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Developer Andrej Karpathy says he built HackerTube, a YouTube-style site drawing on 6,454 videos recommended in Hacker News comments between 2007 and 2026. He says the project used AI-assisted filtering to identify recommendations and offers browsing without accounts, with preference data kept in the browser session.
Andrej Karpathy says he has launched HackerTube, a YouTube-style site that organizes 6,454 videos recommended in Hacker News comments between 2007 and 2026. The project turns those recommendations into a browsable catalog across 150 topics, offering an alternative way to find videos without relying on a personal YouTube account or its recommendation feed.
In a post dated October 31, 2026, Karpathy described building the site after finding YouTube’s recommendations poorly suited to his tastes. He said he assigned the task to Opus 5.5 the next morning. According to his account, the system downloaded Hacker News comments, filtered them, and used Sonnet in a workflow to remove spam and lower-quality material, leaving about 40,000 comments that recommended a YouTube video.
Those comments yielded 6,454 distinct videos, which Karpathy said had been recommended on Hacker News from 2007 through 2026. He said HackerTube groups them under 150 topics and presents them through an interface modeled on YouTube. The site uses video thumbnails taken at the 50% point, rather than the thumbnails uploaded for the videos, according to the post.
Karpathy also described custom “ForYou” recommendations that do not require user accounts. He said the site does not store user state on a server, keeping it in the local browser session instead. The post lists keyboard shortcuts and an option to export the site’s data so users can give it to an AI agent to make their own version. These details come from Karpathy’s description; the source material does not include an independent technical review.
A Different Route to Video Discovery
HackerTube’s significance is its source of recommendations: rather than relying on an individual viewer’s watch history, it collects links that people shared in public Hacker News discussions. That approach makes the site a curated index of community recommendations, while leaving YouTube as the platform hosting and playing the videos.
For viewers who want to browse outside a personalized feed, the project offers a different starting point: topic-based discovery across a large archive of links. Its account-free design, as described by Karpathy, also means users can explore without creating a site profile. The project’s promise of “quality content,” however, is the creator’s characterization of his filtering process, not an independently measured assessment of the full catalog.
The post also offers an example of how AI-assisted development can be applied to a practical personal project. Karpathy said the work took about two hours, including building the interface and deploying the site. That estimate is his own and does not establish how long another developer would need, or how much ongoing work is required to maintain the service.
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From Hacker News Comments to Catalog
Hacker News is a discussion site where users share links and comment on technology, science, and other subjects. Video recommendations can appear within those discussions, but they are not presented there as a dedicated, searchable video library. HackerTube repurposes that material by collecting recommendation comments and connecting them to the videos they mention.
Karpathy’s post describes a multi-step process: download comments, filter them, use a Sonnet-based workflow to screen the results, and build a YouTube-like interface around the selected links. He named Opus 5.5 as the model he tasked with creating the project and Sonnet as part of the filtering workflow. The post does not provide model configuration, detailed filtering rules, or a list of the 150 topics.
The reported timeline is short: Karpathy wrote that the idea followed a late-night visit to YouTube, and that he began the project the following morning. He said the result was deployed to hackertube.org. His account describes the site’s launch and intended features, but does not include user numbers, performance data, or outside assessments.
Catalog Quality and Site Operations
The source material does not independently verify the 6,454-video count, the filtering process, or the claim that the result contains quality content. It also does not explain how duplicate links, deleted videos, private videos, or mistaken recommendations are handled, or how often the catalog is updated.
Karpathy’s post says user state stays in the local browser session, but it does not provide a privacy policy or technical details about logging, analytics, hosting, or other data collection. The size and composition of the catalog may also reflect which videos Hacker News commenters chose to recommend, rather than representing a broad or balanced sample of YouTube.
It is not clear from the post how HackerTube’s recommendations are generated in detail, whether the site has attracted users beyond the creator, or whether the project will be maintained over time. No independent review or usage figures were provided.
Monitoring the Project’s Next Steps
Karpathy’s post presents hackertube.org as a deployed site, but does not announce a release schedule, a planned update, or a next development milestone. Readers seeking to evaluate the project can check the site and its exported data, while keeping in mind that the underlying counts and filtering claims are reported by its creator.
Further details would clarify whether the catalog is refreshed with new Hacker News comments, how users can report errors, and how the recommendation and privacy features work in practice. For now, the confirmed development in the source is the launch announcement and Karpathy’s description of the site’s design and data; its longer-term use and upkeep remain open.
Key Questions
What is HackerTube?
HackerTube is a YouTube-style site that Karpathy says organizes videos recommended in Hacker News comments. Its catalog is arranged across 150 topics, according to his post.
How many videos are in its catalog?
Karpathy reported 6,454 videos, identified from about 40,000 comments that he said recommended YouTube videos. Those figures come from his account and have not been independently verified in the supplied source material.
Does HackerTube require an account?
Karpathy says the site’s custom recommendations work without user accounts and that user state is kept in the local browser session. The post does not provide a full technical account of the site’s data practices.
How were the videos selected?
Karpathy says comments were downloaded from Hacker News, filtered, and processed through a workflow using Sonnet to remove spam and lower-quality material. The post does not publish the detailed filtering criteria or an independent evaluation of the results.
Will HackerTube keep adding videos?
The post does not say whether or how often the catalog will be updated. Its stated collection spans 2007 to 2026, but future updates and maintenance plans remain unclear.
Source: karpathy.bearblog.dev
