Hacker News: benkaiser

New comment by benkaiser in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

benkaiser — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:55:48 +0000

I'm assuming real estate

New comment by benkaiser in "Mob – A personal CRM as an MCP server"

benkaiser — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:40:44 +0000

Thanks! Very valid feedback about the generic branding. Most of my focus has been on getting the app to a dogfooding level where it clearly replaces the last personal CRM I self-hosted (Monica).

People are definitely more likely to roll their own solutions these days, and hey, Mob is actually open source and supports taking it and forking it how users want. The point of the hosted service is still about serving a large chunk of people that can't even be bothered using a proper agent, let alone hosting it somewhere, although given that is a small or non-existent segment of "uses MCP servers" and "can't host something themselves". Maybe when using remote MCP servers hits mainstream adoption.

New comment by benkaiser in "Mob – A personal CRM as an MCP server"

benkaiser — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 03:56:15 +0000

I have loved using Monica CRM for several years, but often times when clicking around the UI it just felt overly laborious compared to just speaking what I wanted to record. So over the last few months I've been putting together an alternative to Monica but with MCP usage first-class. It's open source under FSL-1.1-MIT, relatively lightweight (Node.js + SQLite) and makes managing your contacts very easy via natural language in your agents.

Happy to answer any questions!

Source: https://github.com/benkaiser/mob-mcp-crm

Mob – A personal CRM as an MCP server

benkaiser — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 03:51:35 +0000

Article URL: https://mobcrm.au/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151030

Points: 6

# Comments: 4

Better Grammar – Grammar Practice for Adults

benkaiser — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:28:00 +0000

Article URL: https://benkaiser.github.io/better-grammar/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48624070

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by benkaiser in "The gay jailbreak technique (2025)"

benkaiser — Sat, 02 May 2026 02:06:41 +0000

Often there are "abliterated" or "uncensored" tuned models that suppress the rejections. From my high level understanding it is performed by finding which weights activate for the rejection and lowering those so the model is less likely to reject. It doesn't fix if the model doesn't know what you're asking it though (i.e. if the model never actually learned about meth production in the first place).

New comment by benkaiser in "Mozilla Thunderbolt"

benkaiser — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:31:00 +0000

For those looking for mobile support connecting to remote MCP servers, I maintain a source-available chat app that does exactly that (uses OpenRouter for inference): https://benkaiser.github.io/joey-mcp-client/

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.