Hacker News

Hey HN!

I’ve been spending a lot of time around creator communities recently, and one thing I kept noticing was how difficult it is for smaller YouTubers to understand their channel growth clearly. Most analytics tools are either overloaded with dashboards, require full account access, or are built mainly for large creators and agencies.

So I built AAFY — a simple creator growth companion focused on clarity, privacy, and quick insights.

The idea is straightforward: you enter any public YouTube handle (for example @MKBHD), and AAFY analyzes publicly available channel/video data to generate a clean visual review of the channel.

The platform currently provides:

channel performance summaries

visual growth charts

upload consistency tracking

engagement trend analysis

time-based performance comparisons

downloadable PDF reports for review/sharing

One thing I cared about a lot while building this was privacy. AAFY does not require YouTube login or OAuth permissions because the analysis is based only on publicly accessible data. I wanted creators to feel comfortable testing insights instantly without connecting accounts.

I also tried to keep the experience lightweight and beginner-friendly. Many analytics platforms feel intimidating if you’re just starting out as a creator. My goal here was to make something that feels approachable even for smaller channels trying to improve step-by-step.

A few things I’m currently exploring next:

AI-powered growth suggestions

thumbnail/title pattern insights

upload timing recommendations

creator benchmarking

audience retention prediction models

I’d genuinely love feedback from the HN community on:

whether the reports feel useful or noisy

missing analytics creators actually care about

UI/UX improvements

performance/scalability ideas

privacy considerations I should improve further

Thanks for checking it out — happy to answer questions and discuss the build process as well

https://aafy-yt-analytics.onrender.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243683

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://foundryworks.dev/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243667

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1360393/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243666

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.engadget.com/2179762/google-is-currently-struggling-to-define-words-like-disregard-stop-and-ignore/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243630

Points: 1

# Comments: 3

Article URL: https://hypergrid.systems/war.gov-ufo-viewer/microfilm5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243609

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://socket.dev/blog/malicious-postinstall-hook-found-across-700-github-repos

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243576

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://github.com/VILA-Lab/FigMirror

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243570

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://getmyshelf.app/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243541

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

Article URL: https://readuncut.com/94-will-keep-spending-on-ai-even-when-it-fails/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243523

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5891580-legal-migrants-green-cards/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243514

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

Article URL: https://github.com/Laravel-Lang/http-statuses/issues/277

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243489

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://github.com/pnegahdar/nano

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243488

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.khola.blog/p/sicp-an-architectural-trace-of-pointer

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243477

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/1tkvwbb/legobatmanlegacyofthedarkknightvoices38/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243435

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/25/the-prehistory-of-ai-slop

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243418

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/19/frustrated-franchisee-sues-pizza-hut-over-crappy-kitchen-ai/5242899

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243396

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://wordpress.org/download/releases/7-0/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243354

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Letterbook (https://letterbook.ai) helps growing companies manage and solve customer support tickets across email, app, Discord, and website forms. Our AI integrates with your inbox, database, Stripe, Shopify, you name it. Every ticket that comes in gets a draft resolution that you can approve in 1 click.

Watch our demo video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1vNoMTcKoI).

My co-founder Ethan and I grew our last product, an AI personal assistant app, to 100k users. At one point, we’d get 30-50 support tickets a day, and I had to buy an ancient help desk software and a VA in the Philippines to respond to users.

We knew AI agents could make support 10x easier, so we built the first version of Letterbook and immediately migrated Martin off of Freshdesk.

Now, we're giving Letterbook to other startups at a discounted price. You can try it for free, and then pay half the price of Fin or Zendesk AI to start automating customer support at scale.

If you happen to be in need of a support platform, I can't wait to hear your feedback! If you have general thoughts on AI support agents, past experiences using Zendesk/Intercom/Freshdesk, or AI-native challengers broadly, I'd love to discuss any of these topics with you.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243325

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://sanfranciscobayferry.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243316

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.pcmag.com/news/kash-patels-apparel-site-is-trying-to-trick-visitors-into-installing-malware

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243293

Points: 2

# Comments: 0