HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

dthedavid

29 karma · joined September 16, 2012

submissionscomments
dthedavid··on Introducing System One Models and Jev
Looks promising. I'm building an AI video editor and multi tool calls take >30s using Gemini. This would be a a game changer if Jev can take that down to single digits at p95.
dthedavid··on My Business Is Dying
-> But how you get authentic and engaging for bank statement converter? People search for it to solve particular problem in the first place, not to hear your life story.

That's the hard part :)

dthedavid··on My Business Is Dying
You can stand out by being authentic. Your face on the video, etc. Even writing it yourself genuinely instead of using an LLM. ex the article felt authentic.
dthedavid··on Ask HN: Claude Code in Video Editor
Hey, I'm building exactly this.

I ask it to add subtitles, text effects, color grade my clips, cut out the silent parts.

100% open source

https://github.com/DonkeyCut/Donkey

dthedavid··on Show HN: Mcptoon – MCP CLI client that cuts tool discovery tokens by 97%
How does it work? Im building a video editor and right now it has access to nearly 100 tools. Would be good to learn the techniques you used to make tool discovery more efficient.
dthedavid··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
I'm building an open source video editor fulltime.

https://github.com/DonkeyUseCorp/Donkey

Currently doing this bootstrapped. I'm getting a lot of feedback from free users and barely any from those who pay. Quite interesting.

dthedavid··on Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI
Appreciate the candid feedback. I'm working on this every day. What bugs did you run into? Trying to make AI video editing best in class.
dthedavid··on Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI
donkeyuse.com it’s also open sourced
dthedavid··on Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI
I feel the same way too. I also open sourced a video editor. It's free to use and you can buy credits whenever you want to access AI specific features.
dthedavid··on Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI
Nice project. I’m building a similar project. It’s open source too.

https://github.com/DonkeyUseCorp/Donkey

It’s mostly a web app with a native swift companion app to access local resources like TTS, file storage and video rendering.

I arrived at the same conclusion as you; every app should have AI chat. Just give it full access to the app like a real user. I found that users prefer talking to the AI when editing vs clicking around.

dthedavid··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
I can't believe iMovie doesn't have text overlays so I'm building a replacement at cut.donkeyuse.com

It's opensource and more modern.

dthedavid··on I think I have LLM burnout
I'm a SWE and still a SWE. Just moved from HCOL to LCOL and am working for myself.
dthedavid··on I think I have LLM burnout
If you can afford it, I highly recommend quitting and going independent at least for a while. It’s so much fun building right now.
dthedavid··on GM Deprecating In-Car App Store for Models as Recent as 2020
Auto makers have always been bad at software. They just don’t care. Tesla is an exception.
dthedavid··on Replacing cron jobs with a centralized task scheduler
Great work. Did you consider buying instead of building? I’ve worked at organizations that built similar systems, but what was often lacking was developer experience, observability, and scalability, basically everything outside of core functionality; essentially the stuff that you're trying to tack on as you improve your system.

Now that I'm building on my own, I’ve thought about building as well, but I’ve found that off-the-shelf systems handle all of this far better (and they are opensourced too), ie trigger-dot-dev and many others.

dthedavid··on Converge (YC S23) will review your YC application before you submit
We will be able to help sellers find buyers faster. This improves selling efficiency, therefore helps grows world GDP.
dthedavid··on Converge (YC S23) will review your YC application before you submit
Submitted.

I'm building a copilot for salespeople on LinkedIn (heysalesman.com). I'm using the product to sell the product.

Looking forward to the feedback.

dthedavid··on Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
In university I noticed that some of my classmates just sat there and didn't take notes. So I stopped as well. I sat there, listened and then took pictures of the blackboard. This method worked better for me and I noticed that I performed better. The lesson here is that people learn in different ways.
dthedavid··on Popover API
Cool. I'm building something like this on the side. It's called bannerbox.io. The difference is that it requires no code, has a WYSIWYG editor and works everywhere.
dthedavid··on Five years of indie hacking
I share the same dream; of one day charting my own path. I've been doing things a bit differently. I've kept my job and am building my product (www.bannerbox.io) on the side. I wake up early and dedicate a few hours to it in the morning. So far I've built the MVP but have no users. I'm fine with this because I'm learning.

