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Andrej Karpathy says he built HackerTube, a YouTube-style site populated with videos recommended in Hacker News comments. He reports that the collection contains 6,454 videos across 150 topics, drawn from 40,000 comments; the project’s data and recommendations have not been independently verified.
Andrej Karpathy says he has launched HackerTube, a YouTube-style site that gathers videos recommended in Hacker News comments, after finding YouTube’s recommendations a poor fit for his tastes. He reports that the site’s collection includes 6,454 videos across 150 topics, selected from 40,000 comments posted between 2007 and 2026.
In a post dated October 31, 2026, Karpathy described the project as a personal alternative to YouTube’s recommendation experience. He said he asked an AI coding assistant to build a video site from links recommended on Hacker News, an online discussion forum. The resulting service, at hackertube.org, presents the collected videos in a familiar YouTube-style interface.
Karpathy said the collection process began with Hacker News comments, which were downloaded and filtered for comments recommending YouTube videos. He said an AI workflow was used to remove spam and narrow the material to roughly 40,000 comments, yielding 6,454 videos across 150 topics. Those figures are reported by Karpathy; the post does not provide an independent audit or a breakdown of how many recommendations each video received.
Among the features he described are custom recommendations without user accounts, session state kept in the browser, keyboard shortcuts and an option to export the site’s data. Karpathy also said the interface uses a video’s 50% thumbnail rather than its uploaded thumbnail. He did not explain in the post how that thumbnail choice is implemented or how the recommendation logic ranks videos.
A Different Route to Video Discovery
HackerTube offers a small-scale example of recommendations built from community links rather than a viewer’s personal history. For people dissatisfied with a platform’s suggestions, a collection based on what forum participants have shared may provide a different way to find videos, particularly older or specialist material.
The project also highlights how an AI coding assistant can help assemble a working web product from a narrowly defined brief. Karpathy said the process took about two hours, but that is his account of this project, not evidence that comparable services can routinely be built in the same time. The post describes his use of Claude Code and says he handled several setup tasks himself.
The site’s value will depend on factors not established by the announcement: whether the collected links remain available, how useful its topic groupings and recommendations are, and whether users find the resulting selection better suited to them than YouTube’s own system. HackerTube is presented as a personal project, not as a replacement for YouTube or a formally evaluated recommendation product.
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How HackerTube Was Assembled
Karpathy said the idea began on a Friday night when he went to YouTube looking for something to watch and disliked the recommendations he saw. The following morning, he tasked Claude Code with creating a clone populated by videos recommended on Hacker News. The project’s source material is therefore comments posted on Hacker News, not YouTube’s internal viewing or recommendation data.
In an edit to his post, Karpathy said he used Claude Code’s desktop app for Mac and Opus 5.5 at medium effort as his default. He said the only manual work he did on this project was creating a Google Cloud API key for YouTube video metadata, starting a virtual private server and buying the domain. After providing the server’s IP address, he said, he asked the assistant to update, deploy, secure, harden and optimize the code.
His account gives a snapshot of a workflow in which an AI assistant handled much of the coding and deployment, while the user supplied access and infrastructure. It does not include a technical review, a full account of the project’s costs, or details on ongoing maintenance.
What the Post Does Not Verify
The reported totals and filtering process come from Karpathy’s account; the post does not provide a public methodology or independent verification of the 6,454-video count. It also does not specify how the 150 topics were defined, how often videos were recommended, or how the site distinguishes useful recommendations from incidental links.
Other practical details remain unspecified, including whether all links are currently playable, how recommendations are generated for each visitor, how often the dataset will be refreshed and what moderation or maintenance will be provided. Karpathy says the site avoids user accounts and keeps session state in the browser, but the post does not offer a broader privacy or security assessment. The project’s availability and continued operation may change after publication.
The Site’s Next Test Is Use
Karpathy’s post announces the site but does not give a schedule for updates, a roadmap or a commitment to maintain it. The immediate next step for readers is to try the collection and judge whether its categories and recommendations are useful. Whether the dataset will be updated with newer Hacker News comments, and whether the site will receive further features, remains unannounced.
Any assessment of the project’s longer-term usefulness will depend on its performance beyond the initial launch: the quality and availability of the linked videos, the usefulness of the recommendations and the service’s ongoing operation. The current source describes a launch and its creator’s process, not measured user response or independent testing.
Key Questions
What is HackerTube?
HackerTube is a YouTube-style website that Karpathy says presents videos linked in Hacker News comments. It has a video-browsing interface and features including keyboard shortcuts and data export.
How many videos are in its collection?
Karpathy reports 6,454 videos across 150 topics, selected from about 40,000 comments recommending YouTube videos. Those counts have not been independently verified in the supplied report.
Does HackerTube use personal viewing history?
Karpathy says the site provides custom recommendations without user accounts and keeps state in the local browser session. The post does not detail how its recommendation system selects or ranks videos.
How did Karpathy build it?
He says he used Claude Code with Opus 5.5 to handle much of the coding and deployment. He also reports creating a Google Cloud API key, setting up a virtual private server and purchasing the domain himself.
Will HackerTube keep getting new videos?
The post does not say whether or when the collection will be refreshed. No update schedule is specified.
Source: karpathy.bearblog.dev
