What's moving through AI, ranked by lead time.
Radar is an hourly index of what's moving through the AI ecosystem, ranked by where each story sits on the lead-time gradient: papers become repos become community threads become analysis. The earlier a story is caught, the more head start you have before the crowd. Every row carries its receipts — which source saw it first, how many independent sources have it, how long ago — so the ranking explains itself. It's the public face of the same pipeline that feeds Vlad's Newsletter.
snapshot 12 Aug 2026, 12:01 UTC · 67/78 feeds live · 19,041 tracked since 12 Jun
- 1 Show HN: DejaVu – instant replay for Windows that survives crashes (160 KB exe) github.com · 6m
- 2 Show HN: A deterministic gate that checks agent tool calls before they run github.com · 6m
- 3 Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents kidscreen.app · 18m
- 4 Show HN: The Digital Junk Drawer – a shoebox of tiny web apps the-digital-junk-drawer.vercel.app · 18m
- 5 Show HN: A voice layer over my whole computer: shell, agents, mouse, keyboard github.com · 24m
310 stories entered the watched feeds in the last 24 hours — 25 in papers, 7 in repos, 253 in community, 25 in analysis. The scored board skews to Community (40 of 40). No stories are corroborated across independent sources yet, and the median lead across the ledger's 23 observed fires is 4h — measured, not estimated. Freshest receipt, 18h ago: caught in Hacker News front 4h before Stratechery carried it. The oldest survivor has held the board for 6h.
- Community → Analysis +4h lead Hacker News front first · then Stratechery 18h agoNvidia's Risky Business
- Repos → Community +35h lead GitHub Trending Python first · then Show HN 45h agosuperlinked/sie
- Community → Analysis +2h lead Hacker News front first · then OpenAI News 5d agoResponding to the next frontier of critical cyber capabilities
- 1Show HN: DejaVu – instant replay for Windows that survives crashes (160 KB exe)github.comLive Signal Community · 6m old · via Show HN
- 2Show HN: A deterministic gate that checks agent tool calls before they rungithub.comLive Signal Community · 6m old · via Show HN
- 3Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parentskidscreen.appLive Signal Community · 18m old · via Show HN
- 4Show HN: The Digital Junk Drawer – a shoebox of tiny web appsthe-digital-junk-drawer.vercel.appLive Signal Community · 18m old · via Show HN
- 5Show HN: A voice layer over my whole computer: shell, agents, mouse, keyboardgithub.comLive Signal Community · 24m old · via Show HN
- 6Deadbugz: Currently Active MCP Supply-Chain Campaignpillar.securityLive Signal Community · 30m old · via Lobsters
- 7
- 8Show HN: FlightWifi – Know if a flight's Wi-Fi can hold a video callchromewebstore.google.comLive Signal Community · 1h old · via Show HN
- 9Show HN: A declarative, SwiftUI toolkit that renders to <canvas>pixdeo.github.ioLive Signal Community · 1h old · via Show HN
- 10Show HN: BentoDesk – Elegant Windows desktop organizer powered by Rustgithub.comLive Signal Community · 1h old · via Show HN
- 11Show HN: Gribble – Pixelated pixel art editor in the browsergribble.appLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Show HN
- 12Show HN: Huntclaw – a fast (maybe fastest) simple find-and-replace utilitygithub.comLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Show HN
- 13Show HN: Visual knowledge graphs using Ollama and Embeddingsgithub.comLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Show HN
- 14Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementationwoxi.ad-si.comLive Signal Community · 2h old · seen in 2 sources
- 15Tim Gowers: What sort of maths are LLMs good at?gowers.wordpress.comLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Hacker News front
- 16Show HN: Salary raise calculator with tax and inflation estimatessalaryincreasecalculator.appLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Show HN
- 17Facebook is paying controversial creators to produce rage-bait contentabc.net.auLive Signal Community · 2h old · via Hacker News front
- 18Beef and dairy drive 41% of biodiversity damage linked to global farmlandoxfordmartin.ox.ac.ukLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Hacker News front
- 19Show HN: Craft (Minecraft clone) rewritten in Rust under a $120 budgeted (Grok)zozo123.github.ioLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Show HN
- 20Show HN: Replaced news reading with two tiny editions a day, then made it publiccutthroat.newsLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Show HN
- 21Dutch Train Map Simulatorspoorkaart.zaza.devLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Hacker News front
- 22Show HN: Eclipse locator: find the best place to see the solar eclipsejdlm.infoLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Show HN
- 23Show HN: SoundGate – Real-time note detection and AI tutor for guitarsoundgate.aiLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Show HN
- 24
- 25Show HN: YOalphabet – A 4-bit isomorphic graphical interface systemgithub.comLive Signal Community · 3h old · via Show HN
- 26
- 27The Closure of the Internet (Research Linkpost)lesswrong.comLive Signal Community · 4h old · via LessWrong
- 28Show HN: XO – Open-Source Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe Web Gameultimatexo.comLive Signal Community · 4h old · via Show HN
- 29
- 30Show HN: Boss Says – endless office platformerxmonader.github.ioLive Signal Community · 4h old · via Show HN
- 31Launch HN: Discovered Materials (YC P26) – AI agents to discover new materialsdiscoveredmaterials.comLive Signal Community · 4h old · via Hacker News front
- 32Show HN: Brave DevTools MCP – Control Brave from Claude, Codex, and Cursorgithub.comLive Signal Community · 5h old · via Show HN
- 33
- 34Show HN: Execution Intelligence AI Acceleratorgeekyants.comLive Signal Community · 5h old · via Show HN
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38Show HN: WhatsApp Contact Exporterchromewebstore.google.comLive Signal Community · 6h old · via Show HN
- 39Show HN: Pantheon. Production-ready scientific workflows for the Horus Runtimegithub.comLive Signal Community · 6h old · via Show HN
- 40
How Radar works
The gradient. Stories travel through the AI ecosystem in a rough sequence: they appear first in papers (arXiv, Hugging Face) or repos (GitHub), then surface in community discussion (Hacker News, Lobsters, LessWrong), then get interpreted in analysis (operator newsletters and essays). Radar ranks by where a story sits on that gradient. The earlier it is caught, the more lead time you have before it reaches consensus. The spectrum at the top of the page shows the last 24 hours of that flow — every story that entered the watched feeds, counted at the station where it first appeared.
The score. Each story gets a recency-decayed signal score. Every source tier carries a weight and a half-life, so live signal moves fast and fades fast while analysis sources move slowly and stay relevant longer. A story scores higher when two or more independent source families carry it — corroboration, not popularity, which is why five feeds of the same site count once. A small bonus applies when a story has visibly climbed the gradient. Stories past their tier's maximum age expire from the board.
Heating and lead time. A story is heating when it has surfaced in two or more independent source families. When the same story is observed first at an earlier stage and later at a higher one, Radar records the gap in hours — for example, seen on arXiv fourteen hours before it reached the Hacker News front page. That gap is the reader's lead time, and it is a measured span, never an estimate.
The honesty rule. Every value on this page is an observed fact from the feed log — which source carried a story, when, and how many. Radar makes no claim about what a story means; that is the newsletter's job. When a reading does not exist yet — no stories heating, nothing upstream — the page says so rather than inventing one.
Questions
- What is the lead-time gradient?
- The path a story travels through the AI ecosystem: it appears first in papers (arXiv, Hugging Face) or repos (GitHub), then surfaