Top Tools from Nov 2–8, 2026

The first stable release of libghostty-vt, the terminal emulation library that Mitchell Hashimoto and the Ghostty contributors split out of the Ghostty app, tagged on 6 November with version numbers of its own. You feed it the bytes a program writes and it turns them into terminal state, the screen, cursor and scrollback, with a render state built for drawing on the CPU or GPU, key, mouse, focus and paste encoding, Kitty graphics, search, selection and snapshots; it brings no window, renderer or PTY of its own, creates no threads, is safe to feed untrusted output by default and is fuzzed around the clock, and a complete example terminal takes about 1,500 lines of C. Version 1.0 freezes the C API and ABI, so a program built against any 1.x keeps working with every later 1.x, with changed behaviour arriving under new function names and the old ones deprecated until 2.0, and CI checks the ABI on Linux, macOS and WebAssembly. It is built and tested for Linux, macOS 13 and later, iOS 13 and later, FreeBSD, Windows, Android and WebAssembly, where the small build is under 1 MB, and the 1.0.0 download comes as signed source, a macOS and iOS XCFramework and WebAssembly modules, with CMake, Zig, Nix and pkg-config routes and Zig 0.17 needed to build it. JetBrains' IDE terminal, OrbStack, Vercel's Turborepo, the Emacs package Ghostel, Coder's ghostty-web and the herdr and cmux tools for coding agents already use it, Neovim has an approved change that replaces libvterm with it, and there are community bindings for Rust, Go, JavaScript, Swift, Python, .NET and other languages. MIT and free; Ghostty is fiscally sponsored by the non-profit Hack Club and funded by tax-deductible donations

A ceiling-mounted robot from Nathaniel Nifong's Neufangled Robotics in North Carolina that hangs a two-finger gripper from four lines strung to the corners of a room and picks things up off the floor, with putting laundry and toys into tagged bins as its default job; the company calls it a public prototype, not yet reliable enough to be called a home appliance. Two anchors in opposite ceiling corners each hold two direct-drive motors, with ceramic eyelets in the other two corners, one of the lines carries power down to the 638 g gripper, and cameras on the anchors and gripper find it by AprilTags and line length after an automatic five-minute calibration. It lifts up to about 2 kg, moves at about 0.4 metres a second and suits rooms with a diagonal of 3 to 10 metres and a ceiling of 2.3 to 4 metres, and each line lets go with a damped motion above 28 newtons, about the weight of a backpack, with a separate wireless emergency stop. The motion controller runs on your own computer, which needs a GPU, NPU or Mac acceleration for anything beyond driving it by hand with a gamepad or keyboard; you can also script it in Python, record demonstrations and train policies with Hugging Face's LeRobot, or let a coding agent drive it through an MCP server. By default nothing leaves your network, while an optional cloud mode relays video and controls through Neufangled's servers without saving them. Installing takes about an hour with a drill and a step ladder, and it comes down in five minutes without tools. A fully assembled unit is 795 US dollars with a four-week lead time, shipping to the US and Mexico, Japan, Korea, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the UK and Canada, where a 25 percent tariff is added, and a 655-dollar parts kit for printing the rest yourself is sold out. The software is Apache-2.0, the downloads page puts the CAD and print files under CERN-OHL-W-2.0, and the circuit-board repository ships no LICENSE file as of 9 November 2026

Kagi, the ad-free paid search engine from Kagi Inc., a Delaware public benefit corporation founded by Vladimir Prelovac, opened on 5 November to anyone who visits kagi.com, with the first 50 searches needing no account and 100 more, plus 100 AI assistant interactions, after signing up; after that it takes a paid subscription, with no free allowance that renews. No-account visitors get what Kagi calls its discovery version, which it describes as degraded compared with a paid plan without listing what is missing, the check runs through Cloudflare Turnstile, and the Android app now shows how many free searches are left; Kagi staff told HN the free searches come out of the marketing budget. Paid plans are Starter at 5 US dollars a month or 54 a year for 300 searches a month and up to 300 AI interactions on standard models, Professional at 10 a month or 108 a year with unlimited searches and the Assistant on standard models, and Ultimate at 25 a month or 270 a year adding premium models and a research mode, plus Duo, Family and Team plans, all before sales tax; a month with no use at all is credited back. Kagi says it shows no ads, loads no analytics or tracking and is funded entirely by its users, 75,936 members and 10,225 families as of 9 November 2026, after a founder-funded start and about 2.5 million dollars from community investors in 2023 and 2024; Privacy Pass, which proves you subscribe without revealing who you are, is for paying members. Closed source

