5 ms·

Show HN: ThreadQuilt: AI-Free Thread Aggregator

59 points by andes314 2y ago

Hey HN, I've been working on a project called ThreadQuilt, and I'm excited to share it with you all. ThreadQuilt is a community discussion aggregator that brings together the best threads from various forums and platforms into one convenient place. Whether you're interested in programming, tech trends, or just want to stay updated on niche topics, ThreadQuilt helps you find and follow the most relevant conversations without the clutter of AI-generated content. It's all about real human discussions, curated for quality and relevance. I built ThreadQuilt because I was tired of wading through endless noise to find meaningful discussions. With ThreadQuilt, you get a cleaner, more focused experience that highlights the best parts of the web's conversations. Check it out and let me know what you think! Your feedback would mean the world to me as I continue to improve and expand the site. Happy threading!

salamo 2y ago
This is cool. I clicked "deep learning models" and the results were ok, but some of them were out of date. It would be great if all of the threads were recent (within the last week or so).
winddude 2y ago
2 questions... why AI free? Is it only pulling from reddit, hacker news and stack exchange? I find a a lot of tech discussion has moved to discord, which makes it very hard to find... just even looking at your search samples, kubernetes and react both have official discord servers, and i'm sure there's talk about them in countless other servers.
- andes314 2y ago
  I can implement Discord threads! If anyone has any suggestions of what other threads to aggregate, let me know. The main issue I have to overcome is latency getting too high when retrieving form different places at once. Additionally, I chose to avoid AI as I have picked up from a lot of people that Google’s AI features have more or less ruined it. Do you think there is a way that I could use AI here that wouldn’t ruin things?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - metadaemon 2y ago
    You may have to start building your own reverse index if you're polling API's at query time
  - winddude 2y ago
    "The main issue I have to overcome is latency getting too high when retrieving form different places at once." The solution for that is maintaining and updating an index. (Although that drives up costs.) Google has done a terrible job, but perplexity has done a pretty good job. I think there's quite a bit to be gained by summing/extracting desired information from threads. I'm thinking opinions on choosing tech stacks (eg, "should i use sql or nosql", "fastAPI vs supabase"...), or even fixing bugs (on that note, if you're going after tech, github might be another to look at). I defitley agree there's a ton of noise in discussions, I think LLM's are the current best way to cut through that noise.
    - andes314 2y ago
      I had no intention of making a search engine, I really just envisioned a place to combine threads from different platforms and figured out along the way that it looked exactly like search. This seems to be an overcrowded market so I would be afraid to just "make a search engine". It seems difficult to me at the moment how exactly I can make ThreadQuilt a unique value proposition if I take that route. If AI is the differentiator, then I would absolutely want to integrate it.
akkartik 2y ago
At first glance this looks excellent! I'm going to keep playing with it.
andes314 2y ago
If anyone has any feature suggestions, please let me know. I am trying to create as much value as I can here.
- superasn 2y ago
  It would be great to have a sorting feature by date, popularity, # comments, etc.
andes314 2y ago
Question: Should I combine threads and label them by origin instead of separating them like I have currently?
curious_cat_163 2y ago
> I built ThreadQuilt because I was tired of wading through endless noise to find meaningful discussions. With ThreadQuilt, you get a cleaner, more focused experience that highlights the best parts of the web's conversations. I applaud your effort. I’ll ask the obvious question around the strongly opinionated approach of not leveraging “AI”. Would you like to expand on what that means to you? I would imagine that some form of intelligence could also help with noise reduction but maybe you considered it and decided otherwise.
- andes314 2y ago
  To be honest, I would rather use AI, because it would be more fun and cooler to work with. However, I have a track record of making things no one wants, so I really wanted to focus on what I thought would be more popular. Given I keep hearing that AI has "ruined" Google and other platforms, I figured it would be a good decision to not only cut it out from this but to emphasize it as a "marketing" strategy. I am absolutely not opposed to it, and if I can convince myself that integrating AI would be moreso "what people want" then I would integrate it (and have more fun).
  - andenacitelli 2y ago
    “AI” (as absurdly broad of a term as it is) has legitimate use case. It isn’t JUST hype. However, because of the buzz, it’s being shoehorned into so many places it really just isn’t the proper fit for, and it’s hard to figure it where. However, there ARE plenty of areas it IS the right fit for. Lots of “fuzzy” systems that would struggle to be rule-based and generalizable benefit hugely from LLMs and other fuzzy / intentionally broadly scoped tooling. Source — I work at a “chat with your data” startup, and our product just categorically wouldn’t be worthwhile if the above weren’t true :)
primax 2y ago
Looks like you're getting hugged to death right now. Looking forward to checking this out in a few days once things settle around
Pr0ject217 2y ago
Just an FYI, https://www.threadquilt.com/search?topic=openbsd https://www.threadquilt.com/search?topic=openbsd Throws a 500 and displays a stack trace of the server.
- andes314 2y ago
  I am retrieving threads from APIs per query, and stackexchange is rate limiting me. This is frustrating but a sign that search is popular! I will work on increasing rates with them, and long-term I have to educate myself on indexing.
bgnm2000 2y ago
This is really cool, but I would need the dates with the results.. if I'm looking up something technical, dates really matter as libraries change etc.
andes314 2y ago
I’ve made some major updates everyone. Please let me know what you think.

