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
Ask HN: Do you believe aliens are visiting Earth?
So there's nuance here. Let's define "Aliens" as "non human sentiences". Personally, I think ET hypothesis is valid. Maybe you feel UT (ultra-terrestrial) hypothesis makes more sesne. Or "ED" ( extra-dimensional, as opposed to "from another planet/galaxy"). Facts: there's abundance of testimony that would secure conviction in court regarding abductions, encounters (of variosu "kinds"), and "multi-sensor data". Truth is, it goes back centuries, before we could concievably have "RE'd" (reverse-engineered) anything similar. So there has to be something external to our current human civilization (not so surprising, how can you explain how megalithic 100-ton bricks structures were build by "primitives"). Yes, this is "provocative" (perhaps) for some on HN. That's the point.
Why it failed: So there's nuance here. Let's define "Aliens" as "non human sentiences". Personally, I think ET hypothesis is valid. Maybe you feel UT (ultra-terrestrial) hypothesis makes more sesne. Or "ED" ( extra-dimensional, as opposed to "from an
keepamovin
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Molab, a cloud-hosted Marimo notebook workspace
We launched marimo [1], an open-source reactive Python notebook, last year on HackerNews. Today, the most popular recent feature request in Google Colab’s issue tracker asks for marimo support in Colab [2]. Rather than try to convince Google to replace their notebook with marimo, we decided to just build our own cloud-hosted notebook service instead. We're calling this molab (mo for marimo), and we're launching it today. You can try it at https://molab.marimo.io Some features: - Persistent storage - Link sharing (notebooks are public but undiscoverable, like secret GitHub Gists) - Download notebooks to your machine, reuse them as Python scripts or apps - Upload local notebooks to the cloud from our CLI (coming soon) - Real-time collaboration (coming soon) - Configure computational resources to obtain more CPU or GPU (coming soon) marimo is a modern notebook for modern
Why it failed: We launched marimo [1], an open-source reactive Python notebook, last year on HackerNews. Today, the most popular recent feature request in Google Colab’s issue tracker asks for marimo support in Colab [2]. Rather than try to convince Google to replace their notebook with marimo,
akshayka
- startupShut down2025
The Death of Utilitarian Programming
Utilitarian coding is defined as follows: The code you write should be *directly* useful or serve the interest of at least one actual human being. It might appear somewhat abstract or vague, so examples might help. For example, I don't consider frameworks as utilitarian code. What you create are like the "frames" of a picture box, someone else (the user) will take it and draw the actual picture. Though you did help with part of the process, it's indirect at best. You're part of the supply chain here, not part of the team. A clever and witty bash script running on a unix server somewhere is also not utilitarian coding, no human ever directly benefited from it. Libraries can be somewhat utilitarian, at least more than frameworks. At least they provide some reusable functionality to the user out of the box like logging, scanning a barcode, fetching data from a URL,
Why it failed: Utilitarian coding is defined as follows: The code you write should be *directly* useful or serve the interest of at least one actual human being. It might appear somewhat abstract or vague, so examples might help. For example, I don't consider frameworks as utilitarian code
pyeri
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Anyone else roll eyes at startups that went from "X" to "AI-powered X"?
This feels like the original idea wasn't good enough to work on its own and so jamming AI into the idea might get some VC capital to sustain a failed idea. Or am I thinking of this wrong?
Why it failed: This feels like the original idea wasn't good enough to work on its own and so jamming AI into the idea might get some VC capital to sustain a failed idea. Or am I thinking of this wrong?
