Show HN: I built a site where strangers leave kind voice notes for each other (opens in new tab)

(kindvoicenotes.com)

59 pointsthepaulthomson18d ago39 comments

39 comments

Hey! So the backstory here is pretty simple. I was going through a rough patch earlier this year and I kept thinking about how weird it is that we have all this technology for connecting people but most of it makes you feel worse not better. And I had this moment where a friend left me a voice note, just a short one, and it genuinely shifted my whole day. Something about hearing someone’s actual voice, the tone and the pauses and all that, it just lands differently than text.

So I built this. You record a voice note between 5 and 60 seconds saying something kind, and it goes into a pool. A stranger somewhere presses play and hears you. Thats it. No accounts, no profiles, no sign up. Completely anonymous.

The moderation side was the interesting engineering problem. Every note gets transcribed by Whisper then a second model classifies it into kind/unsure/unkind/not_a_note. Only “kind” notes ever get served to listeners. I made the decision to run moderation inline during upload rather than batching it, so theres never a window where unmoderated audio is just sitting around waiting. The whole lifecycle gets logged in an append-only event table with request IDs so if something weird slips through I can trace exactly what happend.

Its a pretty standard Next.js + Postgres + S3 setup otherwise. Nothing too clever on the infra side, the interesting stuff is all in the moderation pipeline and figuring out what “kind” actually means when you’re trying to get a model to judge it reliably.

One thing I’m really curious to get feedback on: after you record you get a “ripple link” which is basically your only receipt. You can come back and see how many people heard your note and any anonymous reactions they left. I’m not sure yet if this is compelling enough or if I need to build more of a feedback loop there.

The site is live, you can record or listen right now. Zero friction. Would really love this community’s feedback on the product and the technical approach.

yodon18d ago

Pretty sure if this gets any traction at all, it will immediately turn into a mix of Chatroulette and crypto scams.

See also Mythic Quest's discussion of TTP.[0] User Generated Content is only your friend if you have the resources to moderate it.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_xqyIMwbew

thepaulthomsonOP18d ago

I figured there was quite a big surface here for misuse. But I've done my best to curb that. You're right, that if this scales, the compute to oversee moderation would be inaccessible for a solo hobbyist like me. I don't have a huge audience, so I think for now, at least, the moderation is in scope.

Also MQ is one of my all-time favourite shows (mainly first seasons, it kinda lost steam in the later ones).

Bender17d ago

And assorted AI learning and mimicking peoples voices for nefarious purposes.

thepaulthomsonOP17d ago

Good callout

whoamii17d ago

Perfect use case for an LLM

Sat_P17d ago

I love this because when I've been down in various periods of my life, after sharing a problem with someone close, one thing they said made all the difference. This has happened to me many times after getting kind words from family and friends. I agree that this will be ruined if it gains traction, but it should be great if it remains not too well known (ironically).

thepaulthomsonOP17d ago

Wow, thanks for sharing. Yeah, it's amazing how much of an impact a little pick-me-up can have.

As this continues to gain traction, I'll just keep chipping away at keep it safe and people protected. All I can do for now is take it one step at a time and keep solving problems as they appear.

Again, thanks a ton for checking it out!!

dokdev18d ago

Nice Project! You can also keep track of the recordings that the user already listened and pick the random from the ones user hasn't listened yet.

thepaulthomsonOP18d ago

Thanks! That’s a great addition. I’ll work on adding that. Appreciate the feedback.

Yestas17d ago

Cool project! It would be nice to have a way to listen to more recordings of specific persons. And maybe have personal profile with little bio.

harvenstar16d ago

Maybe a middle ground — let people pick a pseudonym and a one-line tagline, but no real identity. You keep the warmth of anonymity while still letting listeners find voices they connected with.