it via the bundled MCP. Every feature in Critic is available over MCP, so your agent gets all the same context without leaving its harness. From the dashboard or MCP, you can chat with the authoring agent directly. When Critic receives a question, it forks the authoring session and forwards your question there. That way your main thread stays clean and keeps working. Local changes are visible
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
Hello! We’re Sid, Alex, Ketan, and Milan. We’re building Whiteboard ( https://whiteboard.dev.fast/ ), an open-source desktop app where humans and agents can architect software together in a common workspace. Here’s our repo: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard . We were missing the feeling of a “whiteboard session” with another dev where you leave with a deep understanding of a system, so we built this app for ourselves. Whiteboard plugs into the tools you already use - e.g. Claude Code, Codex, etc. – and gives your agent an SDK to draw on an in-app canvas to describe its work. We began with an MVP based on HTML artifacts and started rethinking the app as we ran into limitations: 1. Built on top of CodeOSS: We found that in pure HTML tools it was hard to connect a spec or diagram to code. In Whiteboard, when you click on visualizations like a sequence diagram, an entity relationship diagram, or a quote from the agent’s trace, you can jump to the underlying code directly. When navigating code, you get keybindings and LSP support from VSCode out of the box. We’ve found this is especially valuable because tradeoffs are often only discovered after a first pass at implementation (re: slop) 2. Semantic diff viewer: we wrote a semantic, AST-aware diff viewer in Rust so you can only view the code changes which are relevant to you [1]. We’ve set up some sane defaults: large added functions are summarized as pseudocode, and things like unit tests
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Radix – Visual UI for agentic programming
Hey HN, I'm Jordan from Radix. Radix is a UI tool for programming agents. You prompt your agent to generate a workspace for a task you're working on and get an interactive widget that persists locally on disk. I built Radix because I always needed tools while I was writing code: tools to test little experiments, to play around with UI, to visualise results etc. Sometimes these would end up as python tools that read and plotted data, or separate React apps spun up just to test a single feature. Lately obviously I've been using Claude artifacts but these are quite limited. I wanted a system where it was easy to leave comments or adapt an artifact without having to give vague descriptions back to the agent, and where ideally I could actually shift away from a chat window as the main interface. I've got a pro version of Radix which I will launch soon. This current version is entirely free and is definitely a beta -- there will be rough edges! Note: There's no telemetry or data captured. Your messages run entirely through your own agent. I require a key but that's just to get an idea of how many people are using it. Everything is stored locally (the workspaces are actually just React apps which you can edit "artisanally" if you want). If you have any questions please reply here or email me hello@radix-os.com Thank you!
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
CamDial: USB webcam settings on the Mac that come back by themselves after sleep or a reconnect
Hi, developer here. I make CamDial, a menu bar app for USB webcam settings. It went live on the Mac App Store last week. **Problem** USB webcams keep exposure, white balance and focus in volatile memory. Mac sleeps, hub switches, you bump the cable, and the camera is back on factory auto. macOS keeps no record of what you set. I got tired of redoing my camera before every call, so I built the thing that remembers it for me. CamDial sets exposure, white balance, focus and zoom on the camera itself over USB, saves the look as a preset, and puts it back when the camera reconnects. You get a quiet notification with an undo. No virtual camera, so Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and FaceTime all get the same picture, and you can adjust it mid-call. Values are in kelvins and fractions of a second, not percentages. Controls your camera does not support are hidden with an explanation, not greyed out. **Comparison** Webcam Settings (Mactaris) is the app most people find first, and it earned that. Same hardware controls, same 50/60 Hz anti-flicker. It was last updated in October 2019, runs under Rosetta, shows percentages, has no live preview, and presets are recalled by hand (there is a reapply timer). CamDial is Apple Silicon native, has a live preview, and reapplies on reconnect by itself. Logi Tune is Logitech's current app and it is maintained. It does things CamDial cannot: firmware updates and Logitech-only controls like the Brio field of view. If you need those, keep it. But it only sees
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Critic – Review code with the agent that wrote it
