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Andrej Karpathy Builds Custom YouTube Recommendation Site in 2 Hours With Claude
Andrej Karpathy created a custom tool called HackerTube that identifies high-quality video content by analyzing decades of developer discussions using an AI assistant. The software used Claude Opus 5.5 at a "medium effort" setting to sift through 43 million comments from 20 years of Hacker News to isolate 6,454 frequently recommended videos, with the AI writing and preparing the site's code in about 2 hours.
Karpathy deployed the website using Claude Code, a desktop application for Mac, which managed the optimization and hardening of the code on a rented virtual private server. The developer's only manual tasks were obtaining a Google Cloud API key for metadata, purchasing a domain name, and booting the server. The resulting site operates without user logins and replaces user-uploaded thumbnails with frames from the middle of each video.
- @karpathy @karpathy ·about 20 hours ago ·Source Weekend hack: HackerTube. I was annoyed with YouTube's recommendations so I had Claude filter down 43M comments over 20 years of HN to 6,454 videos that keep being recommended. *Significantly* better viewing experience, ~2 hours with Opus 5.5: https://t.co/JIhXN7OSh1 - Excellent recs without any logins (state is kept in local browser session) - Thumbnail is a representative frame from middle of the video instead of the super duper A/B test hyper-optimized user uploads - Underlying data from the comment analysis as one zip file, point your Claude at it and ask for your own version - HackerTube Longs ✊ A bit more on the process: I use Claude Code (desktop app for Mac), Opus 5.5 on Medium effort as my default. I only talk to Claude and have it do everything, the only "manual work" I helped with in tandem was in the browser (reminiscent of MenuGen): 1) I had to create some kind of API key from Google Cloud UI to query YouTube for video metadata, 2) I booted up a VPS box for serving and 3) I bought the domain name. Once the box was up I gave Claude the IP and told it update, secure, harden, deploy and optimize the code, and it did the whole thing. Many awesome projects that would have normally taken weeks/months even can now be few-shotted for breakfast. What else are we not thinking of. I had Claude filter down 43M comments over 20 years of HN to 6,454 videos that keep being recommended.
- @darkwebinformer @darkwebinformer ·about 17 hours ago ·Commentary 172[.]236[.]224[.]146 ❗️ Andrej Karpathy says Claude built him HackerTube, a YouTube that only recommends videos Hacker News keeps praising, in about 2 hours. Claude sifted 43M comments from 20 years of Hacker News down to 6,454 videos that people kept recommending. His only manual work, he says, was a Google API key, a rented server and the domain. He gave Claude the server's IP, told it to secure, harden and deploy the site, and says it did the whole thing. There are no logins, and each thumbnail is a frame from the middle of the video instead of an A/B-tested upload. https://t.co/OxcJFGOxHf He gave Claude the server's IP, told it to secure, harden and deploy the site, and says it did the whole thing.
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