Karpathy launches HackerTube, built in two hours with Claude Opus 5.5
HackerTube selects 6,454 videos by analyzing 43 million Hacker News comments and runs its 'For You' feed in the browser without accounts.
Andrej Karpathy released HackerTube, an alternative video recommendation service that picks 6,454 videos by analyzing 43 million Hacker News comments. He introduced the project on his blog and shared details on X on November 1, 2026, according to aitimes.com.
Karpathy built the service in about two hours using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5. He issued natural-language instructions in the Claude Code desktop app for Mac rather than writing code or running terminal commands himself. He personally obtained the YouTube API key, prepared the server and bought the domain.
HackerTube uses a frame from the middle of each video as its thumbnail instead of a creator-set image. Its "For You" recommendation feed is stored in the browser, with no accounts and no server-side storage of personal data. The service is available on its official website.
The project follows a night of frustration: on October 30, 2026, Karpathy searched for videos on YouTube and was unhappy with exaggerated thumbnails, repetitive recommendations and low-quality content. Hacker News comments posted between 2007 and 2026 total 43 million, of which 40,000 mention YouTube videos.
Videos were selected if at least three users mentioned them in three different months, and were then classified into 150 topics. Karpathy currently works at Anthropic and co-founded OpenAI.
Quick answers
What is HackerTube?
An alternative video recommendation service built by Andrej Karpathy that selects 6,454 videos by analyzing 43 million Hacker News comments.
How was HackerTube built?
Karpathy built it in about two hours using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, giving natural-language instructions in the Claude Code desktop app for Mac.
Where can I use HackerTube?
On its official website. The 'For You' feed is stored in the browser, with no accounts required.