Last year I've dedicated 100% of my time to building. This year I'm spending half of my time marketing. I'm struggling with this new arrangement. Marketing makes me uncomfortable. I haven't made meaningful progress on marketing yet but it's the right move as long I am consistent.

dthedavid··on Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell
Bannerbox: https://bannerbox.io

Embed banners and modals onto your site with no code.

I spent the last 7 years as a growth engineer building banners and modals. Each time there was a custom requirement. I've always thought there should be a Wix kind of experience for tiny components that can be embedded anywhere on a site.

Currently I have 0 users. This year I plan on spending more time on marketing and improving the product. It cost me about $50/month to run. Most is for storage (postgres and redis). A large chunk is for a custom email address through Google. I spend about 1-2 hours working on it every day. I'm thinking long term. Slow and steady.

dthedavid··on Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
I'm in the same boat. Been working on www.bannerbox.io for 2 years, no customers, no revenue. Marketing is important to the success of any project. This year I plan on focusing at least 50% of my time creating content; mostly blog posts and sharing my journey so far. With persistence any idea should work out.
dthedavid··on Ask HN: What are you working on this year?
What is your business? I'm starting out now at $0 profits. Hope to change that this year.
dthedavid··on Ask HN: What are you working on this year?
I've spend many years in Growth engineering. We often get asked to build this banner or that modal. I've always felt there should be a Wix kind of experience, but for smaller components. I didn't find one so I decided to build it.(bannerbox.io).

Bannerbox is targeted at existing site owners, specifically non-technical people (i.e. Marketing).

I do all of the design and coding myself (both backend and frontend in Typescript). I've been building this on the side and it's been a slog. I'm nearing feature complete and aim to start marketing the product this year.

It's currently costing me ~$50/month in hosting fees and generating 0 in revenue.

dthedavid··on We increased our Lighthouse score by making our images larger
What alternative approaches did you try?

Would loading a placeholder image for the map and transitioning it in when ready help?

dthedavid··on Headless WYSISWYG Text Editor – tiptap editor
This looks really nice, especially collaborative editing. I've been playing around with draft.js and also looked at other libs.

How does this handle maintaining text selection while interacting with a drop down list (ex. font size drop down, link editor with pop over)? Google docs handle this really well. It would be nice to see this in the docs.

dthedavid··on Comparing Micro USB vs Lightning and why Apple chose Lightning
Apple is all about design and user experience. They probably hate the way a micro USB cable looks and it can only go in one way. Also they might want control of the peripheral market. I'm just guessing here.
dthedavid··on Everyme (YC S11) Founders Launching Origami to Help Families Stay in Touch
How is this different from Everyme?

From Everyme.com "We believe most stories are meant to be shared with your family and best friends". Isn't the goal of Origami the exact same thing?

Why not build the Origami features into Everyme and make it a better product?

To me, this is a sign that they're loosing focus. Either that or Everyme is not doing very well and they are just pivoting... somehow.

dthedavid··on How polished UI (icon) helped my iPad app's downloads (stats inside)
My designers are from Europe and South East Asia.
dthedavid··on How polished UI (icon) helped my iPad app's downloads (stats inside)
I find it a problem when you have 2 UI designers and cannot come up with a great design on day one. Your new design isn't spectacular either. A great resource is to look at the designs of all of your competitors and understand what is great about all of them.

Also $50 for an icon is very cheap. At that price, I'm not sure how it would motivate any good designer to spend even an hour on a design. I usually pay $150-$300 per icon for my apps (smartieants.com) and I find it barely enough to keep the designer motivated.

Page 1 of 2Next →