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HackerTube is a video-browsing site built from YouTube links recommended in Hacker News comments. Its creator says an AI-assisted workflow filtered roughly 40,000 comments to identify 6,454 videos across 150 topics; the site uses local browser storage for recommendation state rather than user accounts.
A developer has published HackerTube, a YouTube-style video discovery site built from links recommended in Hacker News comments, saying its collection includes 6,454 videos across 150 topics. The project offers an alternative way to browse YouTube videos, using recommendations extracted from Hacker News discussions rather than a conventional personalized account feed.
In a post dated October 31, 2026, the creator, identified as karpathy, said the project began after finding YouTube’s recommendations unappealing. The following morning, the creator asked the AI coding model Opus 5.5 to help build a YouTube clone using videos recommended on Hacker News. The post says the work took about two hours.
According to the creator’s account, the workflow downloaded Hacker News comments, filtered them, and used Sonnet in a processing pipeline to remove spam and lower-quality material. It reduced the material to about 40,000 comments recommending YouTube videos, from which the site’s collection of 6,454 videos was assembled. The recommendations span Hacker News posts from 2007 to 2026, and the creator says the videos are grouped into 150 topics.
The site presents the collection in a YouTube-like interface. The creator lists features including use of a video’s 50% thumbnail rather than its uploaded thumbnail, custom “For You” recommendations, keyboard shortcuts, and exportable site data. The post says recommendations work without accounts and that state is stored in the visitor’s local browser session. These descriptions come from the project’s creator; the source material does not provide an independent review of the site or its recommendation quality.
A Different Route to Video Discovery
HackerTube’s central idea is to use recommendations made in public discussion as a starting point for finding videos, instead of relying on a viewer’s watch history or an opaque account-based feed. That may appeal to people who want a curated collection drawn from a specific online community, or who prefer to browse without creating an account.
The project also illustrates how an AI-assisted workflow can be used to turn a large archive of comments into a usable interface. The creator says Opus 5.5 and Sonnet contributed to building and filtering the collection, but the post does not describe how much of the work was automated or independently validate the filtering decisions. HackerTube is best understood as a small discovery project, not evidence that its selection is broadly representative or objectively higher quality than YouTube’s recommendations.
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From HN Comments to a Video Catalog
Hacker News is a community discussion site where users share links and comment on technology and other subjects. Recommendations for videos can appear throughout its comment history, but they are not necessarily organized as a dedicated catalog. HackerTube’s approach is to gather those mentions and present selected videos through a separate browsing experience.
The creator describes a process that began with downloading comments, then filtering and classifying the material before building the front end and deploying the site. The post says the project was put on a virtual private server and that the creator handled security hardening and optimization. No separate technical documentation, methodology, or breakdown of the 150 topics is included in the supplied report.
“Let’s write our own YouTube clone based on whatever videos have been recommended on Hacker News.”
— Karpathy, HackerTube’s creator
How the Collection Was Filtered
The post does not provide a public audit of the collection, a list of inclusion criteria, or figures showing how many comments and links were removed at each stage. It is also unclear how duplicate recommendations were handled, how topic labels were assigned, or what the “For You” recommendations use to rank videos.
The stated collection size and processing method are the creator’s claims in the report, not independently verified measurements. The source material does not establish whether every video remains available on YouTube, whether HackerTube has ongoing maintenance, or how the site handles privacy and data retention beyond the creator’s statement that session state is stored locally in the browser.
Site Use and Further Details
The creator’s post points readers to HackerTube and says the site’s data can be exported for people who want to create their own version with an AI agent. The source does not announce a roadmap, additional features, or a schedule for updates. Further information about the project’s filtering rules, recommendation logic, and maintenance would be needed to assess how the collection changes or how reliably it reflects Hacker News discussions.
Key Questions
What is HackerTube?
It is a YouTube-style video browsing site built from videos recommended in Hacker News comments, according to its creator.
How many videos are included?
The creator says the site contains 6,454 videos drawn from recommendations posted between 2007 and 2026, across 150 topics.
How were the videos selected?
The creator says the process gathered Hacker News comments, filtered them with an AI-assisted workflow, and narrowed them to about 40,000 comments recommending YouTube videos. The source does not give detailed selection rules.
Does HackerTube require an account?
The creator says it does not use user accounts and keeps recommendation state in the local browser session. The post does not provide an independent privacy assessment.
Is HackerTube affiliated with YouTube or Hacker News?
The supplied report describes it as a project built around YouTube videos and Hacker News comments, but does not state that it is affiliated with either service.
Source: karpathy.bearblog.dev
