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Show HN: Leap – Full-stack AI developer agent that deploys to AWS

We just launched Leap, an AI developer agent that helps you build and deploy apps with real backends to your own AWS or GCP cloud.We built it because every AI app builder we tried fell short. They were fine for prototypes, but not for real systems. No support for proper backend infra, no isolated test environments, and sometimes shockingly no way to own your code.We build Leap to be more appropriate for developers:- Connect GitHub to put your code in a repo you control - Work with code generation using pull request–style revisions with diffs - Get Architecture diagrams and API docs for your app as you build - Develop using an isolated preview environment - Deploy either via open source tooling or the integration with Encore Cloud for automated deploys to AWS/GCPLeap uses Claude 4 Sonnet and runs on our open-source framework Encore.ts[1], which provides declarative infrastructure (like a cloud-agnostic CDK-layer). We found the framework to be a good fit for LLM code generation as both application logic and infra is defined in the same context, and the declarative nature makes it less error prone.Right now we think Leap is best for starting new projects or building new isolated services in existing larger systems.The biggest challenge right now is dealing with larger codebases as models struggle to cope with large contexts. And while we're doing a few things to optimize this, we intentionally made it so that you can switch to your IDE any time and keep working there. To run your app locally you only need the open Encore CLI installed, which also can be used to build the app as a docker container.We're just getting started and would love your feedback if you try it. And also it would be helpful to understand what would make this useful for you?- You can try it here: <a href="https://leap.new" rel="nofollow">https://leap.new</a> - Here's the launch blog post and video: <a href="https://leap.new/launched" rel="nofollow">https://leap.new/launched</a>[1]<a href="https://github.com/encoredev/encore">https://github.com/encoredev/encore</a>

Ask HN: How to Deal with a Bad Manager?

Need some real life advice and stories from experienced folks.I’ve been working for few years in a large company (think faang as a good approximation) in one of the departments under 1 manager. Relatively good one.Then by the will of higher ups some teams got drastically reorged and I ended up in a different team with a new manager. Terrible one.Micromanagement, lack of vision, poor communication, poor planning, zero support, full package. About half the team share similar view. The other half seems like just playing along.To add more context the overall management culture in the company is neither toxic nor great. There is definitely hierarchy and go over her head doesn’t sound like a good idea. Internal movements are basically non existent.I still care about the mission and about what I do. Though not as much as before this all happened.What would you do in my shoes to make the best of the situation?

Ask HN: Contact form spam despite trying everything

I'm at my wit's end with contact form spam on my sites. I've tried:CleanTalk - caught some spam but still getting through, plus the monthly cost adds up Turnstile - better UX than reCAPTCHA but bots seem to be solving it reCAPTCHA v2 - effective but users hate the image challenges reCAPTCHA v3 - invisible but I'm still getting 20-30 spam submissions daily even with strict thresholdsI've also implemented honeypots, rate limiting, basic keyword filtering, and email validation (both format checking and MX record verification). The spam is getting more sophisticated - proper English, realistic email addresses that actually exist, even passing behavioral checks. What I'm curious about: How does Hacker News handle spam so effectively? I rarely see spam comments here, and there's no visible CAPTCHA. Are you using something custom, or is there a service/approach I'm missing? For context, I get about 500 legitimate form submissions per month, so I need something that won't block real users while stopping the bot flood. What's worked best for your sites? Especially interested in hearing from anyone who's dealt with determined, human-like spam at scale.

Technical co-founder, built everything. Offered 4%. Oof

I had done all the work, paid for everything, built all of it, and now wasn’t considered a real co-founder even though I did co-founder work because I might leave at some point, but wouldn’t leave them hanging.There were no deliverables without me. There was no code, no UX, no logic. I hadn’t launched it yet, so I walked away and kept the code and IP (they have never seen a line of code and didn’t have access to my repo).A few days later, a barista at the cafe I used to work from told me they we

Ask HN: How did you handle the recent Google Cloud outage with your customers?

Curious to learn how others dealt with the recent Google Cloud outage? especially in terms of managing customer communication and expectationswhat did you say to your clients? how did you "put out the fire" while things were still down?any best practices or lessons learned you'd be willing to share?thanks!

