Yesterday's Top Launches: 5 Tools from January 26, 2026 | thistools

Yesterday brought another interesting batch of tools across the digital landscape, with a particular focus on new developer tools and productivity aids designed to streamline specific, often tedious, tasks. From wrangling codebases to tracking time, these five launches offer a glimpse into the problems creators are trying to solve as we move through 2026.

Hedra

If you've ever found yourself needing to pull data from your company's database but don't want to write SQL or wait for an analyst, Hedra might be worth a look. It’s positioned as a private AI data analyst that integrates directly with Slack. The idea is straightforward: you ask a question in natural language within a Slack channel, and Hedra generates the SQL query, runs it against your connected database, and returns the results, even creating charts and reports. The significant point here is the emphasis on privacy; your data never leaves your own environment, which is a critical consideration for any business handling sensitive information.

This feels like a tool aimed at product managers, marketing teams, or anyone in an organization who needs data insights but lacks the technical skills or direct access. The paid pricing model suggests it’s targeting established teams rather than individual hobbyists. The success of something like Hedra would hinge entirely on the accuracy of its query generation and the robustness of its Slack integration. A misinterpreted question could lead to misleading data, so you’d want a solid testing period before relying on it completely.

Trip Way

Stepping away from the developer sphere for a moment, Trip Way enters the crowded travel planning space with a fresh angle. Instead of rigid itineraries, it promises flexibility. The app allows you to combine everything related to a trip into a single, cohesive space: your flight details, hotel reservations, a list of restaurants you saw on TikTok, random notes, photos, and links to attraction websites. It’s a digital scrapbook meets itinerary planner.

This approach definitely caters to a specific type of traveler—the one who plans through inspiration gathered from social media and various sources, rather than just guidebooks. Being free and mobile-focused makes it accessible. The challenge for Trip Way will be differentiating itself from the note-taking apps and bookmark managers that people already use for this purpose. Does combining these elements into a dedicated "trip" container provide enough added value? For organized planners who hate app-switching, it very well might.

Changebot

This is one of those simple, utility-first ideas that you immediately understand. Changebot does exactly what its name implies: it monitors web pages for changes and sends you a push notification when it detects one. The use cases are practically endless. You could track a job listing on a company's careers page, wait for a sold-out product to be restocked, monitor price drops on an item, or even watch for updates to a specific piece of documentation.

The appeal of Changebot is its sheer simplicity and the universal frustration it addresses—the need to manually and repeatedly check a webpage. Being free removes the barrier to entry, making it an easy tool to try out. You do wonder about scalability and accuracy. How many pages can it reliably monitor? How does it handle dynamic content loaded by JavaScript? For basic HTML changes on a handful of critical pages, it could be a huge time-saver.

Forums

This is arguably the most specialized tool launched yesterday and a fascinating entry for developers. Forums allows you to ask questions about any GitHub repository and get answers from an AI that has actually analyzed the source code. The system clones the repo, explores its structure, and uses that context to provide what it calls "source-backed" responses. Instead of hoping a stranger on Stack Overflow has worked with that specific codebase, you’re querying an agent that has just read it.

For open-source contributors, developers new to a large legacy project, or anyone trying to understand a complex codebase, this could be incredibly powerful. It directly tackles the hurdle of onboarding and comprehension. The fact that it’s free and offers an API is significant, opening doors for integrations into IDEs or other developer tools. The obvious question is about the depth of understanding. Can it reason about the architecture, or will it just point to relevant files? Its success will depend on the sophistication of its code analysis.

Hourlyo

Tracking time is a perennial challenge for freelancers, consultants, and independent professionals. Hourlyo attempts to make it less of a chore by integrating time tracking with meeting preparation, client management, and report generation. The goal is to create a seamless workflow where you aren’t constantly starting and stopping a timer, but rather capturing your hours as a natural byproduct of your work.

The freemium model is standard for this category, likely offering basic tracking for free with advanced reporting and client features behind a paywall. The market for time-tracking tools is saturated, so Hourlyo will need to prove that its approach to "not breaking your flow" is genuinely better than the dozens of existing alternatives. For someone currently using a manual method or a clunkier app, the promise of "clean reports without breaking your flow" could be a compelling reason to switch.

Quick Links

For more details on any of yesterday's launches, you can check them out directly: