Andrej Karpathy's coding challenge

Andrej Karpathy, a well-known developer, described on his blog how he opened YouTube late one Friday night and encountered what he called an "algorithmic porridge" wall. He suggested that many users might have had similar frustrations with social platforms, where viral content often drowns out quality content.

HackerTube's creation

Instead of continuing to scroll, Karpathy decided to build his own YouTube clone, called HackerTube, using only videos recommended by Hacker News, a popular tech forum linked to the Y Combinator startup incubator. The platform launched on October 31, 2026, and currently includes 43 million comments and 6,454 videos.

Curating content from Hacker News

To build HackerTube, Karpathy gathered all the comments from Hacker News over twenty years, totaling 43 million messages. He filtered out spam and irrelevant mentions, keeping only about 40,000 that explicitly recommended a video. This process led to the curation of 6,454 videos from 2007 to 2026, organized into 150 themes and including some homemade playlists like "The HN Canon."

User interface and features

HackerTube's interface resembles YouTube, with features like history, "watch later," and playlists, but it has several notable differences. Users don't need an account, recommendations work offline, and browsing history is stored in the browser. The thumbnails used are taken from the middle of the videos, replacing the typically optimized images used by creators. The site also includes a section called "HackerTube Longs," inspired by YouTube Shorts.

Open data and community projects

Karpathy made all the data from his comment analysis available in an easy-to-use archive, inviting others to use it with their AI assistants to build their own versions. This call was heeded, leading to variations like a version focused on arXiv scientific publications and an Android app.

No coding required in 2026

Karpathy stated he didn't write any lines of code himself, as this had become standard practice by 2026. He used Claude Code, a programming tool in the Mac app, with the Opus 5.5 model set to a "medium" effort level. His manual tasks were limited to creating a Google Cloud API key, renting a server, and buying a domain name. After starting the server, he provided its address to Claude, who updated, secured, and deployed the site. The entire process took about two hours.