Show HN: I Processed Brazil's 85GB Open Company Registry So You Don't Have To

Last year, I needed to find all software companies in São Paulo for a project. The good news: Brazil publishes all company registrations as open data at dados.gov.br. The bad news: it's 85GB of ISO-8859-1 encoded CSVs with semicolon delimiters, decimal commas, and dates like "00000000" meaning NULL. My laptop crashed after 4 hours trying to import just one file.So I built a pipeline that handles this mess: <a href="https://github.com/cnpj-chat/cnpj-data-pipeline">https://github.com/cnpj-chat/cnpj-data-pipeline</a>THE PROBLEM NOBODY TALKS ABOUTEvery Brazilian startup eventually needs this data - for market research, lead generation, or compliance. But everyone wastes weeks: - Parsing "12.345.678/0001-90" vs "12345678000190" CNPJ formats - Discovering that "00000000" isn't January 0th, year 0 - Finding out some companies are "founded" in 2027 (yes, the future) - Dealing with double-encoded UTF-8 wrapped in Latin-1WHAT YOU CAN NOW DO IN SQLFind all fintechs founded after 2020 in São Paulo:SELECT COUNT(*) FROM estabelecimentos e JOIN empresas emp ON e.cnpj_basico = emp.cnpj_basico WHERE e.uf = 'SP' AND e.cnae_fiscal_principal LIKE '64%' AND e.data_inicio_atividade > '2020-01-01' AND emp.porte IN ('01', '03');Result: 8,426 companies (as of Jun 2025)SURPRISING THINGS I FOUND1. The 3am Company Club: 4,812 companies were "founded" at exactly 3:00:00 AM. Turns out this is a database migration artifact from the 1990s.2. Ghost Companies: ~2% of "active" companies have no establishments (no address, no employees, nothing). They exist only on paper.3. The CNAE 9999999 Mystery: 147 companies have an economic activity code that doesn't exist in any reference table. When I tracked them down, they're all government entities from before the classification system existed.4. Future Founders: 89 companies have founding dates in 2025-2027. Not errors - they're pre-registered for future government projects.5. The MEI Boom: Micro-entrepreneurs (MEI) grew 400% during COVID. You can actually see the exact week in March 2020 when registrations spiked.TECHNICAL BITSThe pipeline: - Auto-detects your RAM and adapts strategy (streaming for <8GB, parallel for >32GB) - Uses PostgreSQL COPY instead of INSERT (10x faster) - Handles incremental updates (monthly data refresh) - Includes missing reference data from SERPRO that official files omitProcessing 60M companies: - VPS (4GB RAM): ~8 hours - Desktop (16GB): ~2 hours - Server (64GB): ~1 hourTHE CODEIt's MIT licensed: <a href="https://github.com/cnpj-chat/cnpj-data-pipeline">https://github.com/cnpj-chat/cnpj-data-pipeline</a>One command setup: docker-compose --profile postgres up --buildOr if you prefer Python: python setup.py # Interactive configuration python main.py # Start processingWHY OPEN SOURCE THIS?I've watched too many devs waste weeks on this same problem. One founder told me they hired a consultancy for R$30k to deliver... a broken CSV parser. Another spent 2 months building ETL that processes 10% of the data before crashing.The Brazilian tech ecosystem loses tons of hours reinventing this wheel. That's time that could be spent building actual products.COMMUNITY RESPONSEI've shared this with r/dataengineering and r/brdev, and the response has been incredible - over 50k developers have viewed it, and I've already incorporated dozens of improvements from their feedback. The most common reaction? "I wish I had this last month when I spent 2 weeks fighting these files."QUESTIONS FOR HN1. What other government datasets are this painful? I'm thinking of tackling more.2. For those who've worked with government data - what's your worst encoding/format horror story?3. Is there interest in a hosted API version? The infrastructure would be ~$100/month to serve queries.The worst part? This data has been "open" since 2012. But open != accessible. Sometimes the best code is the code that deals with reality's mess so others don't have to.

I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives

The manual approach of creating folders and selecting photos one by one is tedious, and keeping up with new photos becomes overwhelmingSo I built an app called BackiGo that addresses this exact pain point - it allows direct backup of Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives, no Mac needed.What makes it useful:Backs up your Live Photos with all the motion intactCan restore Live Photos back to your iPhone camera rollSuper easy to backup new photosYou can browse and view all your saved Live

