StemDeck: AI-Powered Stem Separation, Running Locally for Free

Musicians often face a common problem: you get a full mix and want to isolate just the vocals or drums. Previously this meant dedicated separation software, often paid. StemDeck makes it simple — open-source, local-first, splitting tracks into vocals, drums, bass, piano, and guitar.

With 2500+ GitHub stars, Apache-2.0 license, and a modern JavaScript frontend, it covers the essentials for transcription, remixing, and practice. All processing happens locally, so your audio never leaves your machine.

Best for: music producers, musicians, DJs, and audio-tech enthusiasts.

Sesame: A Local Password Manager Where Your Data Never Leaves Your Device

The password manager space is crowded, but most solutions rely on cloud sync — you have to trust the service provider with your vault. Sesame takes the opposite approach: data stays entirely on your device, it's open-source, and supports importing passwords, 2FA codes, and recovery info.

Currently Windows-only, but it's a solid alternative for anyone uncomfortable handing passwords to Bitwarden or 1Password. The project just launched and already picked up 38 points on HN, showing real community interest.

Best for: privacy-focused Windows users who prefer local-only password storage.

ArchLex: Cloud Architecture Diagrams from Natural Language

Drawing AWS/GCP/Kubernetes architecture diagrams is a daily task for ops and architects. ArchLex's approach is straightforward: describe your architecture in plain language ("an ALB fronting two EC2s connected to an RDS"), and let Claude or Cursor generate a standardized diagram.

It's a small DSL that validates semantics, renders official-icon SVGs, and needs no API key. For anyone who writes architecture docs but doesn't want to drag icons around in Draw.io, this is a meaningful productivity boost.

Best for: cloud architects, DevOps engineers, and technical writers who need quick architecture visuals.

All three projects surfaced on Hacker News on 2026-08-29, open-source and free. Worth bookmarking.