Show HN: ArXivTok

https://arxivtok.vercel.app/

by Miguel07Code • 1 year ago

105 51 1 year ago

arxivtok.vercel.app

I made this, and it's fully open source so if someone wants to contribute here you have the url: https://github.com/Miguel07Alm/arxivtok.

For this project I was inspired by https://wikitok.vercel.app.

Rendello• 1 year ago

You can add Show HN to the title, too.

It looks good, though when I scroll up once on my trackpad it scrolls past 3-4 articles at a time.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Thanks for the feedback! I'll add Show HN then.

i_love_limes• 1 year ago

Great idea! The scrolling is a bit broken though. I can't scroll down the text on my trackpad without it going to the next article, and also it just a lot of articles with a tiny movement of the trackpad.

Otherwise it's a really fun idea! Can I suggest you also scrape from https://www.medrxiv.org/? This is where a lot of medical research preprints, not arxiv

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I saw that medrxiv has an API so I'll add it too!

About the behaviour of the scroll it's a bit buggy haha but I'll try to fix that, thanks for the feedback.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I added now the MedRxiv API, you can try it out and tell me if you notice something weird.

hokkos• 1 year ago

Is it filtered to only talk about AI or all of current science interest is about AI ?

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Yeah, I filtered it mandatorily about AI or computer science

jasonjmcghee• 1 year ago

Not sure why the author didn't say this, but that's _by default_. There's a search in the top right and you can do like `astro-ph` and it'll return papers from it, afaict by skimming the source.

IMO it should show that it's searching cs / ai as prefilled search terms.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Noted, I'll add it now

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Added!

eunos• 1 year ago

Add swipe feature next!

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

That would be nice, I'll add it to the roadmap.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I think I have that now covered, you can try it out and tell me if it works if you want.

Rhapso• 1 year ago

I like this. Now i want a self hosted version i can point at a dozen sources mixed together.

achierius• 1 year ago

Out of curiosity (since you turned this around so fast) -- I saw that the other author mostly used Claude/Cursor, did you do the same?

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Yeah, I used Copilot instead of Cursor.

dang• 1 year ago

Recent and related:

WikiTok - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936723 - Feb 2025 (216 comments)

dandaka• 1 year ago

Could you please consider adding video generation? In TikTok style, but with content from Arxiv

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

That would be cool, I'll consider it!

xnx2• 1 year ago

Feels like XTok is imminent: Browser extension that makes any site scrollable

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Hahaha surely one is building it right now

sgdpk2• 1 year ago

It looks great. But it's missing one critical feature of "fast-food" apps like TikTok: the content is not easily digestible. Which is understandable, because scientific papers are dense.

Maybe a good idea would be to parse the abstract through an LLM to make it more understandable (maybe caching the results so it's not expensive)? Maybe also using some standard style, like starting with a couple of "dumbed-down" sentences of the article for the non-expert, and progressively explaining better.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Mm maybe running a local LLM for doing it would be a great idea, I'll try to do that and if it doesn't work well, I'll consider doing it with an API.

sgdpk2• 1 year ago

Cool :) I am a scientist, so having an easier way to parse the abstracts would be most welcome. Keep up the good work.

siktirlanibne• 1 year ago

Please don't follow the original comments suggestion; I feel that "easily digestible" is not compatible with what makes the idea shine in the first place. Your suggestion delegating such functionality to a local LLM is quite nice as a choice but adding it as a core functionality is quite antithetical to leverage the arXiv part, without which everything reverts back to a bland and generic whateverTok format.

Although the suggestion seems to be aware of the fact and provides both a good reasoning and a quite good solution (progressively deepening explanations), the implicit information and nuance lost in a summary by an unreliable LLM would undeniably turn this from a useful and interesting idea to a cool party trick no one uses for more than 5 minutes.

xnx2• 1 year ago

BRB going to create XTokTok so I can flip through TikTok for X clones.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

That has potential..

bee_rider• 1 year ago

Eventually WaylandTok will be ready.

nialv7• 1 year ago

Funny to think this is actually kind of similar to how ByteDance got their start. One of their first apps is called "Today's headlines", which is basically the TikTok format, but instead of short videos you are scrolling news article.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Wow, I didn't know that.. It's really ironic

ks2048• 1 year ago

I think you need AI to generate a video of a Gen-Z person talking about each, holding a little microphone. The paper could be the green-screened background.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Just by imagining it, it would be a lot of fun haha.

SonOfLilit• 1 year ago

You mean like this?

https://pdftobrainrot.org/

nosioptar• 1 year ago

That might be hilarious.

(I won't know for sure until I can find someone to explain the zoomer lingo.)

mccoyb• 1 year ago

This website has some of the worst mobile UI I’ve ever seen — blasted by ads, and full screen subscription model — before I could even read the pitch.

dvaun• 1 year ago

Might as well throw together HackerTok.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I'll add it as a source too.

password4321• 1 year ago

Can you show number of references as though they were number of favorites or likes?

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Yeah, I'll add it quickly.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Added! Try it out.

resonious• 1 year ago

Pretty weird UX to say "no papers found" before suddenly showing me a paper.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I'll try to improve that in a moment.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

I'm rolling a new version up now, it'll be live in 2 minutes.

qnleigh3• 1 year ago

This is legitimately useful! How does it track what a user has already viewed? Is it just showing articles from the current day in order? If I get to a day I've viewed previously, will it start showing me articles that I've already viewed once? I've been hesitant to touch my filter search term since I don't want to start over.

More customization to what papers it shows you could be very useful. You could keep track of user likes and employ a recommendation algorithm. Or better yet, the user could provide a custom prompt, which an LLM would use to filter and/or recommend papers.

Miguel07Code24• 1 year ago

Thanks! I don't track anything; it just shows sorted papers from the current date.

Maybe I'll implement a basic recommendation algorithm locally, because right now, an LLM implementation wouldn't be sustainable.

worksonmine• 1 year ago

an LLM implementation wouldn't be sustainable

Also not the right tool for the job. Not everything has to be a LLM.

Show HN: ArXivTok

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