It takes any HN thread and turns it into an audio conversation so you can listen to the thread while doing other things.
I've seen many previous attempts to turn HN threads into podcasts, but they all shared a common issue IMO: trying to reduce the very rich back-and-forth into a single-thread single-reader boring podcast. Instead, I wanted to hear the actual debate from the actual thread!
So I asked Claude 3.7 to build this for me as a browser-only app. It just needs a thread URL and an Elevenlabs API key (this all remains in your browser, you can check the source code, it's only 3 files, there is no server storage of anything).
To make the resulting audio experience as natural as possible, each commenter has a different voice.
Commenters who appear multiple times in the thread have the same voice, and introduce themselves. A bit of context is also introduced when coming back "up" from deeply nested comments.
You can play the resulting audio or download it for later listening. I'm planning to later add the ability to load multiple threads so I can have a playlist generated for listening in the gym!
Any comments or improvement suggestions are appreciated!
Cost Estimation
- Shows (very rough) character count estimate (rounded to nearest thousand)
- Displays approximate cost at $0.12 per thousand characters
- Updates dynamically as selections change
- Added toggle between single thread URL and top 100 stories selection
- Implemented multi-thread selection with checkboxes
- Saves input mode preference to localStorage
- Changed to "All" as default with option for custom limit
- Original post no longer counts against comment limit
- Text with > is now properly recognized as quotes
- Quotes are transformed with random introduction phrases
- Adds "End of quote" with variations at the end of quoted text
- Preserves shared links in expandable section at the bottom
- Different random phrases for first, second, and multiple links
- Links open in new tabs when clicked
- Matches commenter usernames to ElevenLabs voices if names match
- Falls back to deterministic assignment if no match found
- Saves progress and allows resuming after errors
- Shows "Retry" button with partial audio when errors occur
- Audio generated so far is available for download
- Added tooltip with API key information
- Persistent theme preferences via localStorage
- Improved responsive design for mobile
- the filename of the generated MP3 file matches the thread title- don't use Legacy voices as they seem to be of much lower quality (sounds like someone is calling in from an international landline)
- when the same poster appears many times, it gets tedious to hear them restate who they are. I think after the first 3, we should recognize the voice so that's not necessary anymore
Feature requests I'll add:
- emphasize quotes better
- add audio chapter marks if possible, so it's possible to skip ahead
- attach a speaker's voice to the relevant voice in the 11Labs account if there's a voice with the same name as the username
- add sound effects if people write down sound effects in their comments (this seems tough)
Anything I'm missing?
First 20 comments of "John Carmack: writing Rust code feels wholesome"
Here is the rendered mp3 : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yG1mwD70ZteXtdh8Jk_sXUXS_sQ...
The thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19126795
First 30 comments of a recent thread, "AGI is still 30 years away": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YbgRXBv1LC3IdMl8Xb4i9y98S2T...
The thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43719280
Can I navigate by voice commands, for example if listening while driving?
2. No navigation by voice commands sadly - it generates a single audio track. I might be able to insert chapter marks for each comment though, so that it'd be possible to "skip" to the next comment!
That seems less natural. I think what I can do though, is turn quotes into actual quotes, eg. turning
> One big post can have a bigger reply counter-arguing every point 1b1
into:
"Look; you said 'One big post can have a bigger reply counter-arguing every point 1b1'"
yeah, I think what I'm getting at is when there is a big argumentative post crossing the line from chit-chat to speech, break out of the structure of the website, let the LLM get the arguments out and connect them to the counter-arguments and turn it into a back a forth with shorter dialog lines, without repeating too much or one person talking for very long.
Also I agree, the LLM should be free to transform or add dialog how it sees fit so it feels more natural but always keeping it true to what is written.
I also think it's incredibly difficult (even with an LLM) to render properly a multi-turn multi-user conversation without sticking to the actual hierarchy of the thread. We would probably run into the "summarize the thread and lose nuance" problem again.
Entering a max of "26" manually is what created the off-by-one error, I think, because of the original post being counted as a comment.
But yeah, I'll fix that.
If I leave the max at 100, then I get every comment (original post + al 26 comments), here's the output audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fIis8yQn-YuOmJwq1J4cLtthQV0...
Maybe publish it as a podcast.
I have no plans to publish as a podcast (if I was going to go through all the trouble to put a podcast together, it would be an actual podcast for my startup, not for a hobby project!) but I'd love it if someone did it!