Show HN: Scribefully is a portfolio/HN-style community for academics & pros

1 point

5 months ago

Hey HN! I'm a founder first, lawyer second. I understand code stacks well enough to explain them, but I've never been able to actually build software, and this has been a chip on my shoulder my entire life.

So Scribefully started as my first vibe coding project last summer. I'd read that building something with HN-style upvoting was a good learning project, and I was curious to try Claude Code.

The more I built, the more I realized I wanted what it evolved into: a single place to aggregate all my scattered professional work -– articles, papers, videos, code -– into one shareable page, with community upvoting baked in. Carrd and others offer portfolios, but none merge that with a social layer. Think HN meets a portfolio builder.

Example portfolios to check out: - https://scribefully.com/author/marc-hoag - https://scribefully.com/author/tawanda-kanhema

Browse everything without an account. Signup only required to comment or claim authorship. Completely free.

The hardest part was letting people use the site without signing up –- even submitting anonymously -– but claiming authorship later. This auth flow alone probably took 40-50 of my ~100 total hours. Race conditions are brutal, but of course you know that already.

Tech: Next.js 15, React 19, Supabase, Tailwind, Render. Built with Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex.

Side effect: I got so frustrated with context window issues (and secrets management) that I built this: https://github.com/marchoag/Claude-Code-Setup-Wizard-MD

I've shared Scribefully with academics and professionals since last July; figured it was time to Show HN.

Building this –- and an iOS app I shipped last week (FloodRoute for tracking flooded roads) –- has been kind of emotional. You can't imagine what it means to finally build software after years of only understanding it.

What a fantastic, magical time to be alive.