Hey HN, I'm Shreyash from Feyn. We help companies build custom models from their data. Today we're releasing Critic, a change review platform that lets you engage directly with the AI that wrote the code. Agents write most of our code. While that has made us more productive, understanding a change and its consequences has become incredibly difficult. As our company adopted more agentic tools, we found it harder to loop people in on the impact of a PR and the state of a project. We built Critic to fix this. Critic lets AI agents present their code, annotate key blocks, and include relevant evidence (like screenshots and instructions to run locally). Anyone viewing that change can talk directly to the agent that wrote it. See a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2--lytmOtQ . Critic works through a plugin for Codex or Claude Code. When your agent writes code, the plugin asks it to also write a narrative describing the story behind the change, and highlight any assumptions, decisions, or complex code. You can then view the change at critic.run or have your agent pull it via the bundled MCP. Every feature in Critic is available over MCP, so your agent gets all the same context without leaving its harness. From the dashboard or MCP, you can chat with the authoring agent directly. When Critic receives a question, it forks the authoring session and forwards your question there. That way your main thread stays clean and keeps working. Local changes are visible
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Hacker News
Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
Hello! We’re Sid, Alex, Ketan, and Milan. We’re building Whiteboard ( https://whiteboard.dev.fast/ ), an open-source desktop app where humans and agents can architect software together in a common workspace. Here’s our repo: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard . We were missing the feeling of a “whiteboard session” with another dev where you leave with a deep understanding of a system, so we built this app for ourselves. Whiteboard plugs into the tools you already use - e.g. Claude Code, Codex, etc. – and gives your agent an SDK to draw on an in-app canvas to describe its work. We began with an MVP based on HTML artifacts and started rethinking the app as we ran into limitations: 1. Built on top of CodeOSS: We found that in pure HTML tools it was hard to connect a spec or diagram to code. In Whiteboard, when you click on visualizations like a sequence diagram, an entity relationship diagram, or a quote from the agent’s trace, you can jump to the underlying code directly. When navigating code, you get keybindings and LSP support from VSCode out of the box. We’ve found this is especially valuable because tradeoffs are often only discovered after a first pass at implementation (re: slop) 2. Semantic diff viewer: we wrote a semantic, AST-aware diff viewer in Rust so you can only view the code changes which are relevant to you [1]. We’ve set up some sane defaults: large added functions are summarized as pseudocode, and things like unit tests
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Echoo.ai - Write in your language. Sound like yourself in English.
**Problem** Getting the English right is only part of writing a good message. It also needs to sound like you, fit the conversation, and get the names and details right. I built Echoo to bring that context into the app where you’re already typing. Write in your own language, press Option+E, and your draft becomes natural English in the same text field. No copying into a chatbot and pasting the answer back. Here’s what shapes the result: * **Personalization:** Tell Echoo what you do, who you write for, and how you like to sound. Your profile guides rewrites and translations, so you don’t have to explain your writing style with every request. * **Memory:** Enable it for a command, and future rewrites can build on earlier requests and results, including corrections and preferences you’ve shared with it. Names, terminology, and tone carry forward. As that context builds, rewrites can become more consistent with how you want to write. Memory is optional, off by default, and resettable. * **Screen Context:** Let a command use a screenshot of the conversation you’re replying to. A rough “sure, I’ll check” can become a reply that references the actual report and deadline visible in Slack. It’s optional and sends the screenshot to the AI provider. You can also edit the built-in prompts, create your own commands, and assign a shortcut to each. The video shows these features together: translating an email inside Gmail, personalizing the rewrite, using a Slack conversation as context, an
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
[OS] DayApp - Minimal Tasks & Notes App
