The first week of 2026 is already delivering serious innovation. The weekly ‘I Made a Useful Thing’ thread is trending as the premier launchpad for indie developers and makers to debut their passion projects.
This week’s highlights are dominated by hyper-localized AI agents. Developers are moving away from general-purpose LLMs toward specialized bots that manage niche tasks—like a dedicated agent for automating Neo-Kafka document streams or a Raspberry Pi integration for smart energy monitoring. Hardware hacking is also making a comeback, with several users sharing open-source firmware fixes for legacy smart home devices.
What makes this thread invaluable isn’t just the tools themselves, but the transparent breakdown of development stacks. Expect to see a surge in ‘build-in-public’ case studies analyzing how these projects handle latency and user scaling in the new year. It is a must-read for spotting emerging UX trends before they hit the mainstream.
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