How I turn Hacker News, GitHub and npm into product ideas every 3 hours

Picking what to build was my slowest step, so I built a pipeline for it. Here is how it works.

1. Collect

Every 3 hours a collector pulls from 23 sources. The builder sources are Hacker News, Lobsters, new GitHub repos, trending npm packages, Product Hunt, r/SideProject, r/microsaas, TLDR and Changelog. Wider signals come from Google Trends, Google News, Bluesky, Mastodon and a few others.

2. Filter

A trend only enters the feed when at least two builder sources mention it. One viral post is noise; the same thing showing up on HN and in new GitHub repos is a signal.

3. Turn signals into ideas, with your own agent

The Mac app sends the feed and the pages behind each trend to the coding agent you already use (Claude Code, Codex, opencode, Gemini CLI and others). The agent runs read-only, in an empty temp folder, so it never touches your files. It writes ranked ideas, each with who would pay, a price, a 7-day plan and source links.

4. Check in code, not with AI

Pulsar checks the shape of the answer in code (every idea needs a plan and links) and retries once if it is off. No AI grades the AI.

Try it

Pulsar is a Mac app, $9 one-time, one free preview per computer: https://getpulsar.web.app. It launched on Product Hunt today.

I'd like to hear how you decide what to build next.