alt Hacker NewsIs Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning
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Yes, we need to do something about this and tomhow and I are talking about it - it's not clear yet what.
Raising the quality bar would likely cut down on quantity as a side effect, and that would be a nice solution. One idea that a user proposed is a review queue where experienced HN users would help new Show HN submitters craft their posts to be more interesting and fit HN's conventions more.
I launched an idea 75 days ago, here as Show HN. It snowballed into a little community and a game that now sells every day. Maybe not an overnight sensation but the encouragement I found in the community was the motivation that i needed to take it further to a bigger audience.
It was not just a product launch for me. I was, sort-of in a crisis. I had just turned 40 and had dark thoughts about not being young, creative and energetic anymore. The outlook of competing with 20 year old sloptimists in the job market made me really anxious.
Upon seeing people enjoying my little game, even if it's just a few HNers, I found an "I still got it" feeling that pushed me to release on Steam, to good reviews.
It was never about the money, it was about recovering my self confidence. Thank you HN, I will return the favour and be the guy checking the new products you launch. If Show HN is drowning, i will drown with it.
Similar experience. I posted a Show HN two days ago for a children's book generator - type a story idea, get a fully illustrated printed book shipped to you. Offered a free printed book including shipping to the HN community via voucher code. Got 7 points, 2 comments, and zero voucher redemptions. Nobody even ordered the free book.
One of those comments was genuinely useful feedback from Argentina about localization. That alone made it worth posting. But the post was gone from page 1 in what felt like minutes.
What's interesting is this isn't a weekend vibe-coded project - it involves actual physical production, printing, and shipping. But from the outside it probably looks like "another AI wrapper," which I think is the core problem: the flood of low-effort AI projects has made people reflexively skeptical of anything that mentions generation, even when there's real infrastructure behind it.
I did a Show HN a few years ago on another account. It got no upvotes but that website/app has generated over $6m in revenue in that time (over $4.5m profit). Not sure what my point is but thought I'd share
The signal/noise problem here cuts both ways. Yes, good projects get buried. But the reason they get buried is that there is genuinely more noise, not less attention from the community.
When I launched a side project a couple years ago, getting to the front page felt like a real achievement requiring weeks of iteration and genuine problem-solving. Now you can vibe-code something in a weekend and post it. The median Show HN quality has dropped, so people naturally vote less aggressively on the category as a whole.
The 37% stuck at 1 point stat is the real story. The solution is not changing HN mechanics. It is people being more selective about what they post - and the community being more willing to say "this is not ready" in the comments rather than just silently scrolling past.
It's definitely been amplified severely by agent coding, but what's worse is that the most meme hustle-culture part of bringing ideas to life has been the most magnified, because it's the easiest. I started paying less and less attention when the whole "just get yourself a mailing list to test there's a market for your product" meme started gaining popularity, but people were at least constrained by the time it took to cobble together a generic landing page with an email signup. Now there's effectively no limit to how many shadcn boilerplate email collectors can be tossed together in a night. The more of that redundant stuff gets put on Show HN, the less I check it, but also the less I trust the "products" or the potential products, and that doesn't seem like it would be in anyone's best interest.
Here’s a dumb idea:
Give people the ability to submit a “Show HN” one year in advance. Specifically, the user specifies the title and a short summary, then has to wait at least year until they can write the remaining description and submit the post. The user can wait more than a year or not submit at all; the delay (and specifying the title/summary beforehand) is so that only projects that have been worked on for over a year are submit-able.
Alternatively, this can be a special category of “Show HN” instead of replacing the main thing.
An additional factor missing in the post I think Is AI.
Before, projects were more often carefully human crafted.
But nowadays we expect such projects to be "vibe coded" in a day. And so, we don't have the motivation to invest mental energy in something that we expect to be crap underneath and probably a nice show off without future.
Even if the result is not the best in the world, I think that what interest us is to see the effort.
Had a funny experience with this some weeks ago. I started developing a small side project and after a week I wondered if this existed already. To my surprise, someone had already built something relatively similar _with the exact same name_ (though I had chosen mine as a placeholder, still funny though) only 2 weeks before, and posted it in Show HN.
I took a look at the project and it was a 100k+ LoC vibe-coded repository. The project itself looked good, but it seemed quite excessive in terms of what it was solving. It made me think, I wonder if this exists because it is explicitly needed, or simply because it is so easy for it to exist?
Perhaps it's the right moment to start an AI Show HN (Vibe HN as recommended above), as I assume more than half of Show HN is now from ChatGPT/Claude, and it's impossible to cut through this noise with something reliable that humans craft over years.
It's fair to give the audience a choice to learn about an AI-created product or not.
The worst part of the death of Show HN is that most of these people are so allergic to putting any effort in that they can't even write the description themselves. The repo's readme, the ShowHN post, and often even their comments will all be fully LLM-generated. This doesn't even take skill! Writing good marketing copy might take skill, but ShowHN isn't (supposed to be) marketing. Just describe the project in your own words, I promise it's not that hard. The bar is so low that even copy-pasting whatever you prompted to the LLM would be more interesting than the LLM's output. Although maybe it's better this way, since it makes it easier to filter out the garbage instantly.
Reminds me of the quote: "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded"
Some of it is "I wish things I think are cool got more upvotes". Fare enough, I've seen plenty of things I've found cool not get much attention. That's just the nature of the internet.
The other point is show and share HN stories growing in volume, which makes sense since it's now considerably easier to build things. I don't think that's a bad thing really, although curation makes it more difficult. Now that pure agentic coding has finally arrived IMO, creativity and what to build are significantly more important. They always were but technical ability was often rewarded much more heavily. I guess that sucks for technical people.
The framing of "Is Show HN dead?" misses something fundamental. Show HN was never a separate product. It's just a tag on the same ranking algorithm that handles everything else. Stories rise and fall by the same gravity formula, and Show HN posts compete directly with major tech news, drama, and viral essays.
I've launched multiple side projects through Show HN over the years. The ones that got traction weren't better products. They hit the front page during a slow news hour and got enough early upvotes to survive the ranking curve. The ones that flopped were arguably more interesting but landed during a busy cycle. That's not a Show HN problem, that's a single-ranking-pool problem.
What would actually help is a separate ranking pool for Show HN with slower time decay. Let projects sit visible for longer so the community can actually try them before they drop off. pg's original vision was about making things people want. Hard to evaluate that in a 90-minute window.
This is part of a bigger problem with vibe coding IMO. It's not just Show HN but signaling credentials in general. How would you signal that you actually put effort into your project on a resume or social event/presentation when others could just vibe-code some good looking but nonetheless unusable projects and show that off instead?
I wrote an internal engine combustion sim in C with what I'd assume is some pretty alright procedural audio generation and posted it to Show-HN (https://github.com/glouw/ensim4) with which I got 2 upvotes. I understand it's niche, but I thought HN loved this sorta demoscene stuff.
C'est la vie and que sera. I'm sure the artistic industry is feeling the same. Self expression is the computation of input stimuli, emotional or technical, and transforming that into some output. If an infallible AI can replace all human action, would we still theoretically exist if we're no longer observing our own unique universes?
Basically: More people are having more ideas that they’re able execute to at least a minimal degree. That doesn’t seem bad, but like an editor’s slush pile yeah- things are gonna get lost in the noise.
> How does HN remain the coolest place to talk about the coolest tech?
Maybe if people did Show HN for projects that are useful for something? Or at least fun?
There's a disease on HN related with the latest fad:
- (now) "AI" projects
- (now) X but done with "AI"
- (now) X but vibecoded
- (less now, a lot more in the recent past) X but done in Rust
- (none now, quite a few in a more distant past) X but done with blockchain
If the main quality of the project is one of the above, why would it attract interest?
The thing in show HN has to do something to raise interest. If not even the author/marketer thinks it does something, why would anyone look at it?
