The graveyard of good ideas
Solutions that were tried, and what stopped them.
Patents that were rejected or abandoned, products that shut down, projects that went quiet. Borrow the idea, avoid the dead end.
1,900 solutions
- startupShut down2025
Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
https://web.archive.org/web/20251113164403/https://hightimes...
Why it failed: https://web.archive.org/web/20251113164403/https://hightimes...
bilsbie
- startupShut down2025
I launched 17 side projects. Result? I'm rich in expired domains
I think I'm officially a side project collector. I've had it all: A SaaS for freelancers... that I never had time to finish because I'm a freelancer. A revolutionary AI tool that I abandoned as soon as GPT-4 came out. And the famous "anti-social media social network" (spoiler: it was just me). I buy a domain name → I code for 3 all-nighters → I lose interest → I start again. My Google Domains look like a graveyard of unfinished dreams. But honestly, I've never learned so much, nor enjoyed it so much. And one day, I might release one that takes off. Or not. But I'll be ready. Any other serial side-projectors here? Share your greatest fails/unlikely successes
Why it failed: I think I'm officially a side project collector. I've had it all: A SaaS for freelancers... that I never had time to finish because I'm a freelancer. A revolutionary AI tool that I abandoned as soon as GPT-4 came out. And the famous "anti-social media social n
cesargstn
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Not treated respectfully by colleague – advice?
I work with a competent jerk: https://www.pickardlaws.com/myleadership/myfiles/rtdocs/hbr/... Backstory -- I joined my current team a year ago. It was falling apart. The team members hated each other and were trying to get each other fired. The team lead who’d joined a quarter before had quit to join another team largely due to conflict with one difficult coworker. Then I joined as the lead. I helped to stabilize the team over the last year. It’s grown from four to ten engineers. Three engineers joined specifically to work with me. Yet the entire time I’ve been on that team, that one difficult coworker has been criticizing and fighting almost everything I’ve done. That coworker was relatively inexperienced, yet was told by a previous director that he was meant to be the lead of this platform. Hence the fighting with the other lead from a year ago. And w
Why it failed: I work with a competent jerk: https://www.pickardlaws.com/myleadership/myfiles/rtdocs/hbr/... Backstory -- I joined my current team a year ago. It was falling apart. The team members hated each other and were trying to get each other fired. The
golly_ned
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Want to leave my job with nothing lined up
I’m currently working in a very toxic environment and it’s starting to affect my life outside of work in negative ways. I have money saved up, don’t live an extravagant lifestyle, and have around 7 years of experience but I do know how challenging the job market has been which worries me. I would also be leaving my current company towards the end of the year when not many people are hiring. When asking my friends and colleagues what to do, I always get the same answer of either wait until you find something else to quit or wait until they fire you, but whatever you do don’t leave with no offer in hand. I agree with their approach in general but I’m just really burned out and don’t have the mental energy to come home from a 10 hour day and start preparing for interviews. Ideally I would like time to prepare adequately for interviews and really think about what I want to do next instead of
Why it failed: I’m currently working in a very toxic environment and it’s starting to affect my life outside of work in negative ways. I have money saved up, don’t live an extravagant lifestyle, and have around 7 years of experience but I do know how challenging the job market has been which wo
bsjak
- startupShut down2025
FWS – pip-installable embedded process supervisor with PTY/pipe/dtach back ends
I’m releasing *Framework Shells* (`fws`): a standalone Python package for orchestrating long-running background processes (“shells”) with *PTY*, *pipes*, and *dtach* backends. This is meant for environments where you don’t want to stand up a full supervisor stack (or don’t have one): quick multi-service prototypes, dev environments, constrained userlands, etc. ### What it does * Spawn/manage shells with: * **PTY**: interactive terminal sessions (resize, input, stream) * **Pipes**: stdin/stdout/stderr streams (good for daemons/LSPs) * **dtach**: persistent sessions you can attach/detach to (survives manager restarts) * *Runtime isolation* (the big feature): shells are namespaced by `~/.cache/framework_shells/runtimes/<repo_fingerprint>/<runtime_id>/...` so two clones of the same repo can run concurrently without cross-adop
Why it failed: I’m releasing *Framework Shells* (`fws`): a standalone Python package for orchestrating long-running background processes (“shells”) with *PTY*, *pipes*, and *dtach* backends. This is meant for environments where you don’t want to stand up a full supervisor stack (or don’t have o
mrsurge
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Open-source Deep Research across workplace applications
I’ve been using deep research on OpenAI and Perplexity and it’s been just amazing at gathering data across a lot of related and chained searches. Just earlier today, I asked “What are some marquee tech companies / hot startups (not including the giants like FAAMG, Samsung, Nvidia etc.)”. It’s a pretty involved question and looking up “marquee tech startups” or "hot tech startups" on Google gave me nothing useful. Deep research on both ChatGPT and Perplexity gave really high quality responses with ChatGPT siding on slightly larger scaleups and Perplexity siding more on up and coming companies. Given how useful AI research agents are across the internet, we decided to build an open-source equivalent for the workplace since a ton of questions at work also cannot be easily resolved with a single search. Onyx supports deep research connected to company applications like Google
Why it failed: I’ve been using deep research on OpenAI and Perplexity and it’s been just amazing at gathering data across a lot of related and chained searches. Just earlier today, I asked “What are some marquee tech companies / hot startups (not including the giants like FAAMG, Samsung, N
yuhongsun
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: I don't think I want to work in tech anymore?
I’ve been working in tech as a SWE for a good while now, and I’m realising it’s making me miserable. On paper I feel like I should have a very successful career: high-paid remote work, senior/staff level, reasonably-generalist with backend specialization, generally good coworkers / managers, and so on. But in reality, I’m doing terribly! I have relatively short tenure in all my roles, because I somehow keep picking jobs where my manager/coworkers start quitting before I do; my savings were drained by health issues caused by work stresses, so I can’t afford to take an extended period between jobs; employers I end up with, regardless of contract or FTE, always seem to end up making near-impossible demands of engineering that ruin the team’s morale; the list goes on. I see a therapist, I see a number of doctors for the health issues I’ve ended up with, but I feel like no amou
Why it failed: I’ve been working in tech as a SWE for a good while now, and I’m realising it’s making me miserable. On paper I feel like I should have a very successful career: high-paid remote work, senior/staff level, reasonably-generalist with backend specialization, generally good cowo
wanttoquittech
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: A word of the day that doesn't suck
I’ve long thought that the Word of the Day was a wasted genre. The goal should be to give you words you can use; to enrich your understanding of words you already know; or at least to use words to tell you something neat about the world. Instead, what you usually get is words that will never be used in conversation, held up as curios. Some examples from Dictionary.com’s daily email: thewless, balladmonger, vagility, contextomy. These words are... not useful. I’ve always thought I could do better. My friend Ben recently created a daily puzzle game, called Bracket City, launched here on HN [1], which I like because it takes about the same amount of time as Wordle but has some of the variety and artistry of a good crossword. Ben agreed to let me write a word of the day for the game’s audience. We’ve collected them all here: https://bracket.city/words . It’s such a joy to writ
Why it failed: I’ve long thought that the Word of the Day was a wasted genre. The goal should be to give you words you can use; to enrich your understanding of words you already know; or at least to use words to tell you something neat about the world. Instead, what you usually get is words tha
jsomers
- startupShut down2025
We got a $60k tax penalty for a zero-revenue side project
In 2020, in the middle of COVID, a few friends and I decided that obviously the world needed another presentation tool. Our pain point was simple: we hated fighting with PowerPoint/Google Slides. We just wanted to write content and get nice slides without babysitting fonts, sizes, alignment, colors, and 19 different "Title + Subtitle" layouts that all somehow looked bad. So we built a prototype: a tiny click-together slide builder. Then we decided clicking was too slow and turned it into a full markdown-to-slides thing. Write markdown in, pretty slides out. Easy. Then, like every good side project, we started bolting on features: Image uploads, PDF generation via API, AI integration and more and more stuff nobody had actually asked for.... Somewhere in there, in peak "we're definitely the next unicorn" mode, we incorporated a US company through Stripe Atlas.
Why it failed: In 2020, in the middle of COVID, a few friends and I decided that obviously the world needed another presentation tool. Our pain point was simple: we hated fighting with PowerPoint/Google Slides. We just wanted to write content and get nice slides without babysitting fonts,
lukaslukas
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?
Is anybody still using TUI applications for business? My family company is a wholesale distribution firm (with lightweight manufacturing) and has been using the same TUI application (on prem unix box) since 1993. We use it for customer management, ordering, invoicing, kit management/build tickets, financials - everything. We've transitioned from green screen terminals to modern emulators, but the core system remains. I spent many summers running serial and ethernet cables. I left the business years ago to become a full time software engineer, but I got my start as a script kiddie writing automations for this system with Microsoft Access, VBA, and SendKeys to automate data entry. Amazingly, they still have a Windows XP machine running many of those tasks I wrote back in 2004! It's brittle, but cumulatively has probably saved years of time. That XP machine could survive a nu
Why it failed: Is anybody still using TUI applications for business? My family company is a wholesale distribution firm (with lightweight manufacturing) and has been using the same TUI application (on prem unix box) since 1993. We use it for customer management, ordering, invoicing, kit managem
urnicus
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?
Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
Why it failed: Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
ofalkaed
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: We Built Our Own Chart Type for Live Dashboards
Most analytics tools give you 10–15 chart types and call it a day. But what happens when none of them actually represent your data well? We ran into this when building a CRM dashboard. We wanted to show how sales reps connect to open deals: not just totals, but actual relationships. A bar chart was too flat, a table too dense. We needed a network graph. The problem? Most chart libraries and BI tools don’t support that out of the box. You either say “no” to the feature request, or you hack together a standalone visualization that breaks the product’s flow (no filters, no interactivity, no theming). So we built it ourselves, but in a way that still plays nicely with the rest of the dashboard. Luzmo now lets you define your own chart type, write your own visualization code, and then drop it into the dashboard editor like any other chart. Luzmo still handles the boring stuff: querying, filte
Why it failed: Most analytics tools give you 10–15 chart types and call it a day. But what happens when none of them actually represent your data well? We ran into this when building a CRM dashboard. We wanted to show how sales reps connect to open deals: not just totals, but actual relationshi
YannickCrabbe
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: A library to convert+deploy existing agent projects as MCP servers
Most of the MCP servers that I’ve seen are tools implemented in standalone projects. To onboard more tools (especially agents and multi-agent workflows) to MCP, I’ve been thinking it’s important to allow AI engineers to continue to prototype in their existing agent frameworks and deploy with minimal conversion when ready. We created the automcp library, which you can add as a dependency to existing projects (CrewAI, LangGraph, Llama Index, OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, mcp-agent currently supported but more coming soon). You just need to run a CLI command to create a run_mcp.py file, make some edits and run it to start the server locally. You can think of run_mcp.py like Heroku’s Procfile, Codespaces configs, Pulumi/AWS CDK style IaC. We also created a demo of a deployment platform where you can enter the GitHub URL of your project, deploy with one click, and get a URL for the hos
Why it failed: Most of the MCP servers that I’ve seen are tools implemented in standalone projects. To onboard more tools (especially agents and multi-agent workflows) to MCP, I’ve been thinking it’s important to allow AI engineers to continue to prototype in their existing agent frameworks and
richardblythman
- startupShut down2025
I am concerned about the future. Are you?
