DEV Community: TANMAY TIWARI 1.2

Hyper Island: Bringing an iOS-Inspired Dynamic Island to Windows

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:26:25 +0000

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle

What I Built

I built Hyper Island, an interactive, iOS-inspired Dynamic Island for Windows, written in C++ using the Windows APIs and designed to run as a Windhawk mod.

The idea is simple: instead of switching between different Windows panels and utilities, bring useful information and everyday controls together in one compact, animated island at the top of the screen.

Hyper Island features a Liquid Glass-inspired interface, smooth spring animations, translucent backgrounds, and swipeable pages that combine system controls with productivity tools.

Key Features

Interactive Liquid Glass UI: Translucent glass effects, customizable appearance, and spring-based animations.
Notification Center: Notification previews, history, dismissal, and clear-all controls.
Universal Media Controls: Media information, playback controls, album artwork, and a live audio waveform, with fallback support for apps that do not expose standard Windows media controls.
Per-App Volume Mixer: Adjust or mute individual applications.
Quick Settings: Volume, brightness where supported, battery information, and useful Windows actions.
Calendar, Tasks & Expenses: View calendar events from an Outlook-published ICS feed and organize tasks and expenses by date.
Quick Notes & File Shelf: Create notes, copy their contents, and temporarily pin file or folder references for quick access.
Focus Mode: Full-screen Pomodoro timer with configurable focus and break sessions.
Wellness Tracker: Track daily water intake, habits, and streaks.
Connectivity Alerts: Get Bluetooth device and battery notifications, along with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connection alerts.
Clipboard History: Quickly reuse recently copied text, stored in memory rather than written to disk.

The project currently has ten swipeable pages: Home, Alerts, Sound, Calendar, Plan, Notes, Shelf, Wellness, Focus, and Tools.

Who is it for?

Hyper Island is designed for Windows users who want a more interactive desktop experience, especially developers, students, productivity enthusiasts, and people who enjoy customizing their operating system.

As a side-hustle idea, it could eventually serve users who want a unified desktop companion without paying for multiple separate utilities. The current project is an open-source mod, not a paid product, and I have not established paying customers yet.

Demo

Project status: Windows desktop mod.

GitHub profile: https://github.com/TANMAY-Tiwaricyber

A short recording showing the island expanding, switching pages, controlling media, and displaying notifications would be the best way to demonstrate the project.

Code

Source code: Hyper Island on GitHub

The project is implemented in C++ and integrates with Windows functionality through native APIs and Windows Runtime components. It runs as a Windhawk mod in a dedicated process and draws its own overlay rather than modifying Windows Explorer.

The current source identifies the project as version 2.6.0 and declares an MIT license. It also describes the project as a modified derivative of an original MIT-licensed source, so the repository should preserve the required upstream copyright and license notices.

Before publishing, replace the profile link above with the direct repository URL and make sure the README, source attribution, and license are complete.

How I Built It

I built Hyper Island in C++ with Windows-native technologies, including Windows APIs, Direct2D, DirectWrite, Windows Composition, and Windows Runtime components.

The implementation brings together several systems:

Rendering and animation: A custom overlay with translucent backgrounds, Liquid Glass-inspired highlights, and spring-based transitions.
Windows integration: Media sessions, audio controls, notifications, battery status, network connectivity, and brightness controls where supported.
Productivity modules: Calendar parsing, task and expense tracking, notes, file references, focus sessions, and wellness tracking.
Configurable behavior: Settings for appearance, placement, monitor targeting, opacity, notifications, and other features.

For this submission, I am documenting the technologies verifiable in the project source. The source alone does not establish which open-source AI model, agent harness, or local inference framework was used. If I used an eligible AI tool during development, I will identify the actual model or framework and explain its contribution here rather than claim AI integration that the project does not demonstrate.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation matters because desktop customization benefits from experimentation, transparency, and community contributions.

Windows users have different workflows, hardware configurations, accessibility needs, and design preferences. An open-source project makes it possible for contributors to inspect the implementation, report bugs, suggest improvements, and build new capabilities around a shared foundation.