A free Windows app from GitHub user JiaFeiMiao-K-Cat that turns a picture into disc data, so that once it is burned onto an ordinary blank CD, DVD or single-layer BD-R the picture shows up on the disc's shiny data side, with no LightScribe or Labelflash drive needed. For CDs it writes audio tracks as WAV and CUE or RAW for ImgBurn or cdrecord, or a data ISO when you add files, building on arduinocelentano's cdimage; DVDs and Blu-ray discs get an ISO whose bytes are chosen so that, after the drive's own encoding, the burned marks form the image, with Blu-ray still experimental and dual-layer discs not supported. Because every disc and burner lays down its track slightly differently, a guided calibration fits the track geometry from a photo of a test burn, and there are presets for named Verbatim and Ritek DVD and BD-R media and a preview that simulates the result. Images come in as PNG, JPEG, BMP or GIF with dithering, gamma and brightness controls, real files can sit on an inner or outer ring around the picture, and an experimental mode burns straight to a blank disc through Windows, which the project says to use only on discs you can spare. The app is a portable, unsigned download for 64-bit Windows 10 2004 or later and Windows 11, with an experimental command-line version for Linux and macOS since 2 November; it makes no network connections and collects no telemetry. Version 1.5.0 shipped on 7 November. GPL-3.0, free. 8.8k stars as of 9 November 2026

A free 3D globe and atlas for the Mac from Tim Pritlove's Metaebene in Berlin, first released on 5 November with version 1.1 two days later, that lets you fly over Earth, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Ceres and Vesta in a native app. Earth uses a cloud-free Sentinel-2 mosaic at up to 10 metres per pixel, Mapterhorn terrain, OpenStreetMap from the project's own tile server with GEBCO sea depths, and 3D buildings from official city models in several German states, the Netherlands, Vienna and Espoo, with OSM buildings elsewhere. A library of about 1,750 map services from more than 75 countries adds current and historic aerial photos and historic maps, and you can add your own WMS, WMTS, ArcGIS, STAC and other sources; there are also five flat map projections, saved places and tours, earthquakes since 1900, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, fireballs, eclipses from 2000 BC to AD 3000, and moonquakes and marsquakes. It flies with a SpaceMouse, keyboard, trackpad or mouse, can stream to an Apple Vision Pro without a headset app, and keeps loaded tiles so places you have visited work offline. Requires macOS 27 on Apple silicon, as a direct download in English and German. There is no account, and the update check sends only the version and whether you take betas. Free, closed source and funded by donations

A honeypot from Hedgerow, a Belgian maker of security tools, published on 5 November and inspired, its maker says, by recent attacks on supermarket refrigeration, that pretends to be a supermarket fridge controller on the open internet and logs who connects, which passwords they try and which public exploits they use. It is one Python file with nothing beyond the standard library and two personas, the Danfoss AK-SM 800A and the Copeland Dixell XWEB EVO, matched to Shodan records of real units down to header order, page titles, certificate fields and TLS version, which according to the maker is enough for Shodan to list both as real devices. It tags attempts at seven published Danfoss and XWEB vulnerabilities, including the Danfoss 'code of the day' login bypass, where it records whether the code was right for that day, and default logins open a fake store dashboard with defrost buttons so you see what an attacker does next; optional Modbus TCP serves fake temperatures and setpoints. Events are written as JSON lines with a script that summarises them, and it runs with plain Python, from a container file with locked-down flags, or from a one-paste cloud-init file for an Ubuntu server, with README advice on keeping the host itself safe. It never runs commands, reads files or forwards traffic, and since public code can be fingerprinted the README suggests changing the persona strings and certificate subject. MIT, free

