Comment by bubbamack

Back to stories Open in a window
Comment

Comment by bubbamack

Hi HN, I'm Harold, founder of The Notifier.

We built this to solve a few of problems I run into:

- I get so many scam texts that now I hate getting any promo texts even from businesses and orgs I like

- A lot of events, conferences and orgs want me to dowload their app mainly so they can send notifications to my phone, like a last minute update. I don't mind the notifications but I do mind downloading their app when all the info I need is already on their website.

- Sometimes you just want to broadcast message - one way with no replies. When my sons played sports, sometimes the coach would text gym changes to the players and parents in a group chat, their message would get lost in the group chat chaos and players would show up late. Or worse, the coach would send an email which hardly anyone checks regularly - especially the players.

The Notifier is 2 things:

1. A SaaS platform that lets you broadcast alerts/messages to groups of people.

2. A personal alert app: no signup, no phone number, no PII. You can create personal alerts/reminders or join a group anonymously. And you can pause, resume, or leave a group with one tap.

The demo page has two live groups running on the same infrastructure our customers use, so you can get an idea of how these one-way, broadcast alerts work:

GitHub Incidents: alerts when GitHub's status page reports an incident. Indie Hackers Case Studies: alerts when Indie Hackers publishes a new case study

The Show HN title says GitHub Incidents but this isn't a GitHub-specific tool. It a general delivery layer. The GitHub Incidents is the type of alert a community organization can send to residents, or a conference can send to attendees, for last-minute updates. The IH Case Studies is the type of alert an online store can use to announce an upcoming drop, or a company can use to pre-register customers for an upcoming product launch.

Currently, our platform lets you manually send alerts. We had some devs ask about API access, mostly folks who wanted an alternative to A2P SMS without collecting phone numbers, and we are currently working on that - so these GitHub and IH alerts are meant to show how our service can be used in a product or website.

Happy to answer anything.

Replies bubbamack · 2026-08-30
Open on HN
Loading the discussion…

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com.

    Help

    Keyboard

    j / k
    Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
    Enter
    Read the marked story in the article reader.
    ]
    Read the next story in the same article-reader applet. Back returns to the previous story.
    p
    Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
    n / N
    Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
    c
    Collapse or expand that comment.
    f
    Hide or show the story list.
    Esc
    Close a menu or this help.
    Access key m
    Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
    ?
    Show this help.

    Windows

    Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Use Window > New reader window to open an empty reader, or a story row's Open in new reader window button to compare articles. Docked readers keep their articles when you select another story from the sidebar. Minimized readers can be restored and reused for their site. A window's Next story link reads on down the list in the same window.

    A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

    While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

    The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

    The list

    The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

    Browsing view

    View > Windowed and View > Classic select the browsing view and save your default in this browser. Window view reuses a reader for each feed. Classic view opens stories and applets as pages. Open as a page and Open in a window are one-off actions that do not change your saved default. Direct page links always open as pages.

    Applets

    The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

    They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser.

    Find

    Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

    About

    YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Pins, hidden stories, filters and layout are kept in this browser only.

    Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.