It also creates opportunities for community-driven extensions, such as developer-focused widgets, more notification rules, new visual themes, and integrations with other Windows utilities.

For a project like Hyper Island, open innovation can help turn a personal customization experiment into a useful tool shaped by real users. Contributors can also learn from the C++ implementation and help improve its maintainability, compatibility, and performance.

Open innovation is especially valuable when combined with transparent development practices: documenting limitations, crediting upstream work, and sharing reproducible demonstrations of new features.

Built by Tanmay Tiwari.

If you enjoy Windows customization, C++, and open-source desktop tools, check out Hyper Island and consider contributing ideas, testing the mod, or helping improve the experience.

Rise. Build. Contribute.

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Week 1

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:57:23 +0000

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass

What I Built

I built SyncPlay — an open-source, real-time music experience that lets a group of people listen to the same music together across multiple devices.

The idea started with a simple question:

What if our phones could become one synchronized music system instead of everyone sitting around looking at one screen?

With SyncPlay, one person creates a room and shares a QR code. Friends scan it, join the room, search for music, and add songs to a shared queue.

When playback starts, SyncPlay keeps the connected devices synchronized while allowing every person to control their own device volume independently.

Create Room
     ↓
Share QR
     ↓
Friends Join
     ↓
Search Music
     ↓
Shared Queue
     ↓
Synchronized Playback
     ↓
Put the phone down
     ↓
Enjoy the outdoors

It's designed for situations like:

🌳 Park hangouts
🧺 Picnics
🏕️ Camping
🌅 Sunset sessions
🏃 Running groups
🚴 Cycling
🎉 Outdoor gatherings

The goal of the Touch Grass challenge is to make the screen the shortest part of the experience.

That's exactly what SyncPlay tries to do.

Demo

The project is currently under development, so there is no deployed demo yet.

I'm building the MVP around the core experience:

Create and join rooms
QR-based room joining
Music search
Shared queue
Real-time synchronized playback
Individual device volume control
AI-powered outdoor music sessions

A live deployment will be added once the MVP is ready.

Code

GitHub Repository:

https://github.com/Tanmay-Tiwaricyber/SyncPlay

SyncPlay is being developed as an open-source project, including the real-time synchronization engine, room protocol, frontend, backend, and AI integration.

The goal is to make the project useful not only as a finished application, but also as something other developers can inspect, modify, and build upon.

How I Built It

SyncPlay is built with a lightweight web stack so that people can join from almost any device without installing a dedicated application.

Tech Stack

HTML — application structure
CSS — responsive interface
JavaScript — client-side interaction and playback
Node.js — backend runtime
Express.js — HTTP/API layer
WebSockets — real-time room communication
Web Audio / browser audio APIs — local playback and volume control
Render — planned deployment platform

The core architecture looks like this:

                    SYNCPLAY
                       │
              ┌────────┴────────┐
              │                 │
          Frontend           Node.js
       HTML/CSS/JS        Express + WebSocket
              │                 │
              │           ┌─────┴─────┐
              │           │           │
              │       Room Manager  Sync Engine
              │                       │
              └───────────┬───────────┘
                          │
                    Music Provider
                          │
              ┌───────────┼───────────┐
              ↓           ↓           ↓
           Phone A    Phone B      Laptop
           100%         60%          80%

Real-Time Synchronization

The server maintains the authoritative playback state.

Each room keeps information such as:

{
  "trackId": "track_123",
  "state": "playing",
  "position": 84.32,
  "serverTimestamp": 1791250000000
}

Clients use the server timing information to calculate their expected playback position.

If a device drifts away from the expected position, SyncPlay can correct the playback and bring it back into synchronization.

The important part is that volume remains local.

If five people are connected:

Person A → 100%
Person B → 70%
Person C → 50%
Person D → 85%
Person E → 35%

everyone can hear the synchronized music at their preferred volume.

Open-Source AI: Outdoor DJ

The AI component is designed around an open-weight model such as Gemma.

Instead of adding a generic chatbot, the AI has a specific job:

Understand the outdoor activity and create a music-session plan.