ronbenton
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Klarity – Open-source tool to analyze uncertainty/entropy in LLM output
We've open-sourced Klarity - a tool for analyzing uncertainty and decision-making in LLM token generation. It provides structured insights into how models choose tokens and where they show uncertainty. What Klarity does: - Real-time analysis of model uncertainty during generation - Dual analysis combining log probabilities and semantic understanding - Structured JSON output with actionable insights - Fully self-hostable with customizable analysis models The tool works by analyzing each step of text generation and returns a structured JSON: - uncertainty_points: array of {step, entropy, options[], type} - high_confidence: array of {step, probability, token, context} - risk_areas: array of {type, steps[], motivation} - suggestions: array of {issue, improvement} Currently supports hugging face transformers (more frameworks coming), we tested extensively with Qwen2.5 (0.5B-7B) models, b
Why it failed: We've open-sourced Klarity - a tool for analyzing uncertainty and decision-making in LLM token generation. It provides structured insights into how models choose tokens and where they show uncertainty. What Klarity does: - Real-time analysis of model uncertainty during gener
mrciffa
- startupShut down2025
Notion's Lies Sunsetting Skiff Mail
With the announcement of "Notion Mail", here's a reminder that after Notion acquired Skiff Mail in early 2024, their entire product line was sunset and, despite promising[1][2] email forwarding and support would remain functional until 2025 for trapped users that couldn't immediately access their accounts, both turned out to be complete lies. Their support through support@skiff.org was shut off[3] not long after the fake promise, responding only with automated acknowledgements to even refund requests. Forwarding was also effectively shut off around the same time thanks to Notion's willful negligence maintaining Skiff's certificates[4], pulling the rug out from under users needing mails forwarded from inaccessible Skiff email accounts. To add insult to injury, Notion's support through team@makenotion.com for months responded with incoherent, AI-generated
Why it failed: With the announcement of "Notion Mail", here's a reminder that after Notion acquired Skiff Mail in early 2024, their entire product line was sunset and, despite promising[1][2] email forwarding and support would remain functional until 2025 for trapped users that c
notioned
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Scheduling stateful nodes when MMAP makes memory accounting a lie
We’re hitting a classic distributed systems wall and I’m looking for war stories or "least worst" practices. The Context: We maintain a distributed stateful engine (think search/analytics). The architecture is standard: a Control Plane (Coordinator) assigns data segments to Worker Nodes. The workload involves heavy use of mmap and lazy loading for large datasets. The Incident: We had a cascading failure where the Coordinator got stuck in a loop, DDOS-ing a specific node. The Signal: Coordinator sees Node A has significantly fewer rows (logical count) than the cluster average. It flags Node A as "underutilized." The Action: Coordinator attempts to rebalance/load new segments onto Node A. The Reality: Node A is actually sitting at 197GB RAM usage (near OOM). The data on it happens to be extremely wide (fat rows, huge blobs), so its logical row count is low, bu
Why it failed: We’re hitting a classic distributed systems wall and I’m looking for war stories or "least worst" practices. The Context: We maintain a distributed stateful engine (think search/analytics). The architecture is standard: a Control Plane (Coordinator) assigns data se
leo_e
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Woomarks, transfer your Pocket links to this app or self-host it
Pocket is shutting down and I really, really liked it. So I built woomarks, an app that let's you save links with a similar UI. It's very minimal, but it's doing everything I liked from Pocket and you can bulk import your links and use the app or self-host. - Public app that you can test: https://woomarks.com/ - My self-hosted version, where you can see my saves: https://roberto.fyi/bookmarks/ - Repository if you want to self-host: https://github.com/earlyriser/woomarks Export links from Pocket here: https://getpocket.com/export the last day will be on October 20025. Features: - Add/Delete links - Search - Tags - Bookmarklet (useful for a 2-click-save) - Data reads from: csv file in server (these links are public) local storage in browser (these links are visible just for the user) - Local storage s
Why it failed: Pocket is shutting down and I really, really liked it. So I built woomarks, an app that let's you save links with a similar UI. It's very minimal, but it's doing everything I liked from Pocket and you can bulk import your links and use the app or self-host. - Publi
earlyriser
- startupShut down2025
Mozilla Firefox Is Dying
We are undoubtedly witnessing a rapid decline of Mozilla and its products: the question we should be asking ourselves is: how long before the total collapse? And furthermore: are those Linux users (like me) who are still relying on Firefox for doing their development job ready to abandon it? Let me list at least three facts to support my thesis: 1) Over the past year, there have been various controversies announcing a radical change in the core values of the Mozilla Foundation 2) After its rewrite (Project Fenix), the Firefox Mobile browser has never regained the completeness it had before, despite the passage of years 3) One of the web extensions developed by Mozilla (and marked as “official”) was recently removed from the store because it violated Mozilla's own add-on policies: this suggests serious internal disputes. I wonder what is your opinion [1] https://www.osnews.
