I think you are projecting too much, the question about added value other than the face value was in terms of this being posted on HN rather than about doing th

I think you are projecting too much, the question about added value other than the face value was in terms of this being posted on HN rather than about doing this type of work as a learning, refreshing or skill maintenance exercise. Basically is this "newsworthy" as far as HN guidelines go is what you should ask yourself, and it doesn't look like it to me. If the poster is the author they also should've done "show HN" but even then it should still be "newsworthy" for others. HN isn't instagram. P.S. If the author would've made a blog post or even put it in the readme about what he did, what was his approach and what benefits were there from this exercise then this might actually be sufficiently newsworthy for HN because it adds value to the reader but the code itself or the app doesn't.