For example:

User:
"Create a chill playlist for a sunset picnic."

             ↓

        Open-Weight AI

             ↓

{
  "activity": "sunset picnic",
  "mood": "chill",
  "duration": 60,
  "energy": "low-medium",
  "genres": [
    "indie",
    "acoustic",
    "pop"
  ]
}

             ↓

       Music Search

             ↓

       Shared Queue

This keeps the open-source AI at the core of the experience instead of using it as a decorative feature.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Music synchronization itself doesn't require AI.

The interesting question was:

Where can open AI actually make this experience better?

That's where the Outdoor DJ came in.

A closed AI API could certainly generate a playlist, but using an open-weight model gives the project much more control over the intelligence behind it.

Model freedom

The AI layer can be replaced with another open model as the ecosystem evolves.

SyncPlay doesn't need to be permanently tied to one proprietary provider.

Customization

The model can be optimized around a specific task:

understanding activities → understanding mood → generating a structured music session.

That is much more focused than building another general-purpose chatbot.

Privacy

An outdoor session can include personal preferences, activities, and listening habits.

An open/self-hostable AI architecture gives us the option to process this information in an environment we control rather than automatically sending everything to a closed AI provider.

Transparency

Because the project is open source, developers can inspect how the synchronization system and AI integration work, modify them, and experiment with alternative models.

For me, that's the biggest advantage of open innovation:

The AI isn't a black box that the product depends on forever. It's a component that we can understand, replace, and improve.

Prize Categories

Featured Categories

Best Use of Gemma — using an open-weight Gemma model for the AI Outdoor DJ experience.
Best Use of Render — planned deployment of the SyncPlay Node.js application and real-time backend on Render.

Partner Categories

[Add only the categories for technologies actually used in the final implementation.]

Final Thoughts

SyncPlay started as a technical experiment around synchronized playback.

But the real idea is much simpler:

Music should bring people together, not keep them staring at a screen.

Create a room.

Scan the QR.

Pick some music.

Press play.

Then Touch Grass. 🌳🎵

Thanks for checking out SyncPlay!

NextStep : A Career Pathfinder I Built for a Friend

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 03:09:39 +0000

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend

What I Built

I built NextStep, a career and course guidance platform for a friend who was confused about what to pursue after school.

Choosing a course or career can be overwhelming. There are countless options, but students often don't know which path fits their interests, background, and goals.

NextStep is designed to make that decision easier by helping students explore suitable courses, career directions, and possible next steps in one place.

The idea was simple:

Instead of giving students more information, help them find their next step.

I built this specifically with my friend in mind, who needed a clearer way to explore their education and career options.

Demo

Live Demo: https://next-step-cbseians.vercel.app/

NextStep provides an interactive experience for exploring courses and career possibilities and getting guidance based on the student's context.

Code

GitHub Repository: [Add your GitHub repository link here]

The project is being developed as an open-source project so others can explore the implementation, suggest improvements, and contribute to the idea.

How I Built It

NextStep combines a web-based career guidance experience with open-source AI at its core.

The basic flow is:

Student Profile
      ↓
Academic Background
      ↓
Interests & Goals
      ↓
Open-Source AI
      ↓
Personalized Guidance
      ↓
Course & Career Options
      ↓
Next Steps

The frontend is deployed on Vercel, while the AI layer helps interpret the student's context and turn it into more personalized guidance.

Open-source AI used: [Add the exact model/framework used here]

I wanted the AI component to be replaceable and customizable instead of making the entire product dependent on a single closed AI provider.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Career guidance involves personal information such as a student's academic background, interests, goals, and future plans.

Open innovation gives me more control over how that information is processed and how the AI behind the product evolves.

Using open-source/open-weight AI makes it possible to:

Experiment with different models.
Replace the underlying model as better open models become available.
Customize the AI behavior for the specific career-guidance use case.
Explore local or self-hosted inference where appropriate.
Reduce dependence on a single proprietary AI provider.
Build a system that the developer community can inspect and improve.

For me, open innovation isn't just about using an open model because it is required by the challenge.

