Ask HN: Building a Non-AI tool feels surprisingly refreshing for me
7 tinchox6 3 3/25/2025, 12:16:23 PM
Lately, I’ve been working on a small side project: a web tool for creating radial and circular layouts using CSS only. What I’ve enjoyed the most is that it’s completely non-AI—just code, logic, and design decisions made by hand.
I have nothing against AI, but I found that building something without it has been almost therapeutic. Of course I know it is just a side project. I mean I'm not depend on its success for living.
It also made me wonder: in a world where AI is taking over so many creative and technical tasks, is there still a place for the joy of purely handcrafted software? Have others here felt something similar when working on non-AI projects?
Side project url https://github.com/zumerlab/orbit/
I like riffing off AI's creativity. It gives me creative ideas for scenes and conflicts, and I carve whatever it gives me into something pretty, like a lapidarist.
Also AI helped in writing an engine for it - things like VNs don't normally allow for the pacing of good dialogue. So I had to do something to allow for a little back and forth, interruptions, change of tone, etc.