News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should be automated?

I'm researching pain points around manual workflows that haven't been automated yet.

Specifically looking for tasks where: - You do the same thing 5+ times a week - You've looked for a tool but nothing good exists - You'd pay $10-20/month if something just worked

What's yours? Curious to hear both technical and non-technical answers.

( 34 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by austin-cheney on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:48AM (#48045866)
I have nothing that fits that criteria exactly. I still write tests for test automation manually and that should be automated but new tests are only needed as features are created or retired, which is irregular and infrequent.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by SyntaxErrorist on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:07AM (#48045992)
Tried a few workflow tools but most either break often or need more setup than the task itself. Would easily pay for something that just quietly handled all of that in the background.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by lishunsheng on Thursday May 07, 2026 @05:27AM (#48047289)
"Curious what kind of workflows you're talking about – are these dev-related tasks or more general business processes?"
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by SyntaxErrorist on Thursday May 07, 2026 @11:31AM (#48050640)
Mostly a mix of both. Some are dev related workflows while others are more operational like content pipelines, research tasks and internal automation stuff.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by RanHal on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:01PM (#48051824)
For dev workflows, Augment works smoothly for me, and I've heard the same about Claude Code and Codex. What specifically breaks?

The recently announced Cosmos Agent OS is built to handle everything explicitly in the background, but it's more for enterprise than for individuals

Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by pants2 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @03:25AM (#48046467)
Folding my laundry
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by aimiraclemag on Thursday May 07, 2026 @05:48AM (#48047410)
Ahahaha, good point! Some automation on that field would be precious.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by codegeek on Thursday May 07, 2026 @09:45AM (#48049380)
Some companies are building Robots for this already. for example https://figure.ai
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by _aavaa_ on Thursday May 07, 2026 @11:10AM (#48050384)
Except that robot probably costs more than the prevent value of all clothes I’ll ever buy.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by codegeek on Thursday May 07, 2026 @12:36PM (#48051471)
I hear you. I also don't buy clothes unless really really needed. But I am hoping that if I do buy a Robot like that, it will do other things as well and not just folding laundry :)
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by skyberrys on Monday May 11, 2026 @12:35AM (#48091087)
I found this job ad for them, as a data collector. Does that mean they will pay me to fold my laundry, while they finish up their robot system?
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by bjourne on Saturday May 09, 2026 @05:19PM (#48078364)
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by skyberrys on Monday May 11, 2026 @12:38AM (#48091102)
It's touching to hear Anthony Bourdain reminiscing about laundry. The point about a laundry maid giving me back time better spent engineering is a practical dilemma.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by itsyounish on Thursday May 07, 2026 @06:32AM (#48047733)
I'd say if you could automate product sheet details with detailed image recognition would be really interesting
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by fieldsate on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:35AM (#48048142)
preparing for a trip , travel, lots of moving pices like itenary , packing , tickets , IDs , cabs .no sync .huge mess
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by jp42 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @12:03PM (#48051046)
I believe this will get solved once agent protocol is adopted widespread.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by late_night_fix on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:42AM (#48048190)
I still manually synthesize information from multiple sources(docs,blog posts and treads).LLM help with sumaries but merge into a reliable decision step is very human-heavy.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by judahmeek on Thursday May 07, 2026 @09:37AM (#48049284)
Do you think that can actually be automated? Seems like a judgement-heavy process to me.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by yen223 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @08:37AM (#48048638)
Drawing vector graphics.

Image generators can make reasonable-looking raster images. LLMs are good at coding. But drawing SVGs sits at the worst of both worlds.

Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by RanHal on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:00PM (#48051806)
Drawing SVGs via LLMs is mid, but how about converting raster images to SVGs? That sounds like something that shouldn't be too hard
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by yen223 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:13PM (#48056322)
I thought they'd be good at vectorising raster image, but no.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by jordiburgos on Thursday May 07, 2026 @10:59AM (#48050244)
Furniture design.

Give the measures of a bookself and get the pieces and materials needed.

Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by AiReadyApi on Thursday May 07, 2026 @12:13PM (#48051189)
Do the dishwasher and throw the rubbish out
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by rho_soul_kg_m3 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @12:47PM (#48051630)
Knowledge retrieval. Something where I could ask a question, say in natural language, and I would get an answer. Of course the responses have to make sense and not be made up.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by RanHal on Thursday May 07, 2026 @12:58PM (#48051779)
I opened my Obsidian directory with Augment Code, and it indexed it in seconds. Now all my written knowledge is retrievable. You could probably get the same effect with any other RAG-based indexed agent
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by LogicCraft678 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:20PM (#48052068)
I still manually organize my gallery, especially screenshots and downloads
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by swissdom on Friday May 08, 2026 @09:07AM (#48062541)
on the smartphone or pc? If i may ask :)
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by brudgers on Thursday May 07, 2026 @01:56PM (#48052554)
You'd pay $10-20/month if something just worked

If you are selling to ‘enterprise’ that business model might work well as a per-seat price.

At retail, into small bespoke niches a business built on $20 problems is unlikely to be sustainable because it is not enough money to reliably reach small markets and it is not enough money to sustain high quality service to a small number of customers…sure 1000 customers would be $20,000/month, but you have to get there first and stay there second.

Getting there is probably more money and calendar pages than you think and staying is going to gobble up more of the $20,000/month than you want through churn and employees.

My advice: find some thing you want to work on or find actual customers who will pay you handsomely to solve their important problems. Good luck.

Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by sovenyr on Thursday May 07, 2026 @04:19PM (#48054353)
choosing and playing boardgames - hope it never changed
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by khaledh on Thursday May 07, 2026 @05:34PM (#48055409)
Reviewing AI generated slop.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by kamphey on Thursday May 07, 2026 @08:37PM (#48056979)
Formatting Google Sheets. I work all day every day in google sheets. I make video tutorials, and templates, and tools. Sometimes I work with clients/for clients. Sometimes I just make something on my own. Been thinking more and more about coding up a formatting engine in apps script. As that's what I've done many times before. But really would perhaps a SaaS or a Chrome add-on (not a sheets Add-on) be able to handle this better? But I don't really know how it would handle looking at a sheet and knowing what to format it like. Or would some kind of template actions be able to account for data out of place. This is where I fall apart in my thinking and wonder if someone else could really take a crack at a good UI for this. Instead of me who I am too in the weeds.
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by takko_the_boss on Thursday May 07, 2026 @10:31PM (#48057788)
Going to the bathroom.

Like, I gotta get up, walk a few steps, sit down, read Facebook, and then i gotta clean my own rear end. Why aren't we in Wall-E world yet?

I want to just wake up, eat, sleep, repeat without ever having to move out of my floating platform apparatus. Instead of deciding what to eat, goop is dispensed to you from the comfort of my own floating chair/bed thing. Pottying should be the same. A large blocker in this lifestyle is the necessity to get up and do the business yourself. I want a platform that directly handles bodily waste material without you ever having to get up.

Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by MSKJ on Monday May 11, 2026 @04:48PM (#48100456)
I like taking a break personally; but a foot massager at the loo, I'd pay for that
Re:Ask HN: What do you still do manually in 2026 that should... by chistev on Saturday May 09, 2026 @07:06AM (#48073935)
Upwork removed their RSS feed. I'd like a tool that sends me an email when a certain job matching certain job/client filter criteria is made, rather than me checking the recent jobs.

The tools that I could find didn't have email support and weren't good enough in some ways I don't remember.

The inbuilt Upwork alert system sucks.