Hi r/macapps, I'm the developer. **Problem** My ideas and tasks lived in TextEdit. It was difficult to manage tasks and organize thoughts. Obsidian and Notion do both, but they are systems you have to learn. I wanted one daily driver I could open without thinking. So I built DayApp. **Comparison** Simplenote is the closest: free, plain, fast, and it syncs everywhere. But its tasks are checkboxes. There's no today list, no priorities, and no answer to "what did I do all week?" Obsidian and Notion do everything, if you'll spend an evening setting them up. DayApp is the middle: one small window, light and fast because it's simple. It's a native window, not Electron, and the download is under 10 MB. **What's inside**: * Notes: what are you thinking? Can be minimized or hidden. (with optional priority and project tags.) * Tasks: what are you working on? With three sections Today, Daily and Backlog (with optional priority and project tags.) * Analytics: what tasks/projects did I work on? * A built-in CLI, so a terminal or an AI agent can read and work the same lists. * Journaling, quotes, reminders and goals are optional (hidden) quirks. * Command Palette (Cmd+P) has views and modes toggle. (Enter/Exist Demo mode) **Pricing** Free, MIT, no account, no telemetry, no subscription. Site with a one-line install: [https://getdayapp.vercel.app](https://getdayapp.vercel.app) Source: [https://github.com/faraz-35/dayapp](https://github.com/faraz-35/dayapp) **Worth knowing** * Apple Silicon
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Trovelo: private trip planner for Mac, now with shared trips and MCP support for Claude, Codex and more
**Problem:** Planning a trip means juggling Notes, Google Maps, spreadsheets and booking confirmations across half a dozen apps. Trovelo puts everything in one place, organized day by day, with no Trovelo servers, no account and no third party tracking. Built by a solo traveler with 40+ countries and 300+ cities of experience. **Comparison:** TripIt charges a yearly subscription and uploads your trips to its servers. Wanderlog is free but ad supported and requires an account. Trovelo keeps everything on your device and syncs through your own iCloud, one payment, no account. What stands out on Mac: * MCP integration: tell Claude, Codex or any MCP client "plan me 4 days in Rome" and watch the trip build itself inside Trovelo, live. Runs 100% locally, off by default * Native Mac app with a board view: same trip, same board on iPhone, iPad and Mac * 13 languages end to end, with smart parsing: type "Cena en Casa Lucio 21:30 45€" and Trovelo picks up time, price and type * NEW: Shared trips, invite the people you travel with and everyone works on the same board * NEW: Your travel life, a map of every country and city you've visited built from your photo library, with passport stamps and a yearly timeline * NEW: Someday, save places now and turn them into a trip later * NEW: Packing list that checks the destination's forecast and plug type * NEW: Weather next to each day's plan, time per card and a daily pace warning * NEW: Documents filed with the trip, plus full account backup an
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Nodes 2.0: a native Mac Markdown editor that works without plugins or setup. Fully local, on-device AI, no subscription
Hey everyone, Some of you might know Nodes from earlier posts here. For everyone else: Nodes is a native macOS Markdown editor, built by three students in Munich. **What makes it different:** It feels like a Mac app. Nodes is built with SwiftUI and TextKit 2, not a webview. It opens fast, scrolls smoothly, and the interface is clean and typographic. Math, tables and code render inline while you write. It works out of the box. I used Obsidian for about two years and loved the linking, but I also spent a lot of evenings on plugins and settings instead of writing. So we built Nodes the other way around. No plugins, no setup. We made a lot of choices for you on purpose, so you just open it and write. It suggests the connections, you decide. A background agent reads your notes and suggests tags, short descriptions and reminders. Semantic search finds notes by meaning, not just keywords. All of this runs on your Mac. Nothing goes to the cloud. It opens any Markdown file. Double-click a .md file in Finder and it opens in its own window, without importing anything. **What's new in 2.0:** Widgets: Your open reminders and recent notes can now live on your desktop. Faster rendering: Long notes with a lot of math, code or tables no longer lag when you type. Lighter AI features: Semantic search and auto-tagging are faster and use less CPU and battery. Plus a cleaner Home view and quicker Light Windows. We've also started on an iPhone version, with iCloud sync and a local peer-to-peer opti
Sep 24, 2026
How it works?
Turn a link into a decision in 3 steps
https://screen.studio/
read public page
identify apps + claims
keep source attached
1. Paste a link
Start with a product page, review, comparison, or public discussion.
2. Choose what matters
Keep the apps and buyer factors that actually affect your decision.
3. Create reusable Research
Save the result, add priorities, share it, or use someone else's work as your starting point.
Hacker News
Hacker News
Hacker News
Hacker News
r/macapps
Features
Research that reduces uncertainty, not just tabs
Source-backed research
Every published answer stays attached to the source that supports it, so you can verify before you buy.
Comparison that fits the decision
Compare the apps you choose across category-specific factors, not a generic checklist that fits nothing.
Research you can reuse
Save a comparison as Research, add your own priorities, share it, or use someone else's work as a starting point.
RESEARCH LIBRARY
Mac launcher shortlist
6 apps · 11 key factors
Screen recorder research
15 apps · 48 factors
Buy-once utilities
8 apps · Pricing evidence
Public facts, private thinking
Public facts remain evidence-backed while your notes, priorities, and decisions stay yours until you publish them.
Private notes
Stay separate from public facts.
Evidence model · live
Research that stays traceable
Missing evidence remains an open question. Conflicts stay visible.
Start a ResearchAI research agents
TheMacApps for AI research agents
Connect agents to structured Mac app research so they can plan, investigate, expose evidence gaps, and keep every answer traceable.
$ research screen.studio vs screensage.pro
✓ Connected acme.example
$ Compare Screen Studio, ScreenSage Pro, and Tella for polished Mac product demos.
Evidence covers zoom, cursor polish, system audio, pricing, and release history. Missing facts stay explicit instead of becoming guesses.
▍
Works with the sources you already use
PRODUCT SOURCES
COMMUNITY SOURCES
TheMacApps exists because a directory tells you what exists, but a purchase decision needs evidence: what matters for this category, what each app actually supports, what changed, and which source proves it.
Public facts stay separate from your personal Research, so better sources can improve shared knowledge without overwriting anyone's notes or decisions.
Research the decision, not the marketing page.
- Keep evidence visible.
- Keep missing facts as open questions.
- Reuse good Research instead of restarting from zero.
That is the product.
Echoo.ai - Write in your language. Sound like yourself in English.
r/macapps
Research access that matches how you work
Start free. Save, reuse, and publish Research when it becomes part of your workflow.
1 app · Personal · $0
FAQ
What kinds of links can I research?
Public product pages, reviews, comparisons, discussions, documentation, and other public HTTP/HTTPS pages can be analyzed as a research starting point.
How are facts verified?
TheMacApps separates what a page claims from verified facts. Research cells keep source links and evidence state so missing evidence is never silently turned into a negative answer.
Can I compare more than two apps?
Yes. A Research can contain a broad comparison set, while the table keeps the first app pinned and lets you scroll across the rest.
Can I add my own research fields?
Yes. You can add the questions that matter to your purchase instead of waiting for a global schema to anticipate every niche app category.
Do I need an account to analyze a URL?
You can analyze a public URL before creating a saved Research. An account is required when you want the research to become your persistent asset.
Can Research be private?
Research supports private, unlisted, and public visibility. Personal notes are not exposed to other viewers of a public Research.
Can I use someone else's Research?
Yes. Use this research creates your own Research while preserving lineage to the source, so you can change priorities without rewriting public facts.
Is TheMacApps only a directory?
No. The catalog is the identity layer for apps; the core product is evidence-backed Research that turns scattered web pages into reusable purchase knowledge.
Where does TheMacApps get its evidence?
Research can cite official product sites, App Store pages, documentation, support pages, release notes, GitHub, reviews, Reddit, YouTube, X, and other public web sources.
What happens when sources disagree?
Conflicting evidence stays visible as conflicting. TheMacApps does not silently pick one source and present it as settled fact.
Does missing evidence mean a feature is unsupported?
No. Missing evidence remains an open question until a source supports a yes or no answer.
Can Research change when an app changes?
Yes. Public facts can be refreshed as products, pricing, requirements, and features change, while your private notes and priorities remain separate.
Can I share a Research without making it fully public?
Yes. Unlisted Research can be shared by link without appearing as a normal public listing.
Can I keep personal notes inside a Research?
Yes. Personal notes and decision context belong to your Research layer and are kept separate from reusable public facts.
Can I start from a Reddit or X discussion?
Yes. Public discussions can be analyzed as starting evidence, then the important product claims can be verified against stronger sources.
Can AI agents use TheMacApps research?
Yes. The research model is designed so agents can plan, investigate, identify evidence gaps, and work with structured app facts instead of opaque summaries.
Does TheMacApps research non-Mac software?
The product is centered on Mac apps and Mac buying decisions. Cross-platform products can appear when their Mac version is relevant to the comparison.
Can makers correct outdated information?
The evidence model is designed for corrections to be backed by newer or stronger sources rather than overwriting facts without traceability.
How is it better than another app directory?
Read the real conversations that become Research inputs.