59 points by andes314 2y ago

salamo 2y ago

This is cool. I clicked "deep learning models" and the results were ok, but some of them were out of date. It would be great if all of the threads were recent (within the last week or so).

winddude 2y ago

2 questions... why AI free? Is it only pulling from reddit, hacker news and stack exchange? I find a a lot of tech discussion has moved to discord, which makes it very hard to find... just even looking at your search samples, kubernetes and react both have official discord servers, and i'm sure there's talk about them in countless other servers.

andes314 2y ago
I can implement Discord threads! If anyone has any suggestions of what other threads to aggregate, let me know. The main issue I have to overcome is latency getting too high when retrieving form different places at once. Additionally, I chose to avoid AI as I have picked up from a lot of people that Google’s AI features have more or less ruined it. Do you think there is a way that I could use AI here that wouldn’t ruin things?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- metadaemon 2y ago
  You may have to start building your own reverse index if you're polling API's at query time
- winddude 2y ago
  "The main issue I have to overcome is latency getting too high when retrieving form different places at once." The solution for that is maintaining and updating an index. (Although that drives up costs.) Google has done a terrible job, but perplexity has done a pretty good job. I think there's quite a bit to be gained by summing/extracting desired information from threads. I'm thinking opinions on choosing tech stacks (eg, "should i use sql or nosql", "fastAPI vs supabase"...), or even fixing bugs (on that note, if you're going after tech, github might be another to look at). I defitley agree there's a ton of noise in discussions, I think LLM's are the current best way to cut through that noise.
  - andes314 2y ago
    I had no intention of making a search engine, I really just envisioned a place to combine threads from different platforms and figured out along the way that it looked exactly like search. This seems to be an overcrowded market so I would be afraid to just "make a search engine". It seems difficult to me at the moment how exactly I can make ThreadQuilt a unique value proposition if I take that route. If AI is the differentiator, then I would absolutely want to integrate it.

akkartik 2y ago

At first glance this looks excellent! I'm going to keep playing with it.

andes314 2y ago

If anyone has any feature suggestions, please let me know. I am trying to create as much value as I can here.

superasn 2y ago
It would be great to have a sorting feature by date, popularity, # comments, etc.

andes314 2y ago

Question: Should I combine threads and label them by origin instead of separating them like I have currently?

curious_cat_163 2y ago

> I built ThreadQuilt because I was tired of wading through endless noise to find meaningful discussions. With ThreadQuilt, you get a cleaner, more focused experience that highlights the best parts of the web's conversations. I applaud your effort. I’ll ask the obvious question around the strongly opinionated approach of not leveraging “AI”. Would you like to expand on what that means to you? I would imagine that some form of intelligence could also help with noise reduction but maybe you considered it and decided otherwise.

andes314 2y ago
To be honest, I would rather use AI, because it would be more fun and cooler to work with. However, I have a track record of making things no one wants, so I really wanted to focus on what I thought would be more popular. Given I keep hearing that AI has "ruined" Google and other platforms, I figured it would be a good decision to not only cut it out from this but to emphasize it as a "marketing" strategy. I am absolutely not opposed to it, and if I can convince myself that integrating AI would be moreso "what people want" then I would integrate it (and have more fun).
- andenacitelli 2y ago
  “AI” (as absurdly broad of a term as it is) has legitimate use case. It isn’t JUST hype. However, because of the buzz, it’s being shoehorned into so many places it really just isn’t the proper fit for, and it’s hard to figure it where. However, there ARE plenty of areas it IS the right fit for. Lots of “fuzzy” systems that would struggle to be rule-based and generalizable benefit hugely from LLMs and other fuzzy / intentionally broadly scoped tooling. Source — I work at a “chat with your data” startup, and our product just categorically wouldn’t be worthwhile if the above weren’t true :)

primax 2y ago

Looks like you're getting hugged to death right now. Looking forward to checking this out in a few days once things settle around

Pr0ject217 2y ago

Just an FYI, https://www.threadquilt.com/search?topic=openbsd https://www.threadquilt.com/search?topic=openbsd Throws a 500 and displays a stack trace of the server.

andes314 2y ago
I am retrieving threads from APIs per query, and stackexchange is rate limiting me. This is frustrating but a sign that search is popular! I will work on increasing rates with them, and long-term I have to educate myself on indexing.

bgnm2000 2y ago

This is really cool, but I would need the dates with the results.. if I'm looking up something technical, dates really matter as libraries change etc.

andes314 2y ago

I’ve made some major updates everyone. Please let me know what you think.