Mathew Brown

I Built a Home for hackerapps

17 August 2026 • 2 min read
website personal-web open-source privacy building hackerapps rss
Table of Contents

C2K began as one small app I wanted for myself. Then I built Jargon. Now I am working on Bout.

Somewhere along the way, a collection of projects started to become something with an identity of its own. Store listings and GitHub repositories could tell people how to install the apps or inspect the source, but they could not explain what connected the work.

I built hackerapps.com to give the work that home.

A home, not another platform

The site gives each app a permanent page with its downloads, features, screenshots, privacy policy, and source links. It also gives me a place for product news and release notes that does not depend on a social network or an app store deciding how to frame the work.

That distinction matters to me. My personal site is where I write about what I am building, learning, and thinking. hackerapps is where the software itself lives. The two sites can link to each other without needing to become the same thing.

Like this site, I built hackerapps with Eleventy and plain text files. The result is static, small, and easy to understand, with no advertising, analytics, tracking, or client-side JavaScript. hackerapps has no social media accounts. The website, its RSS feed, GitHub, and email are enough.

Two kinds of software

hackerapps now has two lines of apps.

The first is free and open source. C2K is a Couch to 5K and 10K running trainer. Jargon is an offline reader for the Jargon File. Both work without accounts, ads, analytics, or network access. Their Android versions are on F-Droid and Google Play, and their native iOS versions are on the App Store.

The second is pay once. These apps will cost a fair price one time: no subscriptions, ads, dark patterns, or premium tier waiting to take features away later. The first is Bout, an interval timer for HIIT, Tabata, boxing rounds, EMOM, and custom work-and-rest patterns.

I wrote a short manifesto explaining why. Software does not need to become a rental agreement just because recurring revenue looks better on a spreadsheet.

The original meaning of hacker

The name is deliberate.

I mean “hacker” in the sense documented by the Jargon File: someone curious about systems, interested in how things work, and delighted by making something useful or clever. Not the movie-poster version of someone breaking into a computer.

That idea connects the apps more than their categories do. I build focused tools because I want them to exist. They respect the person using them, and they collect nothing they do not need—which is nothing at all.

hackerapps now has a place of its own on the web. You can browse the apps, read project news on the hackerapps blog, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The collection is still small. That is exactly what I want it to be.

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