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

📰 Hacker News · marsw42

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 s

Published 8 Dec 2025
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