Andrej Karpathy launches HackerTube, a video site built from Hacker News picks
In brief
- HackerTube launched October 31, 2026, at hackertube.org, according to Crypto Briefing.
- HackerTube's catalog holds 6,454 videos across 150 topics, all recommended in Hacker News comments.
- Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet processed nearly 40,000 comments in two hours.
- Recommendations work without accounts and are stored in the user's own browser.
How the catalog was built
Every video on HackerTube had to have been recommended somewhere in Hacker News comments, according to Crypto Briefing. One mention didn't qualify. A video needed recommendations from multiple users, and those recommendations had to come in different months.
Karpathy built the site with Anthropic's AI models, according to his account as reported by Crypto Briefing. Claude Opus 5.5 managed the project while Claude Sonnet did the filtering (the models processed nearly 40,000 Hacker News comments, dating from 2007 to 2026, over a two-hour period).
In token terms, the project used around 504M input tokens, 90% of them cached, plus 7.6M output tokens.
So what did Karpathy do by hand? By his account, three things: he got a Google Cloud API key, set up a VPS and bought the domain name.
That's the full list.
No accounts, no login
Recommendations on HackerTube don't require a user account. They're stored in the user's own browser instead, the report said. Users can also download the entire dataset as a zip file and customize it.
On the interface side, thumbnails use a 50% video-frame treatment and the site supports keyboard shortcuts.
One community's taste
The catalog reflects one community's preferences. Its 150 topics skew toward Hacker News users' interests, Crypto Briefing noted, which is worth keeping in mind for anyone expecting a general-purpose video library.
Crypto Briefing also cited unnamed research describing HackerTube's community-vetting approach as different from mainstream content curation. The outlet didn't say who conducted that research.
Frequently asked questions
How does a video get included on HackerTube?
According to Crypto Briefing, every video had to have been recommended somewhere in Hacker News comments. It also needed recommendations from multiple users, and those recommendations had to come in different months.
How was HackerTube built?
Karpathy used Anthropic's AI models, according to his account as reported by Crypto Briefing. Claude Opus 5.5 managed the project and Claude Sonnet did the filtering. The models processed nearly 40,000 Hacker News comments from 2007 to 2026 over a two-hour period.
Do you need an account to get recommendations on HackerTube?
No. Recommendations work without user accounts and are stored in the user's own browser, the report said. Users can also download the entire dataset as a zip file and customize it.