Hacker News
Quiet
Show HN: Koi.rest – watch some fish and regain your balance
Hi there. My name is Paul. I’m a developer, an explorer and I’ve got ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed. This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress. While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use. It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now. So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself. Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make. I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough". I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it. So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy. Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head? So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond. The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together. I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Claude
Show HN: I built a seriously detailed free financial planner
Hi, I spent the last 2.5 years building a super detailed financial planning tool called FinZot (US focused). It helps with questions like deciding when to retire, how much to spend in retirement, how to optimize taxes. I believe it is much more detailed than other free tools or free tiers. It even contains an embedded Excel-inspired domain specific language for customizing the sizing of income/expense, etc. The entire planning engine is free. Runs in your browser (Rust/WASM). No sign-up is necessary. Your data does not leave your browser unless you create an account. There are a couple of paid features in the app which are mostly just quality of life features and AI integration. The AI integration is via a Claude connector that gives Claude access to the full planning engine. Links: https://app.finzot.com/plan/6VXFMte2tRMp81sRKhYgXM/results/n... finzot.com
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Productive
Show HN: Critic – Review code with the agent that wrote it
Hey HN, I'm Shreyash from Feyn. We help companies build custom models from their data. Today we're releasing Critic, a change review platform that lets you engage directly with the AI that wrote the code. Agents write most of our code. While that has made us more productive, understanding a change and its consequences has become incredibly difficult. As our company adopted more agentic tools, we found it harder to loop people in on the impact of a PR and the state of a project. We built Critic to fix this. Critic lets AI agents present their code, annotate key blocks, and include relevant evidence (like screenshots and instructions to run locally). Anyone viewing that change can talk directly to the agent that wrote it. See a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2--lytmOtQ . Critic works through a plugin for Codex or Claude Code. When your agent writes code, the plugin asks it to also write a narrative describing the story behind the change, and highlight any assumptions, decisions, or complex code. You can then view the change at critic.run or have your agent pull it via the bundled MCP. Every feature in Critic is available over MCP, so your agent gets all the same context without leaving its harness. From the dashboard or MCP, you can chat with the authoring agent directly. When Critic receives a question, it forks the authoring session and forwards your question there. That way your main thread stays clean and keeps working. Local changes are visible
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Notion
[OS] DayApp - Minimal Tasks & Notes App
Hi r/macapps, I'm the developer. **Problem** My ideas and tasks lived in TextEdit. It was difficult to manage tasks and organize thoughts. Obsidian and Notion do both, but they are systems you have to learn. I wanted one daily driver I could open without thinking. So I built DayApp. **Comparison** Simplenote is the closest: free, plain, fast, and it syncs everywhere. But its tasks are checkboxes. There's no today list, no priorities, and no answer to "what did I do all week?" Obsidian and Notion do everything, if you'll spend an evening setting them up. DayApp is the middle: one small window, light and fast because it's simple. It's a native window, not Electron, and the download is under 10 MB. **What's inside**: * Notes: what are you thinking? Can be minimized or hidden. (with optional priority and project tags.) * Tasks: what are you working on? With three sections Today, Daily and Backlog (with optional priority and project tags.) * Analytics: what tasks/projects did I work on? * A built-in CLI, so a terminal or an AI agent can read and work the same lists. * Journaling, quotes, reminders and goals are optional (hidden) quirks. * Command Palette (Cmd+P) has views and modes toggle. (Enter/Exist Demo mode) **Pricing** Free, MIT, no account, no telemetry, no subscription. Site with a one-line install: [https://getdayapp.vercel.app](https://getdayapp.vercel.app) Source: [https://github.com/faraz-35/dayapp](https://github.com/faraz-35/dayapp) **Worth knowing** * Apple Silicon
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Cutter
Any nerds out there who've read a lot of research papers?
Which are the most memorable abstracts you have read? I know I am a jackass who usually vibecodes my way through assignments but even I don't want to write a cookie-cutter intro for my paper. I wanna write something that stays with the reader. What paper has stuck with you, what made it memorable?
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Shift
Show HN: Radix – Visual UI for agentic programming
Hey HN, I'm Jordan from Radix. Radix is a UI tool for programming agents. You prompt your agent to generate a workspace for a task you're working on and get an interactive widget that persists locally on disk. I built Radix because I always needed tools while I was writing code: tools to test little experiments, to play around with UI, to visualise results etc. Sometimes these would end up as python tools that read and plotted data, or separate React apps spun up just to test a single feature. Lately obviously I've been using Claude artifacts but these are quite limited. I wanted a system where it was easy to leave comments or adapt an artifact without having to give vague descriptions back to the agent, and where ideally I could actually shift away from a chat window as the main interface. I've got a pro version of Radix which I will launch soon. This current version is entirely free and is definitely a beta -- there will be rough edges! Note: There's no telemetry or data captured. Your messages run entirely through your own agent. I require a key but that's just to get an idea of how many people are using it. Everything is stored locally (the workspaces are actually just React apps which you can edit "artisanally" if you want). If you have any questions please reply here or email me hello@radix-os.com Thank you!
