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SubstanceWiki – Open-source encyclopedia of psychoactive substances

SubstanceWiki – Open-source encyclopedia of psychoactive substances

by toprak123·Mar 9, 2026·2 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidNiche GemDark Horse

Open-source PsychonautWiki alternative with pre-computed interaction safety ratings.

Strengths
  • •Pre-computed interaction matrix avoids runtime calculation latency for 15K combinations.
  • •Reddit aggregation pipeline automatically classifies community insights from Arctic Shift.
  • •Full database schema and seed scripts allow complete self-hosting.
Weaknesses
  • •PsychonautWiki and Erowid already dominate trust and SEO in this niche.
  • •381 substances is small compared to established competitors' databases.
Category
Health
Target Audience

Researchers, harm reduction advocates, and developers interested in the stack

Similar To

PsychonautWiki · Erowid · Drugs.com

Post Description

SubstanceWiki is a free, open-source encyclopedia of psychoactive substances with a harm reduction focus.

Site: https://substancewiki.org Source: https://github.com/yagcioglutoprak/substance_wiki

The database covers 381 substances with structured data including dosage tables by route of administration, duration timelines, 14,967 interaction safety ratings, 240+ catalogued subjective effects, experience reports, and community insights aggregated from Reddit.

Tech stack: Next.js 16 (App Router), PostgreSQL via Prisma, Tailwind CSS. Content is CC-BY-SA 4.0. The whole codebase including the database schema and seed scripts is public.

Some technical decisions that might interest HN:

- Interaction checker is backed by ~15K pre-computed combination records, not runtime calculation - Community insights are built from Reddit data via the Arctic Shift archive, run through a classification and enrichment pipeline - Programmatic SEO generates comparison pages, combo guides, and concept pages from the underlying data - Dynamic OG images generated per-page via @vercel/og - JSON-LD structured data on every page type (WebSite, Article, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage)

Feedback welcome on the data model, the UX for presenting safety-critical information, or anything else.

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