{"slug": "zink", "name": "Zink", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 2.992, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-19", "latest": "2026-10-19", "why": "don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "official_url": "https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Zink", "zink"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802385024, "item_id": 50149064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149064", "by": "hurricanepootis", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I believe the purpose of Zink is that if someone is writing a new driver for a new GPU, they only need to write a Vulkan driver.", "excerpt": "I believe the purpose of Zink is that if someone is writing a new driver for a new GPU, they only need to write a Vulkan driver. After all, OpenGL is a legacy API. Still has lots of uses. But, I think it's better if the effort to write a new driver is spent on bringing up just a Vulkan implementation instead of needing to write two drivers of once. It's kind of like how Mesa's existing OpenGL drivers all switched to ", "context": "", "use_case": "OpenGL on Vulkan drivers", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 15.8.2 Breaks OpenGL"}, {"id": 777915171, "item_id": 48619698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619698", "by": "gloosx", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can emit Vulkan commands from OpenGL via Zink", "excerpt": "Yeah it's very sad for me as well, I was a big fan of supreme commander and I really wanted to play BAR. They have a special Notice for Mac users, which explain that they don't support Mac because: 1. No support for OpenGL 4.3 by Apple. 2. Dependency on a library not supporting ARM architectures. The first point is not a big deal, you can emit Vulkan commands from OpenGL via Zink, and then use MoltenVK to translate i", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)"}, {"id": 737313120, "item_id": 46082070, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082070", "by": "dwa3592", "date": "2025-11-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "excerpt": "If you end up using any of the frontier models, don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "context": "", "use_case": "Redacting private info in prompts", "switched_from": "", "story": "So you wanna build a local RAG?"}, {"id": 735664338, "item_id": 45979021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979021", "by": "rincebrain", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Zink makes sense because it closes a unique gap", "excerpt": "It's in their style to do when they think there's a benefit to them from it, short or long term. I'm not claiming they're not beneficial or acting in bad faith, but their past contributions are \"making enormous improvements in the ecosystem when they think this is the best option for them\" - things like radv+aco you could see as \"we looked at AMD's solution for this and decided it was lower risk to build a better one", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AMD continues to chip away at Intel's x86 market share"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["opengl on vulkan drivers", "redacting private info in prompts"], "compared": [], "makers": [{"id": 800545840, "item_id": 50034115, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50034115", "by": "dwa3592", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am the author of this package - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "excerpt": "I have worked in this field and I am the author of this package - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink A few things jump out since this is done by the government: - the lowest hanging fruit for this problem is to clearly tell people (citizens) not to share any personal info with chatbots which can cause financial harm or identity theft. the example on the page shows a person sharing their SNN with a chatbot to help t", "context": "has worked in the privacy field", "use_case": "PII redaction", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rampart: Browser native on-device PII radaction"}, {"id": 764591985, "item_id": 47786999, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47786999", "by": "dwa3592", "date": "2026-04-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "i built something exactly similar last year.", "excerpt": "ooh nice. i built something exactly similar last year. - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/semi_private_chat - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Pseudonymizing sensitive data for LLMs without losing context"}, {"id": 739708048, "item_id": 46231753, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231753", "by": "dwa3592", "date": "2025-12-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Neat - I built something similar - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink?tab=readme-ov-file#3-shielding-llm-and-api-calls", "excerpt": "Neat - I built something similar - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink?tab=readme-ov-file#3-shielding-llm-and-api-calls", "context": "", "use_case": "shielding LLM and API calls", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Local Privacy Firewall-blocks PII and secrets before ChatGPT sees them"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48617990", "title": "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50141909", "title": "macOS 15.8.2 Breaks OpenGL", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024242", "title": "Rampart: Browser native on-device PII radaction", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778087", "title": "Show HN: Pseudonymizing sensitive data for LLMs without losing context", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46206591", "title": "Show HN: Local Privacy Firewall-blocks PII and secrets before ChatGPT sees them", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080364", "title": "So you wanna build a local RAG?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802385024, "item_id": 50149064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149064", "by": "hurricanepootis", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I believe the purpose of Zink is that if someone is writing a new driver for a new GPU, they only need to write a Vulkan driver.", "excerpt": "I believe the purpose of Zink is that if someone is writing a new driver for a new GPU, they only need to write a Vulkan driver. After all, OpenGL is a legacy API. Still has lots of uses. But, I think it's better if the effort to write a new driver is spent on bringing up just a Vulkan implementation instead of needing to write two drivers of once. It's kind of like how Mesa's existing OpenGL drivers all switched to ", "context": "", "use_case": "OpenGL on Vulkan drivers", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 15.8.2 Breaks OpenGL"}, {"id": 777953601, "item_id": 48622100, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48622100", "by": "dimitar", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "There is an interesting technical reason why its a challenge (and they can't just swap in a supported library): > What makes the \u201csimulate inputs\u201d approach work is that the engine takes utmost care to keep calculations identical on each client. This is not trivial because you still have to work with things that naturally differ on each client, such as mouse position or which units are selected - this is called the un", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)"}, {"id": 777915171, "item_id": 48619698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619698", "by": "gloosx", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can emit Vulkan commands from OpenGL via Zink", "excerpt": "Yeah it's very sad for me as well, I was a big fan of supreme commander and I really wanted to play BAR. They have a special Notice for Mac users, which explain that they don't support Mac because: 1. No support for OpenGL 4.3 by Apple. 2. Dependency on a library not supporting ARM architectures. The first point is not a big deal, you can emit Vulkan commands from OpenGL via Zink, and then use MoltenVK to translate i", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)"}, {"id": 737313120, "item_id": 46082070, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082070", "by": "dwa3592", "date": "2025-11-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "excerpt": "If you end up using any of the frontier models, don't forget to protect private information in your prompts - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/zink", "context": "", "use_case": "Redacting private info in prompts", "switched_from": "", "story": "So you wanna build a local RAG?"}, {"id": 735664338, "item_id": 45979021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979021", "by": "rincebrain", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Zink makes sense because it closes a unique gap", "excerpt": "It's in their style to do when they think there's a benefit to them from it, short or long term. I'm not claiming they're not beneficial or acting in bad faith, but their past contributions are \"making enormous improvements in the ecosystem when they think this is the best option for them\" - things like radv+aco you could see as \"we looked at AMD's solution for this and decided it was lower risk to build a better one", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AMD continues to chip away at Intel's x86 market share"}]}