Ask HN: What developer tool do you wish existed in 2026?

22 points by allenleee 147 days ago | 24 comments

I’m looking for ideas to build and open-source.

Curious what problems you expect to matter in the next couple of years.

Thx!

One thing I want: something like a function call graph: you load some source code files, open a function in window A (windows A now shows Only this function with all functions calls and structs highlighted). Click on any function call then the callee shows up in a new window with proper highlighting. Click on a struct object it immediately shows the struct def in a panel stick to the bottom of the screen.

Essentially, it’s like VSCode Peek definition but with a different visual style, and similar to the same functionality of source insight but free and in Linux.

The purpose is to read xv6 source code. I have found some parts of the kernel, e.g. the file system to be convoluted, and I need to follow quite a few jumps to form the system mindset. Having such a small tool is very helpful.

Actually it doesn’t look too hard to implement. Maybe I’ll write it myself in QT.

skydhash 146 days ago | |

Although it would be manual, that’s very doable in Emacs and Vim. It’s the very reason I use these editors as you can have a screen fulls of opened files instead of the tabbed model of common editors. One example having all the files you need to edit when you’re implementing a feature in a multilayered architecture. Easier that switching tabs again and again.

WilcoKruijer 147 days ago | |

I experimented with this idea a couple years ago, using the Language Server Protocol to make it some what universal. The output gets messy pretty quickly, maybe these days an LLM could be used to only show the interesting calls.

R_D_Olivaw 146 days ago |

A physical board that translates digitally.

Imagine a whiteboard that has sticky notes, writing, little tokens and trinkets and the board also becomes a digital version that you can iterate on.

I really like to plan with my hands and in MY memory, but still love the utikity of planning digitally of course.

allenleee 145 days ago | |

Love this one! My immediate thought for a build: just a camera with on-device VLMs and LLMs. You could point it at a normal whiteboard (or a wall of sticky notes), and the model could interpret the handwriting, track the tokens, and sync the state digitally in real-time without needing any special "smart" hardware.

It feels like a much more flexible approach than an expensive proprietary whiteboard. Would a camera-only setup cover your use case?

R_D_Olivaw 143 days ago | | |

Yeah, I figured a camera oriented solution would probably be the simplest way to actually implement, especially for copying the writing over.

A loooong time ago I had one of those notebooks (rocketbook I think) that you would take a picture of and the software would detect it and upload a digital version of it, it was clunky though. But the thing I liked about it was the little icons you would color in that would denote what kind of note to save the page as.

taurath 147 days ago |

Planners. Something to help me make sense of what my priorities are during the day. Something to help me determine what needs my attention.

I have a lot of systems, but I could really use a Jarvis at work right now and it seems like the whole damn promise of AI is to deliver that. I’m waiting.

R_D_Olivaw 146 days ago | |

There's something about having so many planners online/digital that sucks.

I want to plan, but I don't want to be on the computer yet. But if I plan non-digitally, it's slower, I can't copy/paste, and then I don't really have good access to it unless I have it with me.

But if I plan too much digitally, it's stored in digital memory, not my memory.

I'm really struggling to find something to mitigate this. I wish I had a tactile miro board that also created the miro board online.

vodou 141 days ago |

An "explorative" hex editor where you can do "fuzzy" searches, e.g., searching for a header with specific values for certain fields. (I thought ImHex should be able to do this (and still think it might), but haven't really figured out a good work flow...)

adrianwaj 142 days ago |

I just posted an idea here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46399390 -- collecting micropayments to resolve disappointments.

kubanczyk 146 days ago |

An LLM tool that can sit on a CI pipeline to propose what tests should be blocking.

Instead of brute-force method of selecting the appropriate test suites by path or similar, have LLM analyze changes and propose the set of test suites that is relevant to the change.

If there are new complex tests added to the change, estimates how many times to run them to ensure they are not flaky to begin with (hundreds? or thousands?).

KomoD 147 days ago |

Temporary ssh containers, I just want to ssh (some id)@(container host), spin up a lxc container or firecracker microvm, it attaches to it.

When I exit the ssh session, it terminates (or "pauses").

I've wanted to make it for a while but never got around to it.

ValtteriL 147 days ago | |

You can get such disposable shell in k8s with a command like:

kubectl run -i --tty --rm debug --image=busybox --restart=Never -- sh

Doesn't use ssh though.

cik 147 days ago | |

Unless I'm missing it, the linuxserver have a container you can use. There's also containerssh (which I use all the time)

https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/openssh-server

https://hub.docker.com/r/containerssh/containerssh

KomoD 146 days ago | | |

Oh interesting! ContainerSSH looks like what I want, thanks.

dhruv3006 146 days ago |

Unbloated easy to use postman.

bhdzllr 146 days ago | |

Is a terminal app for you? https://posting.sh/ (You can also use it with the mouse)

rogutkuba 144 days ago | |

https://yaak.app/

allenleee 146 days ago | |

have you tried this one: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

dhruv3006 146 days ago | | |

Still bloated i myself am working on https://voiden.md

IntelliAvatar 144 days ago |

A runtime layer for AI agents that enforces execution boundaries: traces, replay, and a hard “no” when something unsafe is about to run.

wojciii 142 days ago |

I could use a sane CI system.

I hate DevOps. I have to do multiple commits to implement something.

I would love to be able to have access to the same env as the CI so that I could prototype the script/job on my own machine before committing to git. Most things are using Docker anyway, so it should be possible.

I hate that I need to write commands in Yaml files, commit (or use the browser) and then look at the result.

Solve this and I would pay for it.

iExploder 141 days ago | |

Something that would record commands as you go and allow you to rollback during testing the scripts?

This is what I miss whenever I have to do devops...

wojciii 141 days ago | | |

That could be useful as well.

Perhaps the ability ability to stop at a specific point in the script and being able to modify any commands and execute the step and then continue the script until it fails again.

You know .. debugging interface would be a killer feature that would save so much time developing scripts.