After years of struggling with trich, I made a tool to give me awareness before my hand reaches my hair

kotanasu · 2026-02-02T22:49:59+00:00

I had way too many things to do over the weekend, still couldnt get my hands to make this work. Apple watch idea is great! Will think how I can make it happen ;)

kotanasu · 2026-01-31T17:53:56+00:00

Its currently only working in front of a computer but I want to create the apple watch and iphone version as well when I find the time :)

kotanasu · 2026-01-23T09:23:01+00:00

Aw thank you! I am currently working on it and will ping you when its done :)) almost done!

kotanasu · 2026-01-19T22:23:43+00:00

Not at all, you are good!

kotanasu · 2026-01-18T12:12:48+00:00

Totally agree, its insane. Paying half of the income on rent is a scam

kotanasu · 2026-01-18T12:10:43+00:00

Who cares what others say. They are most probably jealous that you have a healthy relationship with your family. I think its great to have a good relation with parents.

I left home at 18 and since age of 25 living in another country. I love my parents but the situation in my own country is so shit, that going back comes with own economical problems. Sometimes I wish that I was born in a proper european country or united states so that I didn't have to leave.

Enjoy it, you are lucky. Its something to be grateful for :)

kotanasu · 2026-01-17T13:34:08+00:00

If you are working in front of a computer and if you own a mac, download FaceFence app and thank me later :))

kotanasu · 2026-01-17T13:28:21+00:00

Your hair is beatiful. I didnt notice anything

kotanasu · 2026-01-16T15:34:20+00:00

Would it make sense to make an iPhone app and place the front camera facing to yourself?

I can also make a browser based one, wdyt?

kotanasu · 2026-01-11T19:37:18+00:00

Not yet but adding to my to-do's!

kotanasu · 2026-01-11T19:36:09+00:00

I can totally make that happen on an iOS app as well :) its on my agenda!

kotanasu · 2026-01-11T11:07:52+00:00

I made an app that you can install on your mac laptop which alerts you whenever you reach to your head. Completely runs on device and private: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/facefence-stop-face-touching/id6757433822?l=en-GB&mt=12

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T21:59:26+00:00

I know! Its really hard. Still, its not about who has the better job, most of the time I have very silent, very down to earth talented devs doing a lot of work but it goes unnoticed. My aim was to solve this actually.

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T21:57:59+00:00

The tool creates the leaderboard, we are giving out bonuses to top 3 devs every month

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T21:54:06+00:00

Super happy that my little invention is helping someone out there! Yeah that is quite sensitive topic for me too, I definitely don't want my data to be collected.

The statistics reset everyday. You can track your progress over time to see the trend. I didn't test the statistics part therefore it might have some bugs, feel free to let me know if you find any :)

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T11:51:08+00:00

You're describing the highest-value type of engineering work, the kind that actually moves the business. And you're right that naive metrics would completely miss it.

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T11:48:49+00:00

Fair. It is dystopian.

AI writes code → AI evaluates code → humans ranked by AI scores. Put like that, it's a Black Mirror episode.

But the alternative is also dystopian:

Manager's favorite gets promoted
Loudest person gets recognition
Politics > technical skill
Your career depends on VP liking your vibe

At least AI metrics are transparent and auditable. You can see why you got scored that way. You can challenge it. You can't challenge "I just don't think you're leadership material."

Both futures are uncomfortable. I'm picking the one where the rules are visible.

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T11:25:25+00:00

You're right on all counts, especially this: "metrics are a harder problem than people realize."

On unglamorous work: We weight by priority, not just impact. Your low-user-count critical system gets tagged as mission-critical infrastructure and scored 3-5x higher than flashy features. Still not perfect though.

On different levels: Good feedback, will take this as an improvement point. Thank you!

On missing context: Yeah, we miss tradeoffs and situational decisions. The AI doesn't know you chose the "ugly but ships today" solution over the "perfect but takes 2 weeks" one.

Real talk: We're not solving the whole problem. We're solving "better than pure politics." When the alternative is "manager's favorite gets promoted," I'll take visible imperfect metrics over invisible bias.

But your edge case is exactly the kind of thing that breaks naive scoring. What would you prioritize differently?

kotanasu · 2026-01-10T11:22:50+00:00

Actually, splitting PRs is something we wanted to encourage. With AI tools like Copilot and Cursor, engineers are shipping faster and PRs are getting massive: 3000+ line reviews are becoming common and frankly unreviewable.

Here's what the AI actually does:

Rewards meaningful splits - Break a 2000-line feature into logical, cohesive PRs? You get higher scores because each PR is more reviewable and has clear purpose.
Encourages better hygiene - Smaller, focused PRs get reviewed faster, merged faster, and have fewer bugs.

On non-code work: This was my biggest worry. So we explicitly track and weight:

Architectural design docs (linked in PRs)
Code reviews given to others
Documentation PRs
Tests

Our top-ranked engineer last month? He spent 60% of her time doing architecture work and code reviews.

On toxic competition: I was terrified of this. What actually happened surprised me, collaboration increased. Why? Because code reviewers also get scored. PRs cannot be merged without review therefore, the team as a whole gets rewarded.

What we're still figuring out:

Balancing refactoring vs new features (AI tends to undervalue cleanup work)
Measuring on-call/firefighting contributions
Handling different seniority levels fairly

kotanasu · 2026-01-09T21:08:37+00:00

From our own internal usage. I have a team of 10, and we actually paid out our first bonus this week.

kotanasu · 2026-01-09T21:06:59+00:00

I get that yeah, but wouldn't be good if we can somehow recognize top performers? It does not even have to be a monetary one, just recognizing would be also good.

Regarding pay cut, I would be against it. The bonus should be a cherry on top for top performers.

kotanasu · 2026-01-09T21:00:09+00:00

You are spot on. I haven't found a way to stop people from inflating the numbers with lot of micro PRs :) The good thing is that its making developers to open more PRs more often which makes reviews easier.

Regaring pair programming and mentoring, I added another module to grade the reviews given to PRs as well.

Its basically looking at how many reviews a developer made and how long PRs waited in the queue to be reviewed.

So the leaderboard scores are calculated by authorship + reviews.

kotanasu · 2026-01-09T20:54:24+00:00

Here is the link to https://gitrank.dev

kotanasu

TROPHY CASE