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Show HN: WhatHappened – HN summaries, heatmaps, and contrarian picks

(www.whathappened.tech)
66 points marsw42 | 1 comments | 08 Dec 25 19:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.283s | 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!

Show context
browningstreet ◴[11 Dec 25 15:19 UTC] No.46232448[source]▶
I have a Gemini gem for HN where I share a thread and it pulls out insightful comments, interesting links, and avoids that flame war stuff entirely. It's less compact than this format but has more actionable takeaways for me. Tips, tricks, insights, and links is what I want from a lot of these conversations. And there are some specific HN-isms that I've coded into the gem to restrict from the report.
replies(1): >>46246214 #
1. marsw42 ◴[12 Dec 25 17:19 UTC] No.46246214[source]▶
I agree! Gemini gem is great for deep dives. My site was just for me to have some feed to read whenever I'm on my phone, data is also cached so I can read on my commute where there's no consistent internet access.