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gschieron Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

Yaak [1] is a local-first desktop API client (Postman alternative) and I've been building MCP workflows around growth lately.

I already have one for product that takes in a bunch of sources (feedback, PRs, my own tasks, etc) and makes it trivial for an agent to guide me through the day's tasks. Now I'm doing the same thing for growth by taking in web/social triggers, web analytics, and other signals to spin up marketing tasks. We'll see how it goes!

[1] https://yaak.app

gschieron Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0

Linux users don't pay for anything anyway

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

That'll do it. That config is used for the production build of Yaak that's downloadable from the website. Just running "tauri build" or "npm run app-build" is what you want.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

How are you running it? The code for the license management and badge are not included by default when running "npm start" or "npm run app-build".

And yes, you can indeed run the OSS yourself for commercial purposes.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Yep, that's what the fallback is for

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Faster, smoother, GRPC, plugins, themes, fully open source, no telemetry,...

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Yep, no VC! Though I have invested 2 years of my own living expenses into it, trying to make it work.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Ya, it's so funny to be going up against a 1000+ person company as a solo dev!

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

I currently direct these people to sponsor on GitHub

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

I've already sold once, and regretted it. I'm aiming to call Yaak "done" in the next few years and use it to fund my* retirement. See you there

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

No way. Queue the gif!

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

This is my retirement project. I'd like to call it "done" within 2 years

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Hey! Who's this?

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Non-competes expire

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

How so? It's completely open source and doesn't rely on cloud accounts or servers. It's also just me. Postman has 1000 employees and $200M+ in funding

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

My runway reaches infinity around $10k MRR so I'll likely do a post around then. Currently 11% of the way there!

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

It's a bit lower on the priority list, but it'll get there https://feedback.yaak.app/p/flatpak-and-flathub

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Enjoy!

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

No plans for VSCode integration, no. It's only great because it's designed for a very specific use case and environment.

I'm not quite sure why Yaak wouldn't work in this case. It it because your running server wouldn't be accessible to Yaak, running on your system?

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

The commercial license terms only apply to the prebuilt binaries. You can build and run the OSS version for whatever purpose you'd like. Check the last FAQ on the pricing page

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

This is a conscious bet I'm making.

Yes, it's a good-faith license. The license doesn't even apply to the OSS version (only prebuilt binaries).

The bet is that super fans will pay for it in the early days and, as it gets adopted by larger companies, they will pay in order to comply with the legalities of commercial use. So far, it's working! The largest company so far is 34 seats, with a couple more in the pipe!

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

You get a 30-day trial

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Nice! Yep, trying to be as open and accessible as possible since so much of the industry is the opposite.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Yaak does this out of the box. It pops open a browser window and intercepts any redirect. And auto refresh is built in as well.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

I was so sad to see its decline after I left. Had to make it right.

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Hahah, ya... :)

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

Hey, I'm the creator of Yaak! Let me know how it could be even better :)

gschieron Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down

This is exactly why I made Yaak [1]. It's fully offline, no telemetry, open source, and can even sync with Git.

https://yaak.app

gschieron AI-powered, self-hostable image proxy

There's some auto cropping stuff based on faces that might be one example.