A drop-in replacement for the Firebase Local Emulator Suite from Sanjevi Rau in Malaysia, with the services written in Rust and Node running Cloud Functions, that reads your existing firebase.json, rules and indexes, uses the same ports and flags and imports and exports the official data format, with no Java needed. It covers Firestore, Auth, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, Extensions, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks and Eventarc; Realtime Database, Hosting, App Hosting and Data Connect are not emulated yet, there are no Python or Dart Functions runtimes, and you keep firebase-tools for deploying. In the project's own benchmark, one app with 211,205 Firestore documents and 6.7 GB in Storage running two hours of its own traffic on one server, peak memory fell from 22.57 GiB with the official emulators to 2.11 GiB, the median write from 208 to 5.1 milliseconds and a restart with data kept from 30.8 to 0.59 seconds, though the official stack was already 7.7 GB into swap when its run began. Data can be kept on disk between restarts, a web console covers functions, sign-in codes, Firestore and Storage editing and the queues, and an MCP server with 54 tools lets coding agents drive it, both staying on your machine. Installs from npm on Node 22 to 26 on macOS, glibc Linux or 64-bit Windows; version 0.2.1 shipped on 4 November, after 0.2.0, the first stable release, on 23 October. Apache-2.0, free, with no paid tier; not affiliated with Google

An open-source agent from Asymptote Labs in New York, first released in May, that records what your coding agents do into a log on your own machine, covering Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Cline, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, OpenCode, goose, Kiro and about 20 others, plus Claude.ai and ChatGPT through a browser extension, cloud agents, CI jobs and the Anthropic and OpenAI SDKs. Depending on the tool it captures sessions through OpenTelemetry, native hooks, plugins or the tool's own session files, masks secrets by pattern before writing, and on its own gives you a terminal and local web view of every session, offline threat rules, a local MCP server that lets agents search past sessions and memories you approve, and a handoff command that resumes a session in another agent or briefs it on one; logs can also be forwarded to Splunk, Datadog, Elastic, Sentinel and other security tools. The optional Beacon Cloud, which the interactive installer preselects with a local-only option, reviews new activity every hour for findings such as secrets in prompts, destructive commands, approval bypasses, prompt injection, retry loops and repeated walkthroughs it drafts into reusable skills; a metadata-only mode strips prompts, responses and outputs on the device but still sends file paths, branch names and full command lines, and the privacy policy allows uploaded content to be used for model training and de-identified datasets to be sold or licensed unless you opt out. Cloud Free stops analysing after 50 findings, Pro is 20 US dollars a month or 15 a month billed yearly for unlimited findings and memory over MCP, Team is 30 dollars a seat a month plus a 10-dollar base fee for up to 20 seats, and Enterprise adds blocking and approval of risky agent actions and fleet rollout. macOS, Linux and Windows. The agent is MIT; the company raised a 5.5 million dollar seed round led by Tower Research Ventures in October 2026. 3.4k stars as of 9 November 2026

A service from Codapt Inc., the US company behind the Solid agent platform, that rents you a dedicated physical iPhone SE or M4 Mac mini in its data centre for an AI agent to use, rather than a virtual machine or emulator. The agent sees the device through its HDMI output, as screenshots or a live stream of JPEG frames, and works it through USB keyboard and mouse input, with clicks, drags, scrolling, typing and key chords sent over a REST and WebSocket API that any agent with HTTPS access can call; there is no shell, file access or clipboard API, a person can take over from the browser dashboard, and the agent gets access through an OAuth device flow that you approve. You sign in to iCloud and apps yourself and can add your own eSIM plan for verification texts, apps, files and sign-ins stay put for the whole rental, and the device, which no other customer shares, is erased and factory-reset when you let it go. The stated limitations include typing US-keyboard ASCII text only, iOS permission dialogs that can block input while missing from the HDMI picture, and no promise of stock, with a waitlist, and the terms rule out fraud, impersonation, spam and reselling access. iPhones are 60 US dollars and Macs 90 dollars per device per month plus tax, billed monthly with no trial, no annual plan, no shorter rentals and no refunds except when a device can't be set up within 30 minutes of payment. Closed source

