TL;DR
Get business pricing on monitors, keyboards and dev gear
- Business-only prices and quantity discounts
- Tax-exempt purchasing
- Multiple users, one account, clear invoices
HackerTube is a YouTube-style site assembled from video links recommended in Hacker News comments. Its creator says an AI-assisted workflow filtered comments to identify 6,454 videos across 150 topics, and the site offers browsing without user accounts or server-stored viewing state. The project’s selection criteria and recommendation performance have not been independently evaluated.
Developer Andrej Karpathy says he has published HackerTube, a YouTube-style video catalog built from links recommended in Hacker News comments. The site’s collection contains 6,454 YouTube videos across 150 topics, according to Karpathy, who describes the project as an alternative to relying on YouTube’s personalized home feed.
In a post dated October 31, 2026, Karpathy said he began the project after finding YouTube’s recommendations unappealing. He described its feed as featuring exaggerated thumbnails and repetitive topics; that assessment is his personal view, not an independently measured finding about YouTube’s recommendation system.
Karpathy said the workflow started with downloaded Hacker News comments, which were filtered to find comments recommending YouTube videos. He reported that the process reduced the material to about 40,000 comments and yielded 6,454 videos recommended by Hacker News users between 2007 and 2026. He also said the collection spans 150 topics.
The resulting site uses a YouTube-style interface and, according to Karpathy, offers topic browsing, keyboard shortcuts, custom recommendations, and a thumbnail treatment that uses a video’s 50% point rather than its uploaded thumbnail. He said the site does not require accounts and keeps its browsing state in the local browser session. Users can also export the site’s data to build their own version.
A Different Route to Video Discovery
HackerTube offers a small-scale example of using community recommendations as the basis for video discovery instead of starting with an individual platform’s personalized feed. For viewers who want suggestions drawn from links people have discussed in a technical community, the catalog could provide a distinct way to browse YouTube material.
The project also puts attention on the provenance of recommendations: its videos were surfaced in Hacker News comments over many years. That does not establish that every video is high quality, or that the community’s preferences suit other audiences. It does make the source of the catalog different from an opaque, personalized ranking, while the site’s own recommendations still depend on choices made in assembling and presenting the data.
Karpathy’s account highlights how an AI-assisted workflow can help process a large archive of public comments into a focused dataset. But his post does not provide a benchmark of the filtering process, a quality review, or evidence that the method will work equally well for other communities or topics.
Popular right now
TCL QM64L 85-Inch QD-Mini LED 4K Smart Fire TV
Shark PowerDetect Corded Stick Vacuum, Self-Cleaning (Eggplant, HZ4002)
KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, Dried Rose (KSM150PS)
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
From HN Comments to Video Catalog
Hacker News is a discussion site where users post links and comment on them. Video recommendations can appear as part of those discussions, but they were not originally presented as a single, purpose-built video library. HackerTube’s central move is to collect those mentions and display the resulting links in a familiar video-browsing interface.
Karpathy’s timeline is brief: he wrote that he considered the idea late on a Friday night, then started work the next morning. He credited Opus 5.5 with carrying out the comment-processing workflow and said Sonnet was used in the process. His post says the work included filtering spam and lower-quality material, then putting the site online. Those descriptions are the creator’s account; the post does not provide a technical report on the models, prompts, or filtering decisions.
The catalog covers recommendations made from 2007 through 2026, so it combines links shared across a long span of Hacker News discussions. The site is not described as replacing YouTube hosting: it organizes and recommends YouTube videos, which remain on YouTube.
How the Collection Was Filtered
Several details are not established in the post. Karpathy did not publish the criteria used to decide which comments counted as recommendations, how duplicate links were handled, or how the claimed spam and low-grade-content filtering was judged. The reported totals—about 40,000 comments, 6,454 videos, and 150 topics—are his figures and have not been independently verified in the supplied material.
It is also unclear how often the catalog will be updated, whether videos that are removed or made private will be identified, and how the site’s custom recommendations are generated. Karpathy’s statement that browsing state stays in the local browser session is not accompanied by a privacy or security review. The post does not report user numbers, audience feedback, or comparative tests against YouTube’s feed.
The Site’s Next Test
The immediate next step is whether HackerTube remains available and whether users find its curated catalog useful. Karpathy’s post says the site has been published, but does not announce a release schedule, maintenance plan, or future data refreshes.
Readers can assess the project by exploring its topic categories and exported data, while treating the reported collection size and filtering process as creator-provided information. Any later update on maintenance, recommendation methods, or user response would clarify whether HackerTube is a one-off experiment or a continuing alternative for discovering YouTube videos.
Key Questions
What is HackerTube?
HackerTube is a YouTube-style browsing site populated with videos that Karpathy says were recommended in Hacker News comments.
How many videos does the catalog contain?
Karpathy reports 6,454 videos across 150 topics, based on recommendations made from 2007 to 2026. The supplied report does not include an independent audit of those figures.
Does HackerTube host the videos itself?
No such claim appears in Karpathy’s post. He describes the collection as YouTube videos presented through a separate interface; the report does not say that HackerTube hosts copies of the video files.
Does using HackerTube require an account?
Karpathy says no user account is required and that browsing state is stored in the local browser session. The post does not include an independent privacy audit.
How were videos selected?
Karpathy says an AI-assisted process examined Hacker News comments, filtered for comments recommending YouTube videos, and removed spam and lower-quality material. He has not published detailed selection rules or a review of the results.
Source: karpathy.bearblog.dev
