Issue 2 · October 28, 2026

Builder
Radar Weekly

The builds worth your time this week, who it was made for, and the pairs of strangers who should be trading phone numbers.

Oct 21 – Oct 28 · 522 builds · 36 communities
Full radarThe whole sky. One search box.All 522 blips, filterable by lane, source, audience and the model behind them. Open the Explorer →

Ten blips per sector. The closer to center, the louder the signal. Ringed dots made the issue. Hover a dot for its name, click a wedge to open that lane.

The week in numbers
522 builds 42 posted in 2+ places 279 Reddit · 47 Hacker News · 179 GitHub · 17 dev.to

What they built with (where stated)

  • Claude Code87
  • Claude61
  • Codex48
  • Qwen18
  • DeepSeek17
  • Cursor15
  • Ollama10
  • Gemini10
From the editor

This week somebody got Doom running on the time clock at work. Somebody else wrote an entire web browser from scratch. And at least four people looked at their TV, saw an ad before Netflix, and said absolutely not.

We went through 1,908 posts from 47 subreddits, Hacker News, GitHub, dev.to and Product Hunt so you don't have to. About 1,500 turned out to be real things real people made. The rest were questions, hot takes, and a steady stream of people asking if Opus got nerfed. (Someone built a tracker for that, too. Day 29: still fine.)

Two new toys this issue. Better Together is where we play matchmaker for apps that have never met. And there's a search box up top, so go ahead and type in dog, or HR, or whatever you're into, and see who's building for it. Also, a pizzeria has its own ordering app now. Your move, delivery apps.

01
Lead story

Everyone is fixing their TV

The most upvoted build of the week was not a developer tool. It was a person who replaced their Samsung TV's ad-filled home screen with their own, written with Claude Code. It drew almost 3,000 upvotes and 246 comments. Within days the pattern was everywhere.

One builder gave Claude Code nothing but their parents' TV model number. It found the set on the home Wi-Fi and stripped out the ads. Another, annoyed by an ad before Netflix on their parents' Xiaomi TV, open-sourced an agent-driven cleanup tool for it. On Hacker News, someone made an LG smart TV dumb and then rebuilt it around voice. Away from the TV, a 12-year-old Kindle became a clock and weather display, and a self-hosted e-ink dashboard app passed 900 GitHub stars.

The common thread: the devices in our homes are full of software nobody asked for, and a coding agent turns out to be patient enough to get past it. Expect a lot more of this.

Hardware & homeClaude Code

arn0-tv

Custom Samsung TV home screen with clock, apps and consoles replacing the ad-filled default.

2,987 votes · 246 commentsProject ↗r/ClaudeAI
Hardware & homeClaude Code

I gave Claude Code my parents' TV model number. It found the TV on…

Claude Code found a parents' TV over ADB and removed its ads.

584 votes · 131 commentsr/ClaudeAI
Hardware & homeClaude Code

My parents' TV showed an ad before Netflix, so I fixed it with an AI…

Agent-driven tool that disables ads and trackers on a Xiaomi TV.

498 votes · 99 commentsProject ↗r/SideProject
Hardware & homeGPTClaude

r2d2-tv

Replaces a webOS smart TV interface with a voice-driven custom one.

110 votes · 81 commentsProject ↗Show HN
Hardware & homeClaude

Turn a 12-year-old Kindle into a clock & weather display

Old Kindle turned into a clock and weather display.

390 votes · 59 commentsProject ↗r/ClaudeAI
Hardware & home

Tesserae

Self-hosted app for e-ink dashboards with calendar, weather and Home Assistant.

98 votes · 18 commentsProject ↗r/SideProject
02
Matchmaking

Better together

Each of these is good on its own. Bolt two together and you get something nobody has shipped yet. The builders have never met. Consider this the introduction.

CorgiOn its own: runs a fleet of agents side by side and knows which ones are waiting, but only on screen.
+
I got tired of checking whether Claude Code needs me. So I gave it a…On its own: a physical light that shows whether one Claude Code session needs you.
→
TogetherOne lamp on your desk that lights up whenever any AI agent needs you

Software that knows, hardware that shows

Corgi runs many agents side by side and keeps an activity feed of which ones need you. Separately, a builder wired a physical status light to Claude Code so they could stop checking the screen.

How it fits: Corgi's feed driving the light, so one lamp on the desk shows whether any agent in the fleet is waiting on you.

Atomic AgentOn its own: splits the work: Opus plans in the cloud, a local Qwen model writes the code.
+
kapitsaOn its own: runs a 27B Qwen at 140 tokens a second on Apple silicon.
+
MAFDETOn its own: starts a local model thinking while you're still typing, cutting the wait from 12 seconds to 3.
→
TogetherCloud-quality planning with near-instant code written on your own Mac, for a fraction of the cloud bill

Plan in the cloud, build at home

Atomic Agent lets Opus plan while a local Qwen model writes the code. Kapitsa is an Apple-silicon engine pushing a 27B Qwen to 140 tokens a second. MAFDET starts a local model thinking while you are still typing.