It gives NextStep the flexibility to evolve with the open AI ecosystem while keeping the product focused on a real problem faced by students.

My Agent Session

[Add your DevRelay agent session here if available.]

Prize Categories

Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge — Build for a Friend

Code-Magic

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 15:54:24 +0000

click here to open website

project url github

A website to help you get simple tricks you can use in your applications with html and css

code magic

⚒️ Languages / Tools
HTML
HTML CSS
CSS Typescript
TypeScript

🧑🏾‍💻 Demo

Check out the website: Code Magic

👇🏽 Prerequisites
Before installation, please make sure you have already installed the following tools:

Git
NodeJs

🛠️ Installation Steps

Fork the project. Click on the icon in the top right to get started
Clone the project, you can use the following command:
git clone https://github.com//Code-Magic
Navigate to the project directory
cd Code-Magic
Install dependencies with npm install
npm install
npm install -g commitizen
Run the project
npm run dev

🥂 After making a change

Create a new branch
git checkout -b YourBranchName
Add it to staging area
NOTE: don't commit the package.json

git add .
Commit your changes with
git cz
Push your changes
git push

👨‍👩‍👦 Community

Don't forget to join the discord community - Join us

👩🏽‍💻 Contributing
Contributions make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create.
Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.
Check out our contribution guidelines for more information.

🛡️ License

Code-Magic is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

💪🏽 Thanks to all Contributors
Thanks a lot for spending your time helping Code-Magic grow. Thanks a lot! Keep rocking🍻

🙏🏽 Support

This project needs a star️ from you. Don't forget to leave a star✨

New Github Repo

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 19:22:30 +0000

https://github.com/Tanmay-Tiwaricyber/t-infect

Difference Between apt update and apt upgrade

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Tue, 10 May 2022 16:34:01 +0000

Package Managers are fantastic!
Let me tell you what made me say that.

Features of Package Managers:
Downloads, installs and updates existing software from a repository.
Ensures the integrity and authenticity of the package.
Manages and resolves required dependencies.
Knows where to put all the files in the Linux file system.
Just imagine performing tasks like checksum verification, installing dependencies, storing components like docs, binaries and config files in different folders manually.

Although for some package managers like "dpkg", you still need to install dependencies manually. But I don't know why would one use package managers like dpkg if we have more advanced package managers which use these low level package managers under the hood and simplifies the task.

"apt" is one such high level package manager.

If you ever googled how to install in Ubuntu machine, you'd have probably came across these commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install
You might be thinking that we only wanted to install a certain package so why are people suggesting us to execute those 2 additional commands?

Let's understand that.

What does apt update do?
"apt update" updates the package sources list with the latest versions of the packages in the repositories.

Package sources list contains the locations or URLs of some of the repositories from which a package is installed.

You can view this list using the command :
cat /etc/apt/sources.list
It would give output:

Sources List

One such location in these repositories is /ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/main/source (You can check that here) where Sources.gz file contains all the information about the packages including:

Dependencies of the package
Latest versions of the package
Checksums of the packages to verify integrity
And much more as shown in the figure below.
Image description

So, whenever we type in apt update it browses these lists from the repositories and copies the latest version of them to the local system. It actually doesn't install any package on the system.

What does apt upgrade do then?
"apt upgrade" compares the version of all the packages currently installed on the system with the ones in the list we fetched through apt update and upgrades all of them to their latest versions.

Generally, when upgrading all the packages in the system, we merge both apt update and apt upgrade commands in a single line:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
All these things happen in the backend within a few seconds.

Visit my website

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 18:58:04 +0000

https://github.com/Tanmay-Tiwaricyber/remote-coders-2022

My Web based OS

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 12:03:24 +0000

check my operating system using this link

https://tanmay-tiwari-os.herokuapp.com/index.html

Encrypt-Decrypt-Msg by Tanmay Tiwari

TANMAY TIWARI 1.2 — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 06:25:09 +0000

https://github.com/Tanmay-Tiwaricyber/Encrypt-Decrypt-Msg

it is use to read encrypted msg