MVP in 15 days and why strangers became angels

How we leveraged Events, LinkedIn, Open-source, free accounts. With 0 Strategy. Just plain curiosity to learn & solve a problem.Curiosity > StrategyWe didn't know words MVP, pitchdeck nor about fundraise, co-founder. Startups, VC, angels world was alien to me....So here's how we started. We would ping strangers on LinkedIn & events that I joined. I even spent Indian Rupees 1L ($4900 in PPP terms) on paid events/niche trainings.I’ve never hesitated to spend on my Curiosity. It pays back in long run.We helped strangers without expectations. Still ppl won't respond... I wondered why? These people posted they needed help.But this pain paid back in long run. You learn this is how the world works. You reach 20 — if 2-5 respond, you're lucky.Deal that crashedI helped 1 wanna-be US VC raising $100M fund, 2 wanna-be startups & 2 folks with overlap to our idea. Since we weren't sure about any idea — VC thing looked exciting.We helped with what we know best — tech, connects — without even knowing what we wanted in return. Introduced 7–10 connects, drafted tech, designed tech teams — for free.It was genuine collab evolving on both sides. Wanna-be-VC wanted us in plum VC role — but that felt like employment. So the deal crashed.Got first Angel without pitch deckOne person we helped on LinkedIn gave us offer to be our first angel — when we weren’t even raising. We didn’t know the word “Pitch Deck”. He’s investing in our new round too.He did it because his idea overlapped with ours & he liked how we navigated the problem while helping him.MVP In 15 daysAt an event, I pinged folks who might want help or become co-founders. Shared idea with a L'Oréal exec. He said — let’s build & take it to L'Oréal.Achal & I knew backend/building like water. But we hadn’t worked in frontends. Still, we built it in 15 days.Another hope crashedL'Oréal guy said — colors/aesthetics aren’t up to mark. Can’t take this to L'Oréal. We said — that’s why this is MVP. By then, we had our first angel on board.Finding way out — there’s no straight roadWe decided to take MVP to market, aesthetics or not. Put some money to validate market (<$12k). Discounted 7 invoices semi-automated. GST number borrowed from 1st investor.But we had no way forward. Angel tells us — put pitch deck. Achal & I had detailed tech & biz plan already (shabby, but whatever).We were validating, attending events, helping, talking, learning, wrapping from Germany & US to India — all at once.Luck meets those who dare to go outAn ex-colleague who had seen my paper vision introduced us to his Razorpay classmate. He linked us to Razorpay’s investment team — they helped refine our deck.They said — what you’re building is called “Buy Now, Pay Later” with AI. We didn’t know that. We reached this word by seeking, reaching...It came from someone who had access to latest ideas. Now our pitch deck aligned to a hot market. We didn’t know — others told us.Same product, new story. The world framed it for us.2 months laterWe had:Pitch deckValidated MVPTeamHottest productRaised ₹80L ($105k) in first round. Raised $68k more later. Raising another round now with more commitments — all without strategy.Without events, active reachout — it might’ve taken 2 years & 3x more capital to reach here. We had a working MVP, deck, team & early investors.What we did:Shared ideas openlyPut it on a webpageDidn’t try to be perfectValidated, moved forwardReached out, helped freely, expected nothingBuild. Fund. Collaborate. Go to market.

Ask HN: AWS API Billing, Credits, and Users

I have a question for people who have dealt with APIs on AWS,for my startup I have someone helping with our AWS migration, but he’s raised the concerns shown in the text below. In short what’s the best software for managing billing, credits, and users for an API?1. User Management System:<pre><code> User registration API with email verification, Login/logout with JWT token management, Password reset functionality, User profile management, API key generation and rotation, Account deletion and data cleanup. </code></pre> 2. Payment & Billing Infrastructure:<pre><code> Stripe customer creation and management, Payment intent creation and processing, Multiple credit package options, Payment method storage and updating, Invoice generation and history, Failed payment retry logic, Refund processing system, Tax calculation integration, Payment analytics dashboard. </code></pre> 3. Credit Management System:<pre><code> Credit balance tracking in real-time, Credit purchase and allocation, Credit deduction with job submission, Credit refund for failed jobs, Credit expiration policies, Usage analytics and reporting, Credit transfer between accounts (if needed), Promotional credit allocation.</code></pre>

Anyone drowning in emails? I'd love to learn how you deal with it

Hey everyone, I’m a college student building a small side project around managing email, but I realized I’m not the best person to understand what the real pain feels like… because I don’t get that many emails myself hahaIf you’re someone who constantly feels overwhelmed by your inbox, or if replying to emails takes up way too much of your time, I’d really love to hear from you. I’m not trying to pitch or sell anything, just trying to learn from real people who deal with this daily as I really h

Show HN: Compears – Compare Grocery prices across Supermarkets

Build a project that tracks supermarket prices across the EU region (for now); the aim is to aid shoppers find the best deals across supermarkets

Black Friday Cat GIF by Looney Tunes

Season 3 Starz GIF by Outlander

bird love GIF by Tuesday Morning

My 7 Favorite Tips and Tricks I Use to Save Money — Traveling on a Tight Budget

7 Tips and Tricks for Affordable Travel on Any Budget

US online spending surges $24.1 billion as steep discounts boost sales, Adobe says

Online spending soared $24.1 billion across U.S. retailers during the stretch from July 8 to 11 – dubbed "Black Friday in Summer", outpacing Adobe Analytics' prior forecast, as eager shoppers rushed ...

Wealthy Families Are Buying Out-of-State Homes To Snag Tuition Discounts at Top Universities

Buying a home in the state where your child will attend college can mean major discounts on tuition—and more families are ...

Amazon extends Prime Day discounts to 4 days as retailers weigh tariffs and price increases

Prime Day sales are here again. The e-commerce giant is making the now-misnamed Prime Day a four-day event for the first time ...

Nordstrom’s Biggest Sale Of The Year Includes Discounts From Coach, Kendra Scott, Sperry, And More Brands We Love

Some of our favorite designer brands, back-to-school styles, and more are discounted right now for Nordstrom’s anniversary ...

Minecraft offers free maps and huge Marketplace discounts

You better be quick if you want to pick up that content pack you’ve had an eye on, with up to 75% off across the Minecraft Marketplace.