Tried to use Show HN for my new project a couple months ago with almost no traction. It's a software literacy tutor, so I guess it's not the right audience, but my intuition aligns with this. For reference, an earlier post showing the practice engine that powers the literacy tutor did pretty well back in 2023 and it was my first post. I've had more success getting sign ups trying to do just the tiniest bit of SEO.
Trane (good post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31980069
Pictures Are For Babies (lame post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45290805
Slightly related, I have been writing all my local tools with the help of AIs.
The answer, as always, is to write a compelling story about it, and make the front page of ‘new’.
The small indie developer ain't dead yet, and from where I sit you could drive a star destroyer through the gaps in what software has been built so far.
It's only that you can't claim any of the top shelf prizes by vibe coding
Crazy idea, but maybe change the rules of Show HN so that you are required to include in the headline how long you have been working on the project. As an example, something like:
Show HN: My Project - A description for my vibe coded project [3 weeks]
A lot of the good stuff I see on Show HN are projects that have been worked on for a long time. While I understand that vibe coding is newer trend, I also know that vibe coded projects are less likely to stand the test of time. With this, we don't have to worry about whether a project is AI assisted or not, nor do we ban it. Instead just incentivize longer term projects. If the developer lies about how long they worked on the project, they will get reported and downvoted into oblivion.
I had a similar experience trying to get feedback on my attempt to help different role families adopt AI evals as a common language (hands on tutorial or tool comparison).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026263
I attribute it mostly to my own inability to pitch something that is aimed for many audiences at once and needs more UX polishing and maybe a bit on timing.
It's tough when you're not looking to sell a product but moreso engage in a community without going the twitter/bluesky route (which I'll bregudgingly may start using).
Maybe evals is a problem that people don't have yet because they can just build their custom thing or maybe it needs a "hey, you're building agent skills, here's the mental model" (e.g. https://alexhans.github.io/posts/series/evals/building-agent... ) and once they get to the evals part, we start to interact.
In any case, I still find quite a lot of cool things in SHOW HN but the volume will definitely be a challenge going forward.
Side question: I love the charts in your blog post. Would you be able to share how they were generated?
I don’t agree with this drowning sentiment. It’s much easier now to build capable stuff. That’s what the data is showing you. Pre AI nostalgia - sure, I built a PPC profiler in assembly by hand, but who am I to say the latest AI induced gadgetry is not as cool. And I am an active participant.
I find this very interesting, but am I being dense here? https://www.arthurcnops.blog/images/hn-show-dead-one-point.s...
The legend says SHNs are getting worse, but surely if the % of SHN posts with 1 point is going DOWN (as per graph) then it's getting better? Either I am dense or the legends are the wrong way round no?
Someone should build (not vibecode!) the next Show HN / Product Hunt where products that used AI to being built are completely forbidden.
It is indeed, and it is very much ripe for a serious review. Which is a pity because I think it is one of HN's most powerful pieces.
The fact that the volume is exploding but the graveyard is also exploding, is a sign that the system is working, not that it's broken (the filter is working).
I did 3 ShowHN in 2024 (outside of the scope of this analysis), one with 306 points, another with 126 points and the third with... 2. There's always been some kind of unpredictability in ShowHN.
But I think the number one criteria for visibility is intelligibility: the project has to be easy to understand immediately, and if possible, easy to install/verify. IMHO, none of the three projects that the author complains didn't get through the noise qualify on this criteria. #2 and #3 are super elaborate (and overly specific); #1 is the easiest to understand (Neohabit) but the home page is heavy in examples that go in all directions, and the github has a million graphics that seem quite complex.
Simplify and thou shall be heard.
Tanget but related, I posted on Who wants to be hired and, in comparison to last time I posted there 2019ish, I received only spam emails, no offers nothing at all. Luckily I used an alias for that post but I hate deleting it if anyone interested might come in
p.s. I thought the OP's Show HN looked pretty good so I put it in the SCP (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
Show HN: Clawntown – An Evolving Crustacean Island - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023255
If show HN is getting diluted and flooded then maybe yhere is opportunity for someone to make a website for showing off your shiny new project.
Something rapid fire, fun, categorized maybe. Just a showcase to show off what you've done.