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
Hacker News
Claude
Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design
Hello! We’re Sid, Alex, Ketan, and Milan. We’re building Whiteboard ( https://whiteboard.dev.fast/ ), an open-source desktop app where humans and agents can architect software together in a common workspace. Here’s our repo: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard . We were missing the feeling of a “whiteboard session” with another dev where you leave with a deep understanding of a system, so we built this app for ourselves. Whiteboard plugs into the tools you already use - e.g. Claude Code, Codex, etc. – and gives your agent an SDK to draw on an in-app canvas to describe its work. We began with an MVP based on HTML artifacts and started rethinking the app as we ran into limitations: 1. Built on top of CodeOSS: We found that in pure HTML tools it was hard to connect a spec or diagram to code. In Whiteboard, when you click on visualizations like a sequence diagram, an entity relationship diagram, or a quote from the agent’s trace, you can jump to the underlying code directly. When navigating code, you get keybindings and LSP support from VSCode out of the box. We’ve found this is especially valuable because tradeoffs are often only discovered after a first pass at implementation (re: slop) 2. Semantic diff viewer: we wrote a semantic, AST-aware diff viewer in Rust so you can only view the code changes which are relevant to you [1]. We’ve set up some sane defaults: large added functions are summarized as pseudocode, and things like unit tests
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Forecast
Trovelo: private trip planner for Mac, now with shared trips and MCP support for Claude, Codex and more
**Problem:** Planning a trip means juggling Notes, Google Maps, spreadsheets and booking confirmations across half a dozen apps. Trovelo puts everything in one place, organized day by day, with no Trovelo servers, no account and no third party tracking. Built by a solo traveler with 40+ countries and 300+ cities of experience. **Comparison:** TripIt charges a yearly subscription and uploads your trips to its servers. Wanderlog is free but ad supported and requires an account. Trovelo keeps everything on your device and syncs through your own iCloud, one payment, no account. What stands out on Mac: * MCP integration: tell Claude, Codex or any MCP client "plan me 4 days in Rome" and watch the trip build itself inside Trovelo, live. Runs 100% locally, off by default * Native Mac app with a board view: same trip, same board on iPhone, iPad and Mac * 13 languages end to end, with smart parsing: type "Cena en Casa Lucio 21:30 45€" and Trovelo picks up time, price and type * NEW: Shared trips, invite the people you travel with and everyone works on the same board * NEW: Your travel life, a map of every country and city you've visited built from your photo library, with passport stamps and a yearly timeline * NEW: Someday, save places now and turn them into a trip later * NEW: Packing list that checks the destination's forecast and plug type * NEW: Weather next to each day's plan, time per card and a daily pace warning * NEW: Documents filed with the trip, plus full account backup an
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Day One
Ember: Life archive journaling software. local first and native, supports dayone and apple journal import. [Free lifetime license to beta users]
I'm Nandha, the developer of Ember. Five months ago I posted about Ember here. So here's the update on ember. **The first 500 beta users get Ember Plus for life.** After those spots are gone, beta users will still get **1 year of Plus free** at launch. **Problem** I've lost nearly 5 people I know. Not lost like they're gone. Lost like I forgot their name. The girl I helped sell lemonade on the side of the road. The first person who had a crush on me. The stories of how we met are slowly eroding. Journal apps are about you. Personal CRMs are about networking. I wanted a private place where every person who mattered gets their own space: how you met, the stories you lived together, and a quiet nudge when someone you care about starts to fade. **What it does** * Write like you always would. Type @ and a name to tag someone, and that entry becomes part of their story. * People live in worlds (Family, Work, College). Someone can be in two, like a colleague who became a friend. * Four ways to hold a person, thanks to a comment on my last post: Tending (fades if you lose touch), Rooted (never fades, like family), Seen (a meaningful one-time encounter), and Quiet (faded, and at peace with it). * Quick log with ⌘L when you don't want to write a full entry. * A graph of everyone, an "on this day" feed, and search that understands time ("Christmas with Jane", "last summer"). * Import from Day One, Apple Journal, and your Contacts. Export to Obsidian, Bear, or a full JSON archive. Your d
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Keep It
