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66 points marsw42 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 2.795s | source

Hi HN,

I built WhatHappened (whathappened.tech) because I have a love/hate relationship with this site. I love the content, but the "wall of text" UI gives me FOMO. I was spending too much time clicking into vague titles ("Project X") or wading through flame wars just to find technical insights.

I built this tool to act as a filter. It generates a card for the top daily posts with a few specific features to cut the noise:

1. AI Summaries: It generates a technical TL;DR (3 bullet points) and an ELI5 version for every post.

2. The Heat Meter: I analyze the comment section to visualize the distribution: Constructive vs. Technical vs. Flame War. If a thread is 90% Flame War, I know to skip it (or grab popcorn).

3. Contrarian Detection: To break the echo chamber, the AI specifically hunts for the most upvoted disagreement or critique in the comments and pins it to the card.

4. Mobile-First PWA: I mostly read HN on my phone, so I designed this as a PWA. It supports swipe gestures and installs to the home screen without an app store.

Stack: Next.js, Gemini, Supabase.

It currently supports English and Chinese. Any feedback will be appreciated! My original X post: https://x.com/marsw42/status/1997087957556318663, please share if you like it or find it helpful! :D

Thanks!

1. kenreidwilson ◴[] No.46232305[source]
Any chance this can go open source? I'd love to contribute and self host.
replies(2): >>46235435 #>>46246021 #
2. rcarmo ◴[] No.46235435[source]
Ditto.
3. marsw42 ◴[] No.46246021[source]
Working on it! Polishing the code and will fix some final bugs and I might make a different post to share the code so it's easier to host :D