MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: We wrapped US healthcare API in MCP and it became surprisingly usable
by endurant_dev | 2026-02-23 21:29:34+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m building HealthPorta — an API layer for the US healthcare data (providers, plans, coverage, costs). Like most healthtech APIs, it started small… and then it didn’t. The surface area grew fast, integrations took longer than they should, and every new partner ended up needing a mini “tour guide” to use it correctly.

So, since the last post here, something changed. We’ve built an MCP server as a boring integration helper to provide a smaller, friendlier interface for engineers of our "two clients" who didn’t want to learn the entire API on day one and just wanted to ask Codex or Claude to "integrate".

Then something unexpected happened.

Once it was hooked into MCP clients, it stopped feeling like "API integration tooling" and started feeling like something you can talk to:

- Find a pcp doctor near me
- Does this plan cover this medication?
- What’s the cost signal for this procedure/provider?
- Any quality or cost indicators for this provider?

Under the hood, it’s still structured tool calls — but the interaction flips from reading the docs & mapping endpoints to "ask a question + inspect the returned structure."
Frankly speaking, it was a good stress test for the API layer, as, by common consensus, the MCP tested the APIs quite well, from the structure of calls to usage limits also.

What it can help with (today):

- provider lookup (specialty/location)
- plan & issuer lookup
- medication details, including restrictions, etc.
- coverage/formulary-style checks (where available)
- cost-related signals + basic comparisons (doctors, plans)
- provider metadata + quality-related signals (where available)

What we’re working on now:
We’re going deeper on transparency data from insurers and hospitals to improve cost/coverage accuracy and make outputs more explainable (and less "trust me, bro").

There’s a free per-user cap, so you can test it without paying or adding a card. Use it from your favorite MCP-capable console or IDE (anything that supports MCP and auth).

I’d love feedback on it.

Happy to answer questions / share implementation details.
by steviedotboston | 2026-02-23 21:29:47+00:00
my point is people are freaking out about Flock but everyone has a tracking device in their pocket at all times, and people absolutely love Ring doorbell cameras (ok maybe not you, I get it).

It seems incongruous to me that people are willing to recognize the benefits that these tools provide law enforcement at solving crimes but when it comes to Flock cameras somehow things are totally different. They're just cameras with really good software, and law enforcement likes them because it makes their jobs easier.
by credit_guy | 2026-02-23 21:30:25+00:00
I don't think this counts as distillation. Distillation is when you use a teacher model to train a student model, but crucially, you have access to the entire probability distribution of the generated tokens, not just to the tokens themselves. That probability distribution increases tremendously the strength of the signal, so the training converges much faster. Claude does not provide these probabilities. So, Claude was used for synthetic training data generation, but not really for distillation.
by toomuchtodo | 2026-02-23 21:30:40+00:00
You're free to your opinion. Property is just property, it is nothing special. Rule of law is highly dynamic and a shared delusion. Damaging or destruction of property is not violence, it is a property crime at best. In the scope of Flock, it is well documented as having been misused, illegally in many cases, by law enforcement and those with access to its systems [1] [2] [3].

> there are alternatives

This does not consistently appear to be the case in the US unfortunately.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-investigations-ex...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=flock+misuse
by 2001zhaozhao | 2026-02-23 21:31:20+00:00
With OAI and Gemini already having anti-distillation measures for quite a while now, I thought Anthropic was purposefully letting Chinese labs distill in hopes that it would improve their safety and alignment by default (at least closer to Claude's level).

Apparently not. (Or not anymore.)

It's not like they can actually prevent distillation anyways even by hiding the thinking output, since you can just turn extended thinking off and all current Claude models will switch to thinking in the open (non-reasoning output) instead whenever it encounters a hard agentic task. So all it takes for distillation to continue to happen is for some real users to sell a competing AI lab their real usage trajectory data which is entirely undetectable by definition, and many people would probably be glad to do it.
by bluebarbet | 2026-02-23 21:31:28+00:00
Seconded. Democracy is the only transcendental political system: you can have any ideology you want (so be careful or you'll be voting only once). To survive, it depends on civic spirit - i.e. participation. Democracy always collapses into authoritarianism eventually. Then (if you want it bad enough), you have to claw it back, slowly and painfully. All just as Plato foresaw.

It really bothers me that so few people in the modern West understand just how lucky they are. If you didn't have the control you already have over your government, you'd be fighting for it.
by dylan604 | 2026-02-23 21:31:43+00:00
I'm in Dallas as well, and I hear gun shots daily. New Years/4th July absolutely sound like a war zone. I found a slug next to my trash can after a 4th celebration a couple of years ago. Not a shell, the actual slug. I keep it on my desk as a reminder. My fur babies are not allowed outside on those nights.
by adrian_b | 2026-02-23 21:31:54+00:00
Inside the European Union, traveling to other places to buy things from there would only seldom be profitable, when considering the travel expenses.

On the other hand, I frequently buy things from online shops located in many of the EU countries, because very often for various kinds of things that I want to buy I find the best deals in different countries. There are no extra expenses but shipping, so it is frequent to order things from far away, because at a local shop near me they would be more expensive than buying from another country, even with the added shipping.
Show HN: Nova – A Web Framework for Erlang, Elixir, and LFE on the Beam
by taure | 2026-02-23 21:32:00+00:00
Nova is an OTP-native web framework that works with Erlang, Elixir, and LFE. Since all three compile to the same BEAM bytecode, you can mix languages freely within one app.

Controllers are plain functions that take a request map and return tuples:

Erlang:

create(#{json := Params}) ->
CS = kura_changeset:cast(pet, #{}, Params, [name, species]),
CS1 = kura_changeset:validate_required(CS, [name, species]),
case my_repo:insert(CS1) of
{ok, Pet} -> {status, 201, #{}, #{data => Pet}};
{error, Changeset} -> {status, 422, #{}, #{errors => Changeset}}
end.

Elixir:

def create(%{json: params}) do
cs = :kura_changeset.cast(:pet, %{}, params, [:name, :species])
cs = :kura_changeset.validate_required(cs, [:name, :species])
case MyRepo.insert(cs) do
{:ok, pet} -> {:status, 201, %{}, %{data: pet}}
{:error, changeset} -> {:status, 422, %{}, %{errors: changeset}}
end
end

Getting started with Elixir (Mix):

mix archive.install hex nova_new
mix nova.new my_app
iex -S mix

Getting started with Erlang (Rebar3):

rebar3 new nova my_app
cd my_app
rebar3 nova serve

The ecosystem includes Kura (an Ecto-inspired database layer with schemas, changesets, and migrations), WebSocket support, distributed pub/sub via OTP's pg module, OpenTelemetry
integration, code generators, and OpenAPI spec generation.

We recently published The Nova Book (https://novaframework.github.io/nova-book), a step-by-step guide to building a full app from scratch. There's also a pet_store example
(https://github.com/Taure/pet_store) showing a complete REST API with Nova + Kura.

On Hex: https://hex.pm/packages/nova (v0.13.7, Apache 2.0)
by JasonADrury | 2026-02-23 21:32:27+00:00
> But it doesn't address first mile to hub. Can a bumfuck workshop in a hamlet deliver in Greece deliver to warehouse in Poland across multiple jurisdictions for peanuts?

Yes, unless they're doing so at a ludicrously small scale. Sending a 20t lorry load from Thessaloniki to Warsaw will cost less than 6000 euros. I suspect it can be done for around 2400, but I don't know the route very well.

>My understanding is EU first mile is fragmented/slow if you rely on national post and expensive if you rely on private couriers.

Yes, it sucks at ultra-small scale. But that's really what that is. The private couriers have super attractive volume pricing, even 80% off public (consumer facing) rates isn't unusual.
by runarberg | 2026-02-23 21:32:36+00:00
Kids also tend to disobey, and whine about it. Sure you can say parents should be strict and thorough, but you can’t expect 100% of parents (who are often tired from a hard day at work) to be 100% diligent 100% of the time.

And the reason we have these ads is that corporations are hoping that the kids will indeed disobey, and whine constantly at their parents, until they have their way (as directed to by the targeted ad). There was a good reason why targeting kids in ads used to be illegal in Europe.
by dec0dedab0de | 2026-02-23 21:32:49+00:00
A long time ago I was in a band, and we opened for a band from Australia that came without any gear and bought it all here. They said it was so much cheaper to buy here that they loved touring in the US just for that reason. They were using vintage collector type stuff that was just harder to find there, but they told me it was the same for new stuff too.
by mpweiher | 2026-02-23 21:33:25+00:00
And Objective-C is C. A strict superset, in fact.

If

[aView display];

really, really, really isn't to your liking, you can write

objc_msgSend( aView, @selector(display));

or even:

objc_msgSend( aView, sel_registerName("display"));

That's pretty much all there is to it. But I have to admit I like the syntax better:

[aView display];
Show HN: KitchenAsty – Open-source, self-hosted restaurant management system
by sharang33 | 2026-02-23 21:33:38+00:00
I built KitchenAsty, a self-hosted restaurant ordering, reservation, and management platform. It's MIT-licensed and built as a TypeScript monorepo.

It covers what most small restaurants need: online ordering (delivery + pickup), menu management, table reservations, a kitchen display, coupon system, customer reviews, staff management, and a dashboard with analytics. Payments are handled through Stripe (with cash-on-delivery as a fallback).

Tech stack: Node.js/Express API, React frontends (admin + customer storefront), PostgreSQL/Prisma, Socket.IO for real-time updates, and a React Native mobile app. There's also a full documentation site.

Some numbers: 27k lines of TypeScript, 30 database models, 118 API endpoints, 330+ tests (unit, integration, and E2E with Playwright).

I built this because the existing open-source options in this space are mostly PHP/Laravel projects from the WordPress era. I wanted something modern, well-tested, and easy to self-host with Docker.

- GitHub: https://github.com/mighty840/kitchenasty
- Docs & Website: https://kitchenasty.com
- API docs: Swagger UI at /api/docs when running locally

Happy to answer questions about the architecture, self-hosting setup, or what it took to build.
by lo_zamoyski | 2026-02-23 21:33:51+00:00
> There are five million Irish in Ireland and something like 75 million “Irish” in the US.

Reminds me of this sketch. [0]

> And Chicago has more Polish that Warsaw, but that’s actual expats and their kids.

This is one of those persistent myths. While Chicago has many Poles and people of Polish ancestry living there, it has never exceeded the population of Warsaw. And New York has more Poles than Chicago.

[0] https://youtu.be/xzlMME_sekI
by endurant_dev | 2026-02-23 21:33:52+00:00
Small example - request to find providers for a knee mri sca(in common English) in Chicago hacing BCBS HMO plan, and the tool's response (it converted text into plan codes, zips, search in area, procedure search, and even read some plan benefits details to give a recommendation):

```
...updated the ranking for knee MRI providers (CPT 73721) relative to ZIP 60654, including their cost levels, average submitted charges, quality scores, and in-network status for both BCBS IL PPO
and HMO plans.

Ranked MRI Providers (Sorted by Quality Score)

┌──────────────────────────┬──────────┬─────────┬────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬────────────────┬────────────────┐
│ Provider Name │ Distance │ Quality │ Claims │ Cost Level │ Avg. Charge │ BCBS HMO │ BCBS PPO │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────┼─────────┼────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ David Sandman, M.D. │ 0.8 mi │ 81.5 │ 247 │ $$$$ │ $437 │ In-Network │ In-Network │
│ Martin Lazarus, M.D. │ 12.3 mi │ 81.2 │ 365 │ $$$$ │ $223 │ In-Network │ In-Network │
│ Lekshmi Nair, M.D. │ 22.8 mi │ 80.5 │ 123 │ $$$$$ │ $1,567 │ In-Network │ In-Network │
│ Tommy Tran, M.D. │ 26.1 mi │ 80.2 │ 866 │ $$$$$ │ $523 │ Out-of-Network │ Out-of-Network │
│ Kyle Kallenbach, M.D. │ 22.8 mi │ 80.2 │ 193 │ $$$$$ │ $1,588 │ Pending │ In-Network │
│ Joseph Judge, M.D. │ 27.4 mi │ 80.1 │ 288 │ $$$$$ │ $1,076 │ In-Network │ In-Network │
│ Shilpa Puppala, M.D. │ 3.4 mi │ 80.0 │ 113 │ $$$$$ │ $1,537 │ Pending │ Pending │
│ Alex Krasny, M.D. │ 12.3 mi │ 75.3 │ 734 │ $$$$$ │ $403 │ In-Network │ Out-of-Network │
│ Sanjay Rao, M.D. │ 0.8 mi │ 69.9 │ High │ $$$$$ │ $2,119 │ In-Network │ In-Network │
│ Matthew Eisenstein, M.D. │ 24.5 mi │ 67.5 │ 393 │ $$$$ │ $334 │ Out-of-Network │ In-Network │
└──────────────────────────┴──────────┴─────────┴────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────┘

Key Takeaways:
* Best Overall (HMO & PPO): David Sandman, M.D. remains the top recommendation. He is less than 1 mile from 60654, is fully in-network for both your HMO and PPO networks, and has the highest quality
score (81.5) with a moderate charge.
* Most Economical In-Network: Martin Lazarus, M.D. in Evanston has the lowest average charge ($223) for those willing to travel 12 miles.
* Charge Disclaimer: The "Avg. Charge" represents the provider's average submitted charge (the "rack rate"). If you are In-Network, your actual out-of-pocket cost will be the much lower BCBS
Negotiated Rate (plus your deductible/coinsurance).

HMO Reminder: If you are using a BCBS IL HMO plan, you must obtain a referral from your Primary Care Physician (PCP) specifically for the imaging center where these doctors practice.

```
by aenis | 2026-02-23 21:34:03+00:00
America is an authoritarian country for decades now.

It first dawned on me when i visited NYC some 30 years ago. I stepped over some arbitrary yellow line I wasn't supposed to - the uniformed cop that noticed that went from 0 to 100 in 0.1 second and behaved as if I just pulled a gun. Zero time to reflect and assume I might have made a legitimate mistake. Since then I've visited U.S. >150 times, and in my experience it was always thus in the U.S. - the law enforcement is on hair trigger and the populace has seemingly grown used to it and considers this behaviour normal. Geez.

(Go live in any northern european country for comparison. Any interaction with law enforcement is almost certainly going to be pleasant, cordial, and uniformed police typically does not rely on threats of violance for authority).
by kstrauser | 2026-02-23 21:34:09+00:00
Yes, I can see how they would be helpful in solving crimes down to minor property damage.

I do not want to live in a society where police are watching everything I do in the name of solving minor property damage. "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is bullshit. I don't do anything illegal in my bathroom, but I do not wish to have a camera in there, even if it could solve a hypothetical crime.
by 0xWTF | 2026-02-23 21:34:53+00:00
> The OP didn't really frame how this question came up.

Hey, OP here. Valid. It's a pre-seed, pre-revenue start-up going through the motions to get the company on the right footing ahead of seeking funding. We have a company Workspace domain, but one of our advisors is a grizzled old CFO and did not enjoy seeing one his formulas borked by a difference in how Excel and Sheets handles xlookup().
Show HN: CodeRocket Deploy – AI generates GitHub Actions workflows in 60 seconds
by mlgraham | 2026-02-23 21:35:08+00:00
Hey HN,

I built CodeRocket Deploy because I was tired of the CI/CD setup ritual every developer knows: search for a workflow template, copy YAML, tweak it, watch it fail, debug, repeat.

What it does:
- Install as a GitHub App
- Analyzes your repo (package.json, requirements.txt, config files, etc.)
- Detects language, framework, and deploy target automatically
- Uses Claude to generate a workflow optimized for your specific stack
- Creates a PR so you can review before merging

Technical details:
- Deep static analysis using GitHub's Contents API
- 20+ framework detectors (Next.js, Django, FastAPI, Rails, Spring Boot, etc.)
- Few-shot prompting with production-ready workflow examples
- Fallback templates for edge cases
- YAML validation with security scanning (no hardcoded secrets)

Stack: Django + DRF backend, React + TypeScript frontend, PostgreSQL, Redis for Celery tasks.

Free tier: 100 generations/month, 3 repos. No credit card.

GitHub Marketplace: https://github.com/marketplace/coderocket-deploy

Would love feedback, especially:
- What frameworks are we missing?
- What would make this useful for your workflow?
- Any concerns about AI-generated CI/CD configs?

Happy to answer questions about the technical implementation.
Show HN: Peekl – A modern alternative to Ansible and Puppet
by redat00 | 2026-02-23 21:35:27+00:00
Hi everyone!

For the last few months I've been working on "Peekl" a configuration management solution.

The idea was to get the good part of what I liked with Ansible (the ease of use, the fact that you can get started quickly) with what I loved with Puppet (mainly the pull based model with the agent).