My children are in college pursuing STEM degrees (CS and Robotics), with one also pursuing an art double major (animation). While we are in the US, we also have family in Europe and Latin America. So, what's the concern? Well, there are two that I think should be obvious. The first is how AI will alter the landscape. It is easy to see that companies might be able to develop products with somewhere between 1/5 to 1/10 the engineers in the not-too-distant future. Let's define that as the time required for a fresh high school graduate to finish a Masters degree. How can you possibly advise and guide a young person given the huge variability of potential outcomes 6 to 10 years out? The second is the massive deindustrialization of the West (again, this isn't US-centric as Europe, Latin America and others are deeply affected) as China solidifies into a dominant positio
Why it failed: My children are in college pursuing STEM degrees (CS and Robotics), with one also pursuing an art double major (animation). While we are in the US, we also have family in Europe and Latin America. So, what's the concern? Well, there are two that I think should be obvious. Th
robomartin
- patentRejected2025
Ask HN: MIT grad, junior dev layoffs – watching my daughter lose faith in merit
My daughter followed the playbook everyone here recommends. MIT. Programming olympiads. Strong internships. No shortcuts. She was hired as a junior developer and laid off in February. Since then, I’ve watched her confidence collapse in real time. She isolates herself. She barely talks. She spends most days in her room applying, waiting, and getting silence. I recently saw her crying alone, trying not to be noticed. That’s when it hit me how deeply this has affected her. This layoff didn’t just remove a paycheck. It removed her belief that effort correlates with outcomes. Every rejection reinforces the idea that none of what she did mattered. It’s Christmas and we aren’t celebrating. No decorations. No pretending things are okay. I’m completely shattered as a parent, mostly because I don’t have answers. I told her for years that merit would protect her. It didn’t. So I’m asking this commu
Why it failed: My daughter followed the playbook everyone here recommends. MIT. Programming olympiads. Strong internships. No shortcuts. She was hired as a junior developer and laid off in February. Since then, I’ve watched her confidence collapse in real time. She isolates herself. She barely
MITfather
- patentRejected2025
Show HN: Timep – A next-gen profiler and flamegraph-generator for bash code
Note: this is an update to [this]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568529 ) "Show HN" post. timep is a state-of-the-art [debug-]trap-based bash profiler that is efficient and extremely accurate. Unlike other profilers, timep records: 1. per-command wall-clock time 2. per-command CPU time, and 3. the hierarchy of parent function calls /subshells for each command the wall-clock + CPU time combination allows you to determine if a particular command is CPU-bound or IO-bound, and the hierarchical logging gives you a map of how the code actually executed. The standout feature of timep is that it will take these records and automatically generate a bash-native flamegraph (that shows bash commands, not syscalls). ------------------------------------------------ USAGE timep is extremely easy to use - just source the `timep.bash` file from the repo and add &quo
Why it failed: Note: this is an update to [this]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568529 ) "Show HN" post. timep is a state-of-the-art [debug-]trap-based bash profiler that is efficient and extremely accurate. Unlike other profilers, timep records: 1. per-command
jkool702
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Nstart, a Nostr's Onbarding Tool
Nstart aims to guide new users to Nostr offering a easy and no-nonsense onboarding wizard, with useful hints about the protocol and some really exclusive features: - Easy local backup of your nsec or ncryptsec - Email yourself your ncryptsec, as an additional backup location - Create a multi-signer bunker URL for Nostr Connect (more info below) - Auto follow the contacts list of some old and trusted Nostr users - Customize of contact suggestions, useful for onboarding friends & family Try Nstart live at https://start.njump.me or watch this video to understand how it works: https://chronicle.dtonon.com/77b9a397cbbcd63f3bfc78ff2b2c060... For devs: it can also be used by any Nostr application, web or mobile, to offer an easy onboarding flow! You can integrate it effortlessly via a simple redirect, modal or popup: in the end, the user is automagically logged into
Why it failed: Nstart aims to guide new users to Nostr offering a easy and no-nonsense onboarding wizard, with useful hints about the protocol and some really exclusive features: - Easy local backup of your nsec or ncryptsec - Email yourself your ncryptsec, as an additional backup location - Cr
dtonon
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: As a developer, am I wrong to think monitoring alerts are mostly noise?
