Show HN: Vacation Maximizer – Maximize PTO by taking days off around holidays https://ift.tt/RmCzsXY

Show HN: Vacation Maximizer – Maximize PTO by taking days off around holidays Hey! In my last job I was constantly wondering when it would be best to take days off so I could enjoy the most days off in a row, so I made this tool! It tries to schedule PTO around holidays so that you get the most consecutive time off while spending as few days as possible. You can set some constraints, customize the holidays and define mandatory vacation days (in case your company mandates them). If you try for 2025, you should see results for the rest of the year. If there are unscheduled days, it's because there isn't a particularly good period to take them off. (I should make this clearer in the site, to be honest). Let me know if you have any questions or comments and hope you get value out of it! Bernardo https://ift.tt/u6wjqkY July 24, 2025 at 01:24AM

Show HN: AnkiTTS (Anki Text to Speech) https://ift.tt/tAim9Ln

Show HN: AnkiTTS (Anki Text to Speech) Easily add audio to your anki files using elevenlabs and this CLI tool. https://ift.tt/k2bKR9n July 23, 2025 at 09:36PM

Show HN: Compass CNC – Open-source handheld CNC router https://ift.tt/nyUmFaX

Show HN: Compass CNC – Open-source handheld CNC router Hey HN, I am Cam, and for the past two years I have been working on Compass, an open-source handheld CNC router that brings computer precision to woodworking while keeping the user directly involved in the process. The idea started as my senior design project at UC Berkeley, with the goal of making a more approachable CNC machine—standard CNC machines are expensive, bulky, and remove you from the tactile “maker” experience. Compass solves that by combining a handheld router with real-time robotic assistance. You move the router roughly along a design path, and Compass uses four optical flow sensors (like in computer mice) and a 3-axis motion system to auto-correct for precision cuts. What is different about Compass: - Open source: All plans, firmware, and CAD files are available on GitHub. - Affordable: The DIY build costs ~$600 in parts, and I am selling kits for <$800. - No external markers: The sensing technology allows for positioning without external markers, so no setup or consumables required. - Portable: Fits in a backpack and is not limited by a fixed work envelope. We recently completed our first beta program and have just launched V1 kits for pre-order. You can find more info and the launch video at the listed URL. GitHub: https://github.com/camchaney/handheld-cnc https://www.compassrouter.com July 19, 2025 at 01:18PM

Show HN: Phind.design – Image editor & design tool powered by 4o / custom models https://ift.tt/2RDqxH3

Show HN: Phind.design – Image editor & design tool powered by 4o / custom models Hi HN, Today we’re launching phind.design ( https://phind.design ), an image editor and design tool that uses 4o and custom models to allow users to generate and edit designs for anything from logos and advertisements to creative website and app designs. 4o is great at producing a first version of an image, but is not capable of editing it without messing up other parts of it. We fix this by running Flux Kontext alongside 4o image gen in the chat, as well as by introducing a precision editor powered by custom models where a user indicates an area to modify and we guarantee that only that area will be modified. Our precision editor is state-of-the-art on image editing in our tests and allows inserting new additional images into the existing image. The latter allows users to insert a logo, product, or face into an image without messing up other parts of the image, and even fix logos and faces that were messed up by 4o. Text editing with the precision edit model is still a work in progress, and we will fix it with the next iteration of that model. We recommend using the chat for editing text for now. Example: Insert UT Austin logo into helicopter ad ( https://ift.tt/3d4pE9t ) We also always produce multiple variations for image generations and edits, as we think this variety is important for getting exactly what you asked for. Example: Paul Graham in startup heaven ( https://ift.tt/aUnHq8E ) One thing we’re excited about is adding more variation into AI-generated websites, as many website builders all use the same CSS libraries, so many websites end up looking the same. We hope to allow builders and creatives to make truly unique designs in 1/10th the time it currently takes with existing tools. Example: Make me a popeyes landing page where the eyes are actually popping out ( https://ift.tt/mY051rs ) Example: A train map with sandwich ingredients replacing subway stops. ( https://ift.tt/0oH9jiE ) As engineers who have been frustrated by the time commitment it takes to learn Figma or Photoshop, we hope that phind.design makes it incredibly easy to go from zero to one on your wildest creative ideas. The editor is far from perfect, particularly when it comes to text. We are working on it and have a new custom precision editing model on the way. In the meantime, we’re excited to hear your comments and feedback! https://phind.design July 22, 2025 at 11:14PM

Show HN: Any-LLM – lightweight and open-source router to access any LLM Provider https://ift.tt/7vJ8y03