Why it failed: We are undoubtedly witnessing a rapid decline of Mozilla and its products: the question we should be asking ourselves is: how long before the total collapse? And furthermore: are those Linux users (like me) who are still relying on Firefox for doing their development job ready to
leonixyz
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: FlyCode – Recover Stripe payments by automatically using backup cards
We built FlyCode after seeing subscription businesses lose ~35% of recurring revenue each year to failed payments — even when customers had other valid cards on file. *The problem:* When a customer's primary card fails, Stripe retries a few times then cancels the subscription. If that customer has a backup card, it isn’t tried. At least 20% of active customers have more than one card on file, which means a lot of preventable churn. *Our solution:* FlyCode automatically identifies if a customer has other valid cards on file and retries them when a subscription payment fails. You can configure when these retries happen during the dunning period (beginning, middle, end) and define validity rules (e.g. “card was used in last 180 days”). It’s a Stripe app — no code changes needed. We've seen 18%-20% higher recovery rates from our core retry engine, plus another 5–10% from using back
Why it failed: We built FlyCode after seeing subscription businesses lose ~35% of recurring revenue each year to failed payments — even when customers had other valid cards on file. *The problem:* When a customer's primary card fails, Stripe retries a few times then cancels the subscriptio
JakeVacovec
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Donobu – Mac App for Web Automation and Testing
Been working on a desktop app for Mac that lets you create web flows and rerun them ( https://www.donobu.com/ ). You can optionally use AI (BYOK: bring your own keys) to create flows for you and to do other interesting things, like making vision-based semantic assertions. Also, your data lives on your own filesystem, and we do not see any of it (further still, there is no phoning home at all). A nice benefit of this being a desktop app rather than a SAAS product, is that if you happen to be developing/iterating on a webpage locally, this has no problem hooking into it. What this intends to be a good fit for: - Testing web pages, especially locally. - Exploring random webpages with a stated objective. - Automating tedious flows. Rerunning a flow won't get caught up on using a single selector (many websites randomize element IDs, for instance), there is smart failo
Why it failed: Been working on a desktop app for Mac that lets you create web flows and rerun them ( https://www.donobu.com/ ). You can optionally use AI (BYOK: bring your own keys) to create flows for you and to do other interesting things, like making vision-based semantic asse
wewtyflakes
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Has anyone here ever tried throwing everything away?
By throwing everything away I mean to shut off a bunch of doors/paths in your life - leave your job, move into a new home, do a bunch of radical changes. This is a personal question hence the small tag. I don't want to post this on reddit or another forum, because too many responses would end up memes or be plain commonly said advice devoid of sincerity. Maybe here they won't be, idk. For anyone here who has struggled for years to improve their life but hasn't been able to do it. Or hasn't been able to accept that he has. Have you tried to just say fuck it ? Did it work out if you did? For years every 2-3 months I'd wreck myself emotionally and contemplate starting over and that desire would always get subdued by common sense that nothing would really change or that I'd throw away the good I've built for myself. And plenty of other good reasons tha
Why it failed: By throwing everything away I mean to shut off a bunch of doors/paths in your life - leave your job, move into a new home, do a bunch of radical changes. This is a personal question hence the small tag. I don't want to post this on reddit or another forum, because too m
arter
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Open-sourcing my failed startup Buzee – A file search application
Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly. As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been using it pretty much everyday since the day I built it - and I love it! I thought I could turn Buzee into a startup. I reached out to offices and helped set it up for them. But it didn't pan out. I am now letting go of this project because I have other priorities in life. Please feel free to do with this project as you wish. I am happy to help you get started with the codebase. Do share what you build. I would love to see it! Cheers
Why it failed: Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly. As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been
thatgurjot
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Manaflow (YC S24) – Automate repetitive office work in tables
Hey HN! We’re Austin, Lawrence, and Wesley from Manaflow ( https://manaflow.com ). Manaflow is a spreadsheet where each column represents a step instruction of a task and each row represents an AI agent executing a case of the task. With one click, you can execute thousands of tasks involving data retrieval, gluing APIs, and taking actions. Here’s a video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwaaqjHGkT4 And a live demo: https://manaflow.com/demo The idea to build an AI automation tool for small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) emerged from our extensive conversations with local managers, directors, and operators. We learned that SMBs are constantly overwhelmed with manual workflows and heavily underutilize technology, especially compared to bigger businesses with teams of engineers. Witnessing an operations manager show us folders of spreadsheets fo
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Austin, Lawrence, and Wesley from Manaflow ( https://manaflow.com ). Manaflow is a spreadsheet where each column represents a step instruction of a task and each row represents an AI agent executing a case of the task. With one click, you can execute thous
austinwang115
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Azalea Robotics (YC S24) – Baggage-handling robots for airports
