Karpathy builds HackerTube with Claude Opus 5.5 in two hours
Karpathy used Claude Code with Opus 5.5 (Medium effort) to build HackerTube in about two hours: he had Claude filter 43 million comments from 20 years of Hacker News down to 6,454 repeatedly recommended videos, and built and launched a browsing website. He said he only conversed with Claude throughout the process; the only manual parts were creating an API key on Google Cloud, starting a VPS, and purchasing a domain, after which he handed the IP to Claude to complete updates, hardening, deployment, and optimization. He also packaged the comment analysis data into a zip file so others can have Claude generate their own version.
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Karpathy used Claude Code to complete the entire process from data filtering to deployment in about two hours, which can serve as a reference case for end-to-end agent delivery.
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View original postWeekend 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.
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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.
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2 hours with Opus 5.5 on Medium effort. Not even High.
Karpathy didn’t like YouTube’s recommendations, so he used the videos engineers kept recommending to each other in Hacker News comments over 20 years instead.
Claude scanned 43 million comments, found 6,454 such videos, and built and launched a website to browse them, all in about two hours.