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A developer identified as karpathy says he built HackerTube, a YouTube-style site drawing on videos recommended in Hacker News comments. The site’s reported collection contains 6,454 videos across 150 topics; its selection and recommendation quality are the creator’s characterization, not an independently verified assessment.
Developer karpathy published HackerTube, a YouTube-style video discovery site populated with links to videos recommended in Hacker News comments. He says its collection contains 6,454 YouTube videos across 150 topics, drawn from recommendations posted between 2007 and 2026, offering an alternative way to browse videos without relying on a personal YouTube account.
In a blog post dated October 31, 2026, karpathy described building the site after finding YouTube’s recommendations unappealing. He said he asked an AI coding model, which he called Opus 5.5, to help create a video site based on links shared on Hacker News. The post says the project took about two hours, from processing comments to deploying the website.
According to the account, the workflow downloaded Hacker News comments, filtered them, and used another model, Sonnet, to help remove spam and what the creator described as low-quality material. The process narrowed the material to about 40,000 comments recommending videos, from which the site’s 6,454-video collection was assembled. The blog post does not provide an independent audit of the filtering or selection process.
Karpathy says HackerTube presents the videos in a familiar YouTube-style interface, uses what he calls a 50% thumbnail rather than the original uploaded thumbnail, and offers custom “ForYou” recommendations without accounts. He says browsing state stays in the local browser session and that users can export the site’s data to adapt it for their own projects. These are features described by the creator; the post does not report independent testing of privacy or recommendation performance.
A Different Route to Video Discovery
HackerTube’s premise is to use links recommended by a community as a source for video discovery, rather than presenting recommendations shaped around an individual’s viewing history. That makes the project relevant to viewers who want to browse a curated collection without creating an account or training a personalized feed. The site’s approach also makes its underlying source material legible: the videos were linked in public Hacker News discussions.
The project is also an example of a small, AI-assisted software build, though the time estimate and workflow come from the developer’s own account. Its collection is not a complete archive of YouTube, and the presence of a link in a Hacker News comment does not establish that a video is accurate, high-quality, or endorsed by the community as a whole. The number of videos and topics describes the site’s reported inventory, not evidence of audience reach or improved recommendations.
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From Hacker News Comments to Videos
Hacker News is a discussion forum where users share links and comment on technology, science, and other subjects. Video recommendations in those discussions can be scattered across years of threads, making them less convenient to browse as a collection. HackerTube repackages selected links from that material in a dedicated interface, according to the creator.
Karpathy’s post frames the project as a personal response to dissatisfaction with YouTube’s recommendations, rather than a formal partnership or a change to YouTube itself. The stated source period, 2007–2026, spans nearly two decades of Hacker News comments. The post credits AI models with assisting the filtering and site-building work, but gives no detailed evaluation of the models’ contribution or the accuracy of the resulting dataset.
“Let’s write our own YouTube clone based on whatever videos have been recommended on Hacker News.”
— Karpathy, in the HackerTube announcement
How the Collection Was Filtered
The announcement does not publish the 40,000 comments used in the workflow, a complete list of the selection criteria, or a breakdown of how many links were excluded as spam or low quality. It also does not explain how duplicate links, removed videos, unavailable videos, or recommendations that were not direct YouTube links were handled.
It remains unclear how HackerTube’s recommendations are generated, whether they change as people browse, and how the site’s local-session storage works in practice. The post gives no usage figures, independent quality review, or comparison with YouTube’s recommendations. The stated collection size and features should therefore be understood as claims in the creator’s announcement, not independently verified results.
Availability and Project Details
Karpathy’s post points readers to hackertube.org and says the site’s data can be exported for people who want to create their own version. The announcement does not lay out a roadmap, announce planned updates, or say whether the collection will be refreshed as new Hacker News recommendations appear.
Further details that could clarify how the project works include its filtering rules, data export format, recommendation logic, and whether it will receive ongoing maintenance. Until those are documented, HackerTube is best understood as a creator-described video discovery site built from a historical set of Hacker News recommendations.
Key Questions
What is HackerTube?
HackerTube is a YouTube-style browsing site that, according to its creator, organizes videos recommended in Hacker News comments.
How many videos does the site include?
Karpathy reports a collection of 6,454 videos across 150 topics, based on recommendations posted from 2007 to 2026.
Does HackerTube require an account?
The creator says the site provides recommendations without user accounts and keeps browsing state in the local browser session. The announcement does not include independent testing of those privacy claims.
How were the videos selected?
Karpathy says the process filtered Hacker News comments, used AI models to help remove spam and low-grade material, and narrowed the source to about 40,000 comments recommending videos. Detailed selection rules and an independent audit were not provided.
Is HackerTube part of YouTube?
The announcement describes HackerTube as a separate site that presents links to YouTube videos. It does not report a partnership with YouTube.
Source: karpathy.bearblog.dev