Show HN: Any-LLM – lightweight and open-source router to access any LLM Provider We built any-llm because we needed a lightweight router for LLM providers with minimal overhead. Switching between models is just a string change : update "openai/gpt-4" to "anthropic/claude-3" and you're done. It uses official provider SDKs when available, which helps since providers handle their own compatibility updates. No proxy or gateway service needed either, so getting started is pretty straightforward - just pip install and import. Currently supports 20+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and AWS Bedrock. Would love to hear what you think! https://ift.tt/7kZKjAO July 22, 2025 at 11:10PM

Show HN: Lotas – Cursor for RStudio https://ift.tt/swEMK4R

Show HN: Lotas – Cursor for RStudio Hey HN! We’re Jorge and Will from Lotas ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ), and we’ve built an AI coding assistant into RStudio (think Cursor for RStudio). RStudio is used by about 2 million data scientists and academics, but they currently lack a coding assistant within their IDE. Developers in other environments benefit from tools like Cursor and Windsurf, but R users don’t have any equivalent tools to speed up their workflow. Since ~80% of R programmers prefer to use RStudio over other IDEs like VSCode to write R code, we figured a tool like this one could be quite useful. Both of us were PhD students at Harvard. Jorge was in the biophysics program and Will was in the biostatistics program where most people used RStudio every day. We saw how integrated code assistants were taking off in other IDEs, but we noticed that the RStudio integrations were still lagging far behind. Many R users were copying and pasting code from ChatGPT to build their workflows, and this was clearly slow and fragile. To bring the Cursor-like experience to RStudio users, we built Rao ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ): a fork of RStudio with an embedded AI assistant that is aware of the user’s local context (both files and variable environment), can read and write files, can run code or commands, and can interpret textual or visual output. It works with any of the file formats already in RStudio (R, notebooks including RMDs and QMDs, Python, Stan, etc.), allowing R programmers to iteratively perform entire data analyses inside their preferred IDE. Other AI data science tools are either (1) built on the web or in environments people don’t already use, (2) are completely focused on python notebooks, or (3) are weak package-based assistants with limited functionality. Rao is exactly like the RStudio IDE that millions of data scientists already use, but it incorporates a powerful AI assistant and works with all the standard file types. You can download Rao at https://ift.tt/0ZRzFyb , watch our demo on the homepage ( https://www.lotas.ai/ ), and work through some example use cases on our GitHub ( https://ift.tt/ZrYcoqM ). We have a one-week free trial (no card required) and provide 500 queries/month for $20/month after that. We’d love to hear feedback from the HN community to make Rao as useful as possible! You can reach us at founders@lotas.ai. P.S. We have zero data retention (ZDR) agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic, but we currently recommend users do not input sensitive or regulated data like PHI into Rao until we sign BAAs with both model providers. For more information on our security practices, please visit the security page on our website https://ift.tt/CWJretU . https://www.lotas.ai/ July 21, 2025 at 11:46PM

Show HN: An API for human-powered browser tasks https://ift.tt/LHuQBeo

Show HN: An API for human-powered browser tasks At APM Help, we have a large team that performs repetitive, browser-based tasks. Years ago, to manage this work securely and get a clear audit trail, we built an internal platform we call "Hub." It's essentially a locked-down environment where our team works that records their sessions, tracks every interaction, and prevents data from being copied or shared. It's been our internal source of truth for years. More recently, like many companies, we've been building more automation. And like everyone else, we've seen our automations fail on edge cases—a weirdly formatted invoice our parser can't read, a website layout change that breaks a scraper, etc. Our team would have to manually step in to fix these. We realized other developers must have this exact same problem, but without a 250-person team on standby. So we connected our old, battle-tested Hub to a new, modern front door: a Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) API. We're calling it browser-work.com. The idea is simple: when you hit a task that needs a human, you can send it to our team through the API. Here's how it works: - You POST a request to our endpoint. The payload contains the context for the task (like a URL) and a set of instructions for the human on what to do. - The task appears in the Hub, where one of our trained operators can claim it. - They perform the task exactly as instructed, all within the secure Hub environment. - When they're done, we send a webhook to your system. The return payload includes the task's output, any notes left by the human, and a detailed log of their actions (e.g., DOM elements they interacted with). For example, if your automation for paying a utility bill fails, you can pass the task to us. A person will log in, navigate the portal, make the payment, and return a confirmation number. The product is live and we're looking for people with interesting use cases. I'm Robert, the CIO. If this sounds useful to you, send me a brief email about your use case at robert@apmhelp.com and we can get you started right away. Happy to answer any questions here. https://ift.tt/Nfenmwh July 21, 2025 at 09:46PM