I'm a solo developer working on a new tool, and I need a reality check from the ops and infrastructure experts here. My background is in software development, not SRE. From my perspective, the monitoring alerts that bubble up from our infrastructure have always felt like a massive distraction. I'll get a page for "High CPU" on a service, spend an hour digging through logs and dashboards, only to find out it was just a temporary traffic spike and not a real issue. It feels like a huge waste of developer time. My hypothesis is that the tools we use are too focused on static thresholds (e.g., "CPU > 80%") and lack the context to tell us what's actually an anomaly. I've been exploring a different approach based on peer-group comparisons (e.g., is api-server-5 behaving differently from its peers api-server-1 through 4?). But I'm coming at this f
Why it failed: I'm a solo developer working on a new tool, and I need a reality check from the ops and infrastructure experts here. My background is in software development, not SRE. From my perspective, the monitoring alerts that bubble up from our infrastructure have always felt like a m
yansoki
- startupShut down2025
Evaluating GPT5's reasoning ability using the Only Connect game show
We evaluated OpenAI GPT5 lateral reasoning abilities against other models using an approach based on the notoriously difficult and highly-challenging british game show Only Connect, which challenges contestants' pattern-matching and trivia skills. Insights: - GPT-5 does extremely well, but only marginally better than o3. - Model verbosity has little impact on accuracy and cleverness, except, interestingly, for the sequences round - "minimal" verbosity however causes accuracy to drop sharply. We'll be publishing additional results in the coming days from our extended tests. We're looking at different types of evals (how do the models fare with a single item in a sequence vs. 2, 3, 4). We would also like to look at how the models behave in a team of 3, replicating the format of the game show. We were unable to find evidence that the Only Connect games are in the tr
Why it failed: We evaluated OpenAI GPT5 lateral reasoning abilities against other models using an approach based on the notoriously difficult and highly-challenging british game show Only Connect, which challenges contestants' pattern-matching and trivia skills. Insights: - GPT-5 does extr
scrollaway
- startupShut down2025
DrawAFish.com Postmortem
Related: Show HN: Draw a fish and watch it swim with the others - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44719222 - July 2025 (233 comments)
Why it failed: Related: Show HN: Draw a fish and watch it swim with the others - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44719222 - July 2025 (233 comments)
hallak
- patentRejected2025
Show HN: Timep – a next-gen profiler and flamegraph-generator for bash code
timep is a TIME Profiler for bash code that will give you an accurate per-command execution time breakdown of any bash script or function. Unlike other profilers, timep also recovers and hierarchally records metadata on subshell and function nesting, allowing it to recreate the full call-stack tree for the bash code being profiled. If you call timep with the `--flame` flag, it will automatically generate a flamegraph .svg image where each block represents the wall-clock time spent on a particular command (top level) or its parent subshells/functions (all the other levels). Using timep is simple - just source the timep.bash file then add timep before whatever you want to profile. You do not need to change in the code being profiled - timep handles everything for you. Example usage: . ./timep.bash timep someFunc timep -flame someScript <inputFile timep will generate 2 profiles
Why it failed: timep is a TIME Profiler for bash code that will give you an accurate per-command execution time breakdown of any bash script or function. Unlike other profilers, timep also recovers and hierarchally records metadata on subshell and function nesting, allowing it to recreate the f
jkool702
- startupShut down2025
Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
See also https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/ .
Why it failed: See also https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/ .
phantomathkg
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?
Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research. What options are there and how are you transitioning?
Why it failed: Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research. What options are there and how are you transitioning?
ahmedfromtunis
- startupShut down2025
Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 post mortem
Related: Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963780 - Nov 2025 (1580 comments)
Why it failed: Related: Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963780 - Nov 2025 (1580 comments)
eastdakota