I'm not sure I agree with the Sideprocalypse idea linked in the blog. Granted, there is a lot of "hustle" content out there about how all you need to do is vibe code an existing business idea and pay for their SEO course. And if you're one of those people selling that, or one of the people believing it... well, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Where the vibe coders with their slop cannons aren't present though is in things that require hard won domain knowledge. IE, stuff that requires you to actually create a new idea, off an understanding of actual areas of need.
And that kind of thing probably isn't going to do well on Show HN, because your audience probably isn't on HN.
Instead of Show HN, it should be Show HN Progress.
And the comments should start with the day/month the project was first launched.
Funny to see this above four Show HNs right now
There should probably be "Show Vibe:" simply because this is something new. This is something radical.
I was a skeptic last year, and now... not so much. I am having Claude build me a distributed system from scratch. I designed it last week as I was admitting to myself the huge failure of my big "I love to code" project that I failed to get traction on.
It took me a week to even give the design to claude because I was afraid of what it meant. I started it last night, and my jaw is dropped. There is a new skill being grown right now, and it... is something.
It certainly isn't nothing, and I for one am curious to simply see what people are making with vibes alone. It's fascinating... and horrifying.
But, I have learned to silence that part of me that is horrified since the world never cared for what I find beautiful (i.e. terrible languages like JavaScript)...
I'm so disappointed about what happened to this industry. It's worse than I could have imagined.
The market is saturated with superficial solutions that look amazing at a glance but don't work at all in the medium or long term yet it doesn't matter at all; they don't even have an incentive to improve, ever, because the founder cashes out/exits before they need to worry about the stuff under the hood. Customer support is replaced by AI agents so nobody can feel the customer's pain anymore. Then investors find ways to financialize the product so that it doesn't depend on consumers anymore and can just tap into big contracts from big institutions... And yet they still spend big on ads, just to prevent new entrants from entering the market.
It reminds me of my time in crypto; the coins were sold as one thing but all the big well known projects barely had less than half of the features implemented (compared to what was advertised)... And 10 years in, most of those projects cashed out big time and still don't have the features promised. Many shut down completely. Doesn't matter. The whole thing existed and succeeded as a pure shell project.
Horrible industry. Do not participate.
"Show HN: ... that I vibe coded" is a language pattern that NLP trainers will give you to make yourself invisible.
I think it is true with any distribution channel. When people figure out that it works, then everyone ends up bombarding that channel till it saturates.
Vibe coding is not helping either, I guess. Now it is even cheaper to create assets for the distribution channel.
I think same thing happened with product hunt.
Thanks for all the work you did on this. I want to see Show HN post thrive.
> Show HN of course isn't dead. You could even say it's more alive than ever.
You could argue it's dead in the sense of "dead internet theory". Yes, more projects than ever are being submitted, but they were not created by humans. Maybe they are being submitted by humans, for now.
Thank you so much for the statistics!
It's not just Show HN. Other parts of HN are drowning too.
related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47039478
I feel this. I recently posted a Show HN for a tool I've been working on, and it got 2 points. Honestly I think I posted it too early.
It's turning into an influencer economy, similar to twitch streaming, youtube or only fans.
I've long wanted something like Blog HN as a way to post things things that I wrote without feeling guilty of submitting my own site. Things that authors themselves write and post are often a good signal. But this should be completely separate from any new products, etc.
I think that Show HN should be used sparingly. It feels like collective community abuse of it will lead to people filtering them out mentally, if not deliberately. They're very low signal these days.
I think vibe coding something and showing it off on Show HN is probably fine, but it boils my blood when people cannot even be bothered to write the post body themselves. If someone is using an AI generated post body and title that's usually a clear signal of slop for me. The post body is supposed to be part of the human connection element!
I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had.
The cool part about pre-AI show HN is you got to talk to someone who had thought about a problem for way longer than you had. It was a real opportunity to learn something new, to get an entirely different perspective.
I feel like this is what AI has done to the programming discussion. It draws in boring people with boring projects who don't have anything interesting to say about programming.