How it fits: Atomic Agent running on Kapitsa with MAFDET's head start would make the local half of the split close to instant. All three are open source.

kinetographOn its own: renders video fast from code, but someone still has to decide the edit.
+
FableCutOn its own: lets an agent edit a timeline, but leans on a browser to render.
+
YouTube-AI-Video-Editing-SystemOn its own: has agents that plan YouTube edits, tied to its own pipeline.
→
TogetherAn AI agent that cuts, edits and exports a finished video on its own

An agent video studio in three parts

Kinetograph is a fast rendering engine built for agents. FableCut gives agents a video timeline to edit through MCP. A third builder open-sourced a full YouTube editing system with a teleprompter, editing agents and motion graphics.

How it fits: Kinetograph as the renderer under FableCut's timeline, with the YouTube system's editing agents deciding the cuts. Each team has built the piece the others are missing.

WeatherlingOn its own: a polished Mac weather app with a big audience, #3 in the App Store.
+
Should We Ride TodayOn its own: tells motorcyclists whether today is a riding day.
+
Storm SenseiOn its own: lightning alerts for your exact spot, not the nearest town.
→
TogetherOne weather app with a riding forecast and pinpoint lightning alerts built in

Three weather apps, three niches

Weatherling hit number 3 in the Mac App Store. Should We Ride Today tells motorcyclists whether to ride. Storm Sensei sends lightning alerts for your exact spot.

How it fits: The two niche apps could ride on Weatherling's audience as add-ons, and Weatherling would gain features for riders and storm-watchers without building them.

Turn a 12-year-old Kindle into a clock & weather displayOn its own: turns one old Kindle into a clock and weather display.
+
TesseraeOn its own: builds rich e-ink dashboards with calendar and Home Assistant, if you buy an e-ink screen.
→
TogetherOld Kindles turned into free wall dashboards for your calendar, weather and smart home

A second life for old e-readers

Rekindle turns a 12-year-old Kindle into a clock and weather display. Tesserae is a self-hosted app for e-ink dashboards with calendar, weather and Home Assistant panels, now past 900 GitHub stars.

How it fits: Tesserae renders the dashboard, and Rekindle's work gets it onto hardware people already have in a drawer.

NarroOn its own: reads web pages and Kindle books aloud with local AI voices.
+
Hurston-1On its own: a voice model that finally gets Southern and African American English right, with no app to use it in.
→
TogetherWeb pages and Kindle books read aloud in accents most AI voices get wrong, all on your own machine

Better voices for your reading list

Narro reads web pages and Kindle books aloud with local AI voices. Hurston-1 is a new open-source voice model that handles Southern American and African American English well.

How it fits: Hurston-1 as a voice option inside Narro. Both run locally, so nothing leaves your computer.

canvas-mcpOn its own: lets an AI assistant see your courses and due dates in Canvas.
+
LoudwalkOn its own: reviews Anki flashcards out loud on a walk, but you have to make the cards.
→
TogetherThis week's course deadlines and flashcards, quizzed out loud while you walk

Study without a screen

Canvas MCP lets Claude or ChatGPT read your courses and due dates from the Canvas school platform. Loudwalk reviews your Anki flashcards out loud on a walk.

How it fits: An assistant that pulls what is due from Canvas, builds the flashcards, and hands them to Loudwalk for the walk home.

03
Parallel builders

Same idea, different builders

Two people, two time zones, one problem, zero awareness of each other. Somebody start a group chat.

Same idea, different builders

Two TV takeovers, one platform

arn0-tvr/ClaudeAI
r2d2-tvShow HN

Both builders replaced a smart TV's interface from scratch, one on Samsung's Tizen, one on LG's webOS. They are solving the same launcher, input and app-switching problems separately.

If they talked: A shared, open TV launcher with a plug-in for each brand, instead of two one-off projects.

Same idea, different builders

Your agents, drawn as an office

Visualizing agent sessions as an office: useful or just a gimmick?r/AI_Agents
whatsmyagentdoingGitHub

Two people independently decided the best way to watch a fleet of coding agents is a little office where each agent sits at a desk. One asked Reddit whether it is a gimmick. The other shipped it on GitHub and got 270 stars, which answers the question.

If they talked: Combine the art and the live session tracking into one tool. The Reddit builder has the design, the GitHub builder has the Claude Code and Codex hooks.