The project is now in a state where I believe I can share it with the world. Of course there is still a long way to go for it to be on-par in term of features to Puppet or Ansible, but I think that currently it's a good starting point.
by unethical_ban | 2026-02-23 21:35:32+00:00
The US is a semi-democracy, notably due to its hyper-polarized two party system that completely forbids (in the 2020s) any crossing of party lines for compromise.

The single biggest improvement to American society would be to implement multi-member districts for legislature, OR to implement STAR voting - any kind of system that promotes the existence of more parties, more political candidates, to break the two party cycle.

Far too many people fail to vote or research candidates due to how shitty our democracy is. Far too few candidates exist as a blend of values, and we are stuck with "every liberal policy" vs. "every conservative policy".

---

To that end, it seems the cities that are banning Flock for proper privacy reasons are all in liberal states and cities. Conservative/moderate areas seem a lot less engaged on the topic. "That's just how it goes, of course government is going to tread on us, what can be done about it".
by thinkingemote | 2026-02-23 21:36:24+00:00
I remember reading about some desert monks who do that and that they had a set routine for every day including a large amount of manual physical work and cooking and cleaning. They were not just isolated in a cave doing nothing but living and working and praying. I seem to recall they were also advised to ignore any visions they had (even if they were good) which seems counter intuitive if one is thinking about stories about spirit quests. But I guess it's very wise.

I imagine the translation to lighthouses would be to ensure that your time there is spent in a good routine of keeping yourself active and to have some training on how to maintain psychological health. Over wintering Antarctic research scientists and astronauts probably also have rigorous routines although they would be in a small community which can regulate mental health.

I'm also reminded of the requirements of people being asked to move to small communities on isolated harsh islands. One would imagine that they would be attractive to people who do well alone, introverts, who work alone and are happy quietly, but they actually want and favour people who like others, need to work with others, who work well in a community and are socially outgoing.
by synthesis5x | 2026-02-23 21:36:26+00:00
Meta has a problem in its clusters in Boca Raton, Miami; this is affecting the MNA content delivery network and direct content consumption. This has a regional impact in Latin America, since so far most non-cacheable content is consumed from the clusters in Florida.

The impact is traceable via ICMP, but also reproducible via TCP and difficult to measure via UDP. This is why monitoring tools are misleading: there is no “slowness” resulting from interface saturation; instead, there is data corruption where packets are discarded at the interface level. Therefore, if network performance is measured using those same data points, it won’t work and you won’t see any alerts.

The issue can also be replicated from the looking glass. In fact, I will attach images below, although you can also see them on the website attached to the post, as well as a more specific report

There is packet loss and probably flapping on a BGP instance, OSPF, or some IGP within Meta’s network. I believe it is between 129.134.101.34, 129.134.104.84, and 129.134.101.51. It is possible that it’s a faulty interface in a bundle or some hardware issue that a “show interface status” doesn’t reveal, which is why I’ve failed to report this problem through your NOC.

How can Meta replicate the failure?

1: Look for random MNA cluster IPs from your clients. 2: Ping from 157.240.14.15 with a payload larger than 500 bytes (a packet is more likely to get corrupted on a faulty interface if the payload increases). 3: Ping many servers from point 1.

You will see that once you find the affected upstream or downstream route combination, you will have 10-60% packet loss to the destination host.

How to fix it? Isolate the port or discard faulty hardware.

Why didn’t we see it before?

Simply put, your monitoring tools and troubleshooting protocols don’t work for these problems. The protocol is to attach a HAR file that bases its performance on window scaling and TCP RTT; if both are good, even with data loss, there’s “no problem.” Especially because that HAR file is extracted using QUIC, and QUIC is particularly good at mitigating slowness caused by data loss (since packets are retransmitted without the TCP penalty). You know what uses TCP? WhatsApp Statuses, and those are slow.

Can an MTR show where the problem is?

Generally not, this is because:

In any network route, there is a certain number of hops; for example, suppose there are 5 hops between host A and host B. To perform a traceroute, packets are sent with increasing TTL values (1, 2, 3, etc.). Each time a packet expires before reaching its destination, the transit hop reports a “TTL Time Exceeded” message, which is how the route is mapped. The problem is that these are basically point-to-point probes; it’s like pinging each hop individually. And when there’s a problem on an affected interface in an ECMP or bundle, those P2P connections won’t necessarily take the affected path. So they are unreliable; generally, you will see that the losses are produced by the final host even though the fault is in the middle. check metafixthis.com