rishikeshs

There is a product I really like. Love using it, love tinkering with it, and I buy into the overall vision. Founder has also always been pretty respectful publicly.

But I recently came across some of their political views and now I just feel a bit weird about it. Nothing changed about the product, just how I feel.

Do you separate the product from the founder? Does this change whether you keep using something? Or only if it starts showing up in the product?

Don’t ask what the product is. It doesn’t matter and I’m not going to share.

Hi HN,

I've been writing on Substack for about 5 years with close to 3,000 subscribers. The platform has grown a lot but the analytics have barely changed, and there's still no API support.

I like to explore data, and Substack lets you export some analytics as CSVs from the creator dashboard. I've been doing that for a while, mostly with local scripts, but realized this could be useful to other writers as a simple local tool.

So I built StackStats. A better analytics app for Substack Writers.

You export your CSVs, point it at the folder, and everything populates. Growth sources, engagement scoring, cohort retention, bot-filtered open rates (GoogleImageProxy alone inflated my opens by ~51%), best day/hour to post, and more.

There's an optional AI feature for deeper insights. Totally optional, but why not go with the hype :D. You can use any provider (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter) or run Ollama fully offline. BYOK, no lock-in.

Built with Electron and vanilla JS. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. All data stays on your machine.

You can see a live demo with my actual newsletter data here: https://demo.stackstats.app

Happy to answer questions about the app!

I’m now in UAE which is affected by war. Woke up to an alert yesterday night and was wondering how this works. Any good write ups on its technical side?