Same idea, different builders

Shared memory for agents

Bellmanr/ClaudeMCP
System Oner/LLMDevs

Bellman gives Claude agents shared rooms so the human stops being the copy-paste bus between sessions. System One gives a coding agent memory that persists between runs. Same pain, two angles.

If they talked: System One's long-term memory living inside Bellman's rooms, so a team of agents shares both the conversation and what it learned.

Same idea, different builders

Non-coders shipping real games

No coding or gamedev background, 6 weeks with Opus 5.5 + Godotr/ClaudeAI
The Shattered Islesr/ClaudeCode

A builder with no coding background spent six weeks with Opus and Godot turning drawings into a Ragnarok-style monster hunter. A tabletop game master who can't code spent 750 hours on a Pathfinder tactics RPG. Both posts drew hundreds of comments from people asking how.

If they talked: A joint write-up or stream on the workflow. Between them they have answered most of the questions in each other's threads.

04
Five that got people talking

The ones everyone argued about

  1. 1
    Developer tools & agentsClaude Code

    A web browser from scratch, in Rust

    A web browser written from scratch in Rust with Claude Code. It was the most-discussed build of the week, with 299 comments.

    596 votes · 299 commentsr/ClaudeCode
  2. 2
    Games & hobbiesClaude Code

    No coding or gamedev background, 6 weeks with Opus 5.5 + Godot

    No coding or game-dev background, six weeks, Opus and Godot. The result is a Ragnarok-meets-Monster-Hunter game, and 2,700 upvotes from people asking how.

    2,747 votes · 213 commentsr/ClaudeAI
  3. 3
    Business & workClaude Code

    Nomback

    A pizzeria got its own ordering app, built with Claude Code, so regulars can skip the delivery apps and their fees. 1,300 upvotes and 200 comments.

    1,332 votes · 201 commentsr/ClaudeAI
  4. 4
    Games & hobbies

    Badaboom Taxi

    A flying-taxi endless runner straight out of The Fifth Element, playable in the browser.

    982 votes · 165 commentsProject ↗r/vibecoding
  5. 5
    Creative & entertainment

    ContentCam

    A phone camera app that records portrait and landscape video at the same time, so one take covers every platform.

    1,070 votes · 145 commentsProject ↗r/SideProject
05
Built for

Who got built for this week

522 builds, 247 audiences. Developers building for developers, sure. The good stuff is down the long tail: TV owners, McDonald's regulars, motorcyclists, people who can't sing. Tap one and the Explorer serves up everything made for them.

06
Under the radar

Big in a small room

Appetizers before the main course. Each of these was the biggest thing in its own corner of the internet and never came close to the front page. Forty upvotes in r/ollama is a standing ovation. We count it that way.

Developer tools & agentsOllamalocal LLM

Row-Bot

Desktop local-model assistant with in-app browser, computer use and approval prompts.

40 votes · 19 commentsProject ↗r/ollamar/LangChainr/Qwen_AI
Developer tools & agents

Certo

MIT coding agent in Python not tied to one model provider.

15 votes · 30 commentsr/AgentsOfAI
Developer tools & agents

Specification First Agentic Development Plugin and Prove

Spec-first agentic development plugin built around specifications.

27 votes · 18 commentsProject ↗Show HN
Developer tools & agentsClaude Code

agent-usage-guard

Claude Code mod that protects your usage window.

28 votes · 12 commentsProject ↗Show HN
Developer tools & agents

Enzyme

Programming language that compiles wikis for agents.

23 votes · 9 commentsProject ↗Show HN
07
By segment

Pick your lane

Developer tools & agents

252 builds this week

Half the radar, every week. This time it's models running in spare bedrooms and tools that stop agents from lying about their test results.

Developer tools & agentsClaude CodeCodex

kanzo

A tiny self-hosted kanban board that coding agents can read and update through MCP. It uses about 3 MB of memory and a few dozen tokens per reply.

58 votes · 35 commentsProject ↗r/LLMDevsr/mcp
Developer tools & agents

CrowdGPT

A 1B-parameter language model trained by volunteers' PCs, like the old SETI@home screensaver.

544 votes · 293 commentsProject ↗r/LocalLLaMA
Developer tools & agentsGemmagpt-oss

Hob

An open-source, on-device alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT that works on your own files.

164 votes · 42 commentsProject ↗Show HN
Developer tools & agents

Kitten-TTS 2

Kitten-TTS 2: an open-source voice model small enough to run on a laptop's processor, with voice cloning.

899 votes · 160 commentsProject ↗r/LocalLLaMA
Developer tools & agentsCodex

Write the F**king Manual

A free Codex plugin that writes your web app's user guide, with screenshots.

176 votes · 25 commentsProject ↗r/codex
08
Odd and delightful

Things that made us grin