Hacker News: benkaiser

Bible RAG

benkaiser — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:38:03 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.github.io/bible-rag/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47394964

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

MCP First Application Development

benkaiser — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:49:23 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.dev/mcp-first-application-development/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303444

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "Google Workspace CLI"

benkaiser — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:20:44 +0000

Would be nice if the MCP implemented the Streamable HTTP MCP spec instead of the CLI one. I know this is already a HTTP API, but making it available as an MCP server that clients like Joey[1] can consume easily over network would be nice.

[1] https://github.com/benkaiser/joey-mcp-client

AI First Application Development

benkaiser — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 23:27:35 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.dev/ai-first-software-development/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225767

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "When does MCP make sense vs CLI?"

benkaiser — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:13:07 +0000

One key aspect that is missed here, is mobile users.

iOS don't have a CLI, Android phones... kinda have a CLI, but it's not really usable by all apps / universal like it is on desktop.

I've been putting together a MCP client for mobile recently [1] since to me it seems apparent that Remote MCP is a great utility but none of the major players offer it without a paid subscription.

As other commenters have mentioned, the use case here is really not for software developers, it's for everyone else. It's bringing that agentic loop to do all those "personal assistant" type things in a connected way with all of your services. We're not there yet, but maybe some day.

[1] https://github.com/benkaiser/joey-mcp-client

Show HN: Joey – MCP client that runs on your phone

benkaiser — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:08:14 +0000

Hi HN,

I’ve been watching the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) with interest. While it’s gaining traction in the enterprise space for internal tools and databases, I’m convinced we’re heading toward a future where consumers will interact with all sorts of remote services via MCP. The problem I hit was that while the ecosystem is growing, there wasn't a great way to use remote MCP servers from a mobile device without a monthly subscription. I wanted a high-quality native experience on my phone that I actually owned, so I built Joey.

Joey is a mobile-first AI chat client that connects to any model via OpenRouter and supports remote MCP servers over HTTP. It handles the full agentic loop, including many MCP features like sampling, elicitation, and OAuth. All your OAuth tokens and history stay on your device since there is no middle-man proxy server, and I collect no telemetry.

The project is source-available under the FSL-1.1-MIT license. Since it is a standard Flutter app, it is easy to build it yourself and deploy to your own device if you have the SDK installed. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of consumer MCP and how we'll be managing these tools on the go.

GitHub: https://github.com/benkaiser/joey-mcp-client

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47211750

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft"

benkaiser — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:55:03 +0000

Am a software engineer at Microsoft using a M3 MBP, opinions are my own and all. Honestly one (of many) reasons I opted to go through the exception process to request a macbook was the screen brightness. The fact you can run software to boost the screen to HDR brightness levels for SDR content is insanely useful for working outside.

New comment by benkaiser in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

benkaiser — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:56:32 +0000

I think the parent may be referring to the fact that safari/webkit will evict all localstorage/indexeddb/caches etc after 7 days of not visiting a site. And apparently this now extends to PWAs making it a pretty big blog to building any infrequently accessed PWA that needs to persist user data locally.

New comment by benkaiser in "I was right about dishwasher pods and now I can prove it [video]"

benkaiser — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:16:34 +0000

Counter-example... some people have no idea that SLS is causing these issues and just chalk it up to how things are.

I recently switched to an SLS free toothpaste but it was really hard to track one down that still had flouride in it!

Big Tech Employee Giving Program Tier List

benkaiser — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 04:49:50 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.dev/big-tech-employee-giving-tier-list/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948355

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "Bento: A Steam Deck in a Keyboard"

benkaiser — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:26:33 +0000

This is super nice as it's a native unencumbered linux environment.

I recently blogged about trying to do web development on the Quest 3, and although it kind of works, it's way more hacky (and performance is still lacking). The nice thing however about the Quest, is still being able to leverage virtual window placement in the space around you vs. the fixed 2d monitor approach here.

https://benkaiser.dev/web-development-in-vr/

Quest 3 as a Standalone Web Development Machine

benkaiser — Wed, 21 May 2025 00:29:10 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.dev/web-development-in-vr/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047241

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android"

benkaiser — Sun, 18 May 2025 07:05:13 +0000

I actually tried doing web dev on a Meta Quest 3 recently, but found the biggest limitation to actually be the lack of devtools in Android.

Here is the blog I did discussing the limitations: https://benkaiser.dev/web-development-in-vr/

I wonder if something like this running on the quest could technically work, but I suspect it would be too heavy running Linux chrome in a chroot. You also lose the cool "place and resize your windows anywhere" if it's all stuck inside one window for a desktop.

New comment by benkaiser in "Show HN: A personal YouTube frontend based on yt-dlp"

benkaiser — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:16:05 +0000

I'm quite curious how they go about licensing the content, maybe they just pay the creators a cut of the subscription fees. Or is it really just scraping youtube in some form?

As for the search you mentioned, that might come into it for an older range, for my little ones they still can't read or spell yet, they just want to click on the thumbnail that looks the most engaging at any random time.

New comment by benkaiser in "Show HN: A personal YouTube frontend based on yt-dlp"

benkaiser — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 11:58:36 +0000

On this same topic, I just launched an app that lets you use your offline videos in an interface that is easy to use for kids.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaiserapps...

I stuck to a one-off payment, rather than the garbage subscription models all the other parenting apps use.

Show HN: Text an LLM at 61493035885

benkaiser — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 21:51:16 +0000

Full number (no + allowed in title): +61493035885

I put together this basic service running on an Android phone with a cheap prepaid SIM that supports "unlimited SMS to 20 countries". I considered alternatives like Twilio and Telnyx, but at ~5c per SMS sent or received in Australia, the SMS costs would rack up faster than the LLM costs! Of course, this comes at the risk the carrier disconnects my service.

I explain it more in the blog post, but the service is just a basic node server that sends the LLM calls to DeepInfra running Llama 3.1 8B. The node server runs in Termux on the phone receiving the SMS, and is relayed to the node server by SMS Gateway for Android[1].

Tip: you can text "CLEAR" to clear all your past messages from the database so you can start a new conversation.

[1] https://github.com/capcom6/android-sms-gateway/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43382777

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store"

benkaiser — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 12:38:43 +0000

Thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of that blog post. That said, their approach sounds kind of disheartening. I love being able to use extensions within my PWAs (primarily uBlock Origin, obviously), and some Android Chrome forks (Kiwi/Mises) let me do this, while still letting me feel like I'm in a dedicated app (i.e. no browser chrome at all). The firefox team really seem to stress here that they want to keep the chrome around the app (albeit different), which really feels like it goes against the grain of what I expect a PWA to be in the first place (a chromeless website).

New comment by benkaiser in "uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store"

benkaiser — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 21:37:56 +0000

As a developer, the one feature I really love in Chrome is PWAs. But Firefox abandoned PWA support years ago, and seems to have no appetite for adding PWAs back[1]. Maybe I'll just have to split my usage across PWAs in Chrome (since I trust those apps/websites anyway) and Firefox for general browsing.

[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress...

New comment by benkaiser in "macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)"

benkaiser — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 09:15:05 +0000

Brightintosh is the same as Vivid (roughly) and is actually open source, but the author ships the binaries as a Mac app store purchase for $2:

https://github.com/niklasr22/BrightIntosh

New comment by benkaiser in "All Kindles can now be jailbroken"

benkaiser — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:15:30 +0000

Yeah there's a way to do this with Calibre + some plugins on windows. I tried on my Mac but it was unsuccessful.