https://astrohacker.com/blog Astrohacker Blog 2026-04-13T12:00:00.000Z https://github.com/jpmonette/feed Ryan X. Charles ryan@astrohacker.com https://astrohacker.com Dispatches from the Astrohacker portfolio. https://astrohacker.com/favicon.ico Copyright (C) 2026 Astrohacker <![CDATA[Introducing Astrohacker]]> https://astrohacker.com/blog/2026-04-13-introducing-astrohacker 2026-04-13T12:00:00.000Z For years I've been shipping projects under scattered banners — a blockchain here, a shell there, an encrypted messenger, a social-network joke that got out of hand. Each one had its own domain, its own repo, its own half-written about page. None of them had a home.

Astrohacker is that home. It's the umbrella company for everything I build: a single brand for a portfolio of tools that all share one premise — that science and technology are how we explore and understand the universe, and that the best way to explore is to build.

This post introduces the portfolio.

The portfolio

TermSurf — TERMINAL + BROWSER

A protocol that embeds GPU-accelerated web browsers directly in your terminal. Type web and you're browsing in your shell. No window-switching, no context loss, no leaving the keyboard. Currently in alpha. → termsurf.com

Shannon — NUSHELL + BASH

A shell built on nushell with seamless bash compatibility. Press Shift+Tab to switch modes: structured data pipelines on one side, decades of muscle memory on the other, environment and working directory synced between them. Shannon is not AI-first and doesn't try to be — it's a real shell for real work. In beta. → shannonshell.com

EarthBucks — ELECTRONIC CASH

A global electronic cash system. GPU-mined, instant finality, email-like addresses, 42 million EBX. A from-scratch blockchain built on the original Bitcoin premise — peer-to-peer electronic cash — adapted for an era where AIs are going to need to pay each other. Shipped 1.0. → earthbucks.com

Rickbait — FRONT PAGE

An AI-powered clickbait generator, algorithmic feed, and advertising auction market. It is exactly as serious as it sounds, and exactly as serious as the rest of the web. Alpha. → rickbait.com

KeyPears — SECRET EXCHANGE

Federated encrypted messaging, a secret manager, and an authentication provider, in one project. The pitch is that your keys, your secrets, and your identity should live in one place you control — not scattered across five SaaS dashboards. Alpha. → keypears.com

The through-lines

Looking at the portfolio as a whole, a few themes surface:

  • The shell is the interface. TermSurf, Shannon, and most of the development tooling I reach for live at the command line. The terminal is not a legacy interface — it's the most powerful UI we have, and it deserves better infrastructure.
  • Cryptography is plumbing, not a product category. EarthBucks and KeyPears both treat crypto as a primitive for solving a concrete problem — moving money, holding secrets — rather than as an end in itself.
  • Play is allowed. Rickbait is a joke, and it's also a real product with a real auction market. The jokes inform the serious work and vice versa.

What's next

Astrohacker is a founder-led portfolio company, and 2026 is the year the portfolio starts pulling its weight commercially. Expect shipping cadence to pick up on all fronts, expect a few new projects to join the roster, and expect this blog to track it all.

If you want to follow along, this blog has RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds. Pick your poison.

Hack the universe.

]]> Ryan X. Charles https://astrohacker.com