Hey HN! We’re David and John B, cofounders of Azalea Robotics ( https://www.azalearobotics.com ). We build robots to handle passenger baggage in airports. Here are some videos to give you the idea: Unedited autonomous ops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuJ3ZORnO1o Teleoperated (sped up, so no sound): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeK8NQLnYgA The marketing version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0SDPm09U6s Robotics is in an interesting place right now, with many warehouse automation companies humming along for almost a decade, and a lot of new effort going to full general purpose hardware with humanoids and software via generalist robotics foundation models. We love these efforts (David used to work on one at Google X with Everyday Robots), but we also see a lot of utility in the current wave of robotics planning and perception
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re David and John B, cofounders of Azalea Robotics ( https://www.azalearobotics.com ). We build robots to handle passenger baggage in airports. Here are some videos to give you the idea: Unedited autonomous ops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
dmillard
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Wallstreetlocal – View investments from America's biggest companies
Hello Hacker News! My name is Anonyo, and I am a seventeen-year-old from Southeast Michigan. This is wallstreetlocal, my passion project for the last year (and a half). I've posted this before, but I've finally open-sourced this entire project, so I thought I'd post it again. Heres the short pitch. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps record of every company in the United States. Companies whose holdings surpass $100 million though, are required to file a special type of form: the 13F form. This form, filed quarterly, discloses the filer's holdings, providing transparency into their investment activities and allowing the public and other market participants to monitor them. The problem though, is that these holdings are often cumbersome to access, and valuable analysis is often hidden behind a paywall. Through wallstreetlocal, the SEC's 13F filers b
Why it failed: Hello Hacker News! My name is Anonyo, and I am a seventeen-year-old from Southeast Michigan. This is wallstreetlocal, my passion project for the last year (and a half). I've posted this before, but I've finally open-sourced this entire project, so I thought I'd pos
anonyonoor
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Deepsilicon (YC S24) – Software and hardware for ternary transformers
Hey Hacker News! We’re Abhi and Alex from deepsilicon ( https://deepsilicon.com ). We are building software and hardware for training and inferencing ternary transformer models. Here's a video of the software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBn-I5D6pk . Transformer-based models are getting bigger every generation, making the inference hardware requirements more and more expensive. Running large transformer models on device is even more challenging. Usually, they require trillions of FLOPs to run at decent speeds and use too much energy and space. Our solution is to train ternary transformer models. There are two advantages to using ternary values. The first is that the weights can now be stored in two bits (or even less) from 16 bits. This represents an almost 8x compression ratio for every weight matrix in the transformer model (slightly less because of t
Why it failed: Hey Hacker News! We’re Abhi and Alex from deepsilicon ( https://deepsilicon.com ). We are building software and hardware for training and inferencing ternary transformer models. Here's a video of the software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBn-I5D
areddyyt
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
Hey Hacker News! I’m Nikita, founder of Airhart Aeronautics ( https://www.airhartaero.com/ ). We are building an airplane for people who don’t fly airplanes. The goal is to make flying as easy as driving a car—while maintaining a high bar for safety. Here’s a video that shows a bit of our hardware and quite a bit of our software: https://youtu.be/PGJUGUceu8A In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation. Thanks to the Wright Brothers we've had aerial transport for over 100 years. The US has over 19,000 airports, and large commercial airplane technology has developed to the point that the planes practically fly themselves. If we already have the infrastructure and the technology, why isn't everyone flying planes? The problem is that s
Why it failed: Hey Hacker News! I’m Nikita, founder of Airhart Aeronautics ( https://www.airhartaero.com/ ). We are building an airplane for people who don’t fly airplanes. The goal is to make flying as easy as driving a car—while maintaining a high bar for safety. Here’s a video
n_ermosh
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Codebuff (YC F24) – CLI tool that writes code for you
Hey HN! We’re James and Brandon building Codebuff ( https://codebuff.com ). Codebuff is like Cursor Composer, but in your terminal: it modifies files based on your natural language requests. You can try it with `npm i -g codebuff` and start using it immediately for free. We have no login gate, and we give all accounts up to $20 worth of credits. Codebuff is different because we simplified the input to one step: you type what you want done in your terminal and hit enter. Then Codebuff looks through your whole codebase and makes the edits it wants, to existing source files or new ones. It also can run your tests, the type checker, or install packages to fulfill your request. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ0NOMsu0dA It all started at a hackathon. I was trying out Sonnet 3.5 which had recently come out and seeing if I could use it to write code. The sc
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re James and Brandon building Codebuff ( https://codebuff.com ). Codebuff is like Cursor Composer, but in your terminal: it modifies files based on your natural language requests. You can try it with `npm i -g codebuff` and start using it immediately for free
jahooma
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: One – A new React framework unifying web, native and local-first