CamDial: USB webcam settings on the Mac that come back by themselves after sleep or a reconnect
Hi, developer here. I make CamDial, a menu bar app for USB webcam settings. It went live on the Mac App Store last week. **Problem** USB webcams keep exposure, white balance and focus in volatile memory. Mac sleeps, hub switches, you bump the cable, and the camera is back on factory auto. macOS keeps no record of what you set. I got tired of redoing my camera before every call, so I built the thing that remembers it for me. CamDial sets exposure, white balance, focus and zoom on the camera itself over USB, saves the look as a preset, and puts it back when the camera reconnects. You get a quiet notification with an undo. No virtual camera, so Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS and FaceTime all get the same picture, and you can adjust it mid-call. Values are in kelvins and fractions of a second, not percentages. Controls your camera does not support are hidden with an explanation, not greyed out. **Comparison** Webcam Settings (Mactaris) is the app most people find first, and it earned that. Same hardware controls, same 50/60 Hz anti-flicker. It was last updated in October 2019, runs under Rosetta, shows percentages, has no live preview, and presets are recalled by hand (there is a reapply timer). CamDial is Apple Silicon native, has a live preview, and reapplies on reconnect by itself. Logi Tune is Logitech's current app and it is maintained. It does things CamDial cannot: firmware updates and Logitech-only controls like the Brio field of view. If you need those, keep it. But it only sees
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Slack
Echoo.ai - Write in your language. Sound like yourself in English.
**Problem** Getting the English right is only part of writing a good message. It also needs to sound like you, fit the conversation, and get the names and details right. I built Echoo to bring that context into the app where you’re already typing. Write in your own language, press Option+E, and your draft becomes natural English in the same text field. No copying into a chatbot and pasting the answer back. Here’s what shapes the result: * **Personalization:** Tell Echoo what you do, who you write for, and how you like to sound. Your profile guides rewrites and translations, so you don’t have to explain your writing style with every request. * **Memory:** Enable it for a command, and future rewrites can build on earlier requests and results, including corrections and preferences you’ve shared with it. Names, terminology, and tone carry forward. As that context builds, rewrites can become more consistent with how you want to write. Memory is optional, off by default, and resettable. * **Screen Context:** Let a command use a screenshot of the conversation you’re replying to. A rough “sure, I’ll check” can become a reply that references the actual report and deadline visible in Slack. It’s optional and sends the screenshot to the AI provider. You can also edit the built-in prompts, create your own commands, and assign a shortcut to each. The video shows these features together: translating an email inside Gmail, personalizing the rewrite, using a Slack conversation as context, an
Related apps
Sep 24, 2026
r/macapps
Obsidian
Nodes 2.0: a native Mac Markdown editor that works without plugins or setup. Fully local, on-device AI, no subscription
Hey everyone, Some of you might know Nodes from earlier posts here. For everyone else: Nodes is a native macOS Markdown editor, built by three students in Munich. **What makes it different:** It feels like a Mac app. Nodes is built with SwiftUI and TextKit 2, not a webview. It opens fast, scrolls smoothly, and the interface is clean and typographic. Math, tables and code render inline while you write. It works out of the box. I used Obsidian for about two years and loved the linking, but I also spent a lot of evenings on plugins and settings instead of writing. So we built Nodes the other way around. No plugins, no setup. We made a lot of choices for you on purpose, so you just open it and write. It suggests the connections, you decide. A background agent reads your notes and suggests tags, short descriptions and reminders. Semantic search finds notes by meaning, not just keywords. All of this runs on your Mac. Nothing goes to the cloud. It opens any Markdown file. Double-click a .md file in Finder and it opens in its own window, without importing anything. **What's new in 2.0:** Widgets: Your open reminders and recent notes can now live on your desktop. Faster rendering: Long notes with a lot of math, code or tables no longer lag when you type. Lighter AI features: Semantic search and auto-tagging are faster and use less CPU and battery. Plus a cleaner Home view and quicker Light Windows. We've also started on an iPhone version, with iCloud sync and a local peer-to-peer opti
Sep 24, 2026
Find the answer before you buy the app
Start with the page you already have open. Turn it into evidence-backed Mac app Research.