The latest release of Xmind, the mind-mapping app that has been around for nearly two decades, out on the desktop as version 27.01 on 28 October and launched on Product Hunt as Xmind 2027, built around Xmind Agent, a chat panel that analyses, expands and edits a map from your instructions, attached PDF, Word and PowerPoint files, images, web pages, YouTube transcripts, web search, Google Drive and Notion. It sits alongside AI tools that turn text, images, drawings or recordings into maps, break work down into tasks and make pitch videos, a remote MCP server that lets Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and other agents work on your cloud maps, and an MIT-licensed command-line tool for editing local .xmind files; the release also adds link previews, custom watermarks, dot-grid backgrounds and task durations worked out from start and due dates, and Premium gets an editable Gantt chart that counts working days, tasks with assignees and task export to calendars or Excel. Maps can be mind maps, timelines, tables, matrices, org charts or fishbones, a Pitch mode turns them into slides that export to PowerPoint, and maps import from MindManager, FreeMind, MindNode, EdrawMind, OPML, Markdown and Word. Free allows 10 online maps, a 5-slide Pitch, 50 AI credits at sign-up and watermarked exports; Pro is 10 US dollars a month or 59 a year with 50 online maps and full exports; Premium is 15 a month or 99 a year with unlimited online maps, real-time collaboration, Gantt editing and 500 AI credits a month; one subscription covers up to five computers and five mobile devices. AI features need sign-in and credits and send your content to outside AI providers, which the 2024 terms name as OpenAI. Windows, macOS, Linux, web, iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, Android and HarmonyOS. Closed source, from Supermind Pte. Ltd. in Singapore

The latest release of changedetection.io, Leigh Morresi's self-hosted web app that watches pages, PDFs and JSON APIs for changes, restocks and price moves and alerts you through more than 80 notification services, out on 5 November as 0.70.1 with 0.70.2 later the same day, alongside a yearly update post on r/selfhosted. The release adds an MCP server, off until you enable it, with 27 tools covering watches, snapshots, change history and price history, per-area read or read-write permissions and OAuth sign-in so Claude and ChatGPT in the browser can connect, plus a setup widget that builds notification addresses from a few fields instead of hand-written Apprise URLs, plugin hooks for custom fetchers and recheck schedules, and restock prices you can pick by hand when automatic detection fails, shown in the visitor's locale. Over the past year the app also gained a refreshed interface that follows the system's dark mode, an installable web app, more translations and a run of security fixes, and since February it blocks local network addresses by default unless you allow them. Checks run through plain HTTP or a real Chrome via Playwright, which the visual selector needs, as do browser steps that log in, click and fill forms, with XPath, CSS, JSONPath, jq and regex filters, price thresholds, conditions and optional plain-English rules and summaries from an AI model you choose, Ollama included. Runs with Docker on x86 and ARM, Raspberry Pi included, or from pip on Python 3.11 or later; by default the self-hosted app sends the project a daily version check with an install ID and watch count, which one setting turns off. Apache-2.0 and free to self-host; the hosted version, run by Web Technologies s.r.o., is 8.99 US dollars a month for up to 5,000 watched pages, and the README carries referral links to the Bright Data and Oxylabs proxy services. 35.7k stars as of 9 November 2026

A self-hosted audiobook server and player from KodeStar, the linuxserver.io member behind the Heimdall dashboard and fanart.tv, whose version 2.6.0 came out on 7 November. The server is a Go binary or Docker image, also packaged by linuxserver.io and for Unraid, that reads your M4B, MP3, FLAC and other files without ever writing to them, keeps everyone's progress, bookmarks and notes, and is built to sit on the internet, with no default passwords, invites by QR code, rate-limited logins and shares that give each person only the authors, series or books you choose. The player runs in the browser and as free apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, with CarPlay and Android Auto, downloads for offline listening, a seek bar that works within the chapter for 30-hour books, sleep timers, a listening journal that exports to Markdown or CSV and yearly stats that stay on your server. Book details come from AudioSilo's open metadata database, over 282,000 works and 297,000 recordings with a CC0 core, plus listener-written characters and recaps under CC BY-SA, hidden until you reach that point in the book; the server can look books up one at a time, keep a daily local copy or turn it off. Version 2.6.0 adds a shelf and calendar feed of upcoming books in the series you own, listening that syncs after offline sessions and asks which device's place to keep, read-along that highlights the matching EPUB sentence by sentence, and, through the optional Bridge companion, signing in to Audible to back up books you bought there into your library as M4B files with chapters and to sync listening places both ways; an Apple Watch app is on the way. There is no account with the project, no ads and no telemetry. AGPL-3.0 for the server, player and Bridge, free with no paid tier, funded by GitHub Sponsors, which unlocks nothing