Hey HN, I'm Nate, the creator of Tamagui. One is a React framework that does two things differently in hopes of simplifying how we build websites and apps: 1. It unifies React Native and React web with typed file system routing by making Vite able to serve RN. This lets you share (or diverge) your code in a simpler way for cross-platform apps. 2. We've partnered with Zero ( https://zerosync.dev ) to make local-first work well. We've been building a solution in One that makes Zero supporting server rendering, without waterfalls, and with seamless server/client handoff. --- Honestly - I'm a bit hesitant to post One here. HN has really soured on frontend/frameworks. And I get it. We've collectively complicated the hell out of things. That's why I decided to build One. I loved Rails, it made me as a young developer able to finally realize way
Why it failed: Hey HN, I'm Nate, the creator of Tamagui. One is a React framework that does two things differently in hopes of simplifying how we build websites and apps: 1. It unifies React Native and React web with typed file system routing by making Vite able to serve RN. This lets you
nwienert
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: WhoDB – Streamlined, Lightweight Database Management with a Sleek UI/UX
Hello fellow hackers! I'm excited to share the launch of WhoDB by Clidey. We are hoping to redefine the user experience with database management. Going away from the LLMs hype, we really just want to make developers' lives better! WhoDB is written in Golang, is lightweight, and supports a variety of database backends (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite3, MongoDB, & Redis). WhoDB offers: * Better UX: Intuitive and easy-to-use interface. * Faster Performance: Built with GoLang for exceptional speed and table virtualization in the Frontend. * Schema Visualization: Interactive graphs to visualize your entire database schema. * Inline Editing & Preview: Easily preview cell or edit inline Why did we build it? * User Experience First: Imagine Adminer but built for 2024, with a modern, user-friendly interface. * Broad Support: Fully supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite3 MongoDB, Redis, an
Why it failed: Hello fellow hackers! I'm excited to share the launch of WhoDB by Clidey. We are hoping to redefine the user experience with database management. Going away from the LLMs hype, we really just want to make developers' lives better! WhoDB is written in Golang, is lightwei
hemangkandwal
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: PlayBooks – Jupyter Notebooks style on-call investigation documents
Hello everyone, Dipesh and Siddarth here. We are building PlayBooks ( https://github.com/DrDroidLab/playbooks ), an open source tool to write executable notebooks for on-call investigations / remediations instead of Google Docs or Wikis. There’s a demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e-wOtIm1gk , and our docs are here: https://docs.drdroid.io/docs/playbooks We were in YC’s W23 batch working on a data lakehouse with support for dynamic log schemas. Eventually we realized it was a product in search of a market and decided to stop building it. When pivoting, we decided to work on something that we originally prototyped (before even YC) but didn’t execute on. In our previous jobs, we were at a food delivery startup in India with a busy on-call routine for backend & devops engineers and a small tech team. Often busin
Why it failed: Hello everyone, Dipesh and Siddarth here. We are building PlayBooks ( https://github.com/DrDroidLab/playbooks ), an open source tool to write executable notebooks for on-call investigations / remediations instead of Google Docs or Wikis. There’s a demo vi
TheBengaluruGuy
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Projects You Thought Were Cool but Failed Miserably – What Happened?
Hey HN community, I'm here to spark a discussion on a topic that, I believe, many of us have encountered but might not often talk about: projects that we were excited about and believed in, but that ended up failing miserably after release. To kick things off, I want to share my own experience with a project called interfAIce. It's a Java/Kotlin library that allows developers to access Large Language Models (LLMs) by defining interfaces. The library automatically generates proxies that query the OpenAI API and formats the results into the defined return type data. I thought it was super cool at the time of development. Despite my enthusiasm, my library never gained the attention I hoped for after its release. Reflecting on it, I believe the primary reason might be the mismatch between the technology stacks used by Java/Kotlin developers, who are mostly in server/
Why it failed: Hey HN community, I'm here to spark a discussion on a topic that, I believe, many of us have encountered but might not often talk about: projects that we were excited about and believed in, but that ended up failing miserably after release. To kick things off, I want to shar
mscheong
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: An open-source, local-first Webflow for your own app
Hey HN, I’m Kiet, and I’m one of the co-founders of Onlook – an open-sourced desktop app that lets you visually edit your locally running React app, then write your changes back to code in real time. I posted the repo a few months ago [1] when it was just 2 weeks old. Since then, we’ve made some big changes/improvements. I wanted to share some of the updates we’ve made and add more technical details. Here are the three big ones: • Inserting new elements - Draw elements in the live page like a design tool and write them back to code. • Component detection - Detect when an element is a re-used component and find its usages. • DOM tree representation - A layers panel similar to the Chrome devtool or Figma. Technical details [2]: Visual editing - Onlook is technically a browser that points to your localhost running the app. It can manipulate the DOM like a Chrome Devtool, and all these
Why it failed: Hey HN, I’m Kiet, and I’m one of the co-founders of Onlook – an open-sourced desktop app that lets you visually edit your locally running React app, then write your changes back to code in real time. I posted the repo a few months ago [1] when it was just 2 weeks old. Since then,
hoakiet98