Est. 2011
About HN Showcase
A visual gallery for Show HN projects — originally built as a weekend hack in 2011, rebuilt in 2026 with AI scoring, live screenshots, and daily digests.
The Original (2011–2012)
HN Showcase started as a weekend project by ssong and nnythm in August 2011. The idea was simple: Show HN posts are some of the best parts of Hacker News, but there was no good way to browse them visually. We built a thumbnail gallery using the HN Search API, Pyramid, jQuery, and url2png.
The community picked it up (158 points). In 2012 I shipped a v2 with infinite scrolling, search, and a polished design. Then, as side projects do, it eventually went offline — the domain lapsed, the dotCloud hosting shut down, and life moved on.
Why Rebuild Now?
Show HN has changed dramatically. In 2011, you'd see a handful of posts per day. Now there are 50–100+ daily, driven largely by the explosion of AI-powered tools, vibe-coded side projects, and a new wave of builders shipping faster than ever. The volume makes it harder to find the genuinely interesting stuff.
I thought: what if I brought HN Showcase back, but built for this era? Visual browsing, AI as a judge to surface the most interesting projects, and a daily digest so you never miss the good ones. This rebuild was largely built with AI coding assistants — felt appropriate for a tool that showcases AI-era projects.
What's New in v3
Live Screenshots
Every project gets a real screenshot captured via headless browser — no broken thumbnails.
AI Tier Ratings
AI classifies each project with a tier (Gem → Pass), playful vibe tags, and an editorial mini-review. The daily digest highlights top picks.
Daily Digest
A curated summary of the best Show HN projects from the past 24 hours, updated automatically.
Full-Text Search
Search across titles, summaries, and tags to find exactly the project you're looking for.
How AI Picks Work
Every Show HN post gets judged by AI — it looks at the project's description, tech stack, and a screenshot of the landing page to classify each project into a tier and write a short editorial take.
Tiers
- ●●●● GemExceptional, share-it-everywhere good.
- ●●● BangerGenuinely impressive, want to try it.
- ●● SolidGood work, niche appeal.
- ● MidNothing stands out.
- ○ PassGeneric or broken.
Vibe Tags
Each project also gets 1–3 playful vibe tags that describe what kind of interesting it is — things like "Rabbit Hole," "Eye Candy," "Wizardry," "Dark Horse," or "Solve My Problem."
Each card also gets a one-sentence hot take — what's actually interesting (or honestly, what isn't). No generic praise, just a quick read so you can decide if it's worth clicking.
Curious how well the AI agrees with the crowd? AI vs HN shows where the gap is widest — hidden gems HN missed and hyped posts our AI didn't buy.
Open Source
HN Showcase is open source, as it always has been.
View on GitHubCredits
Built by ssong. v1 co-created with nnythm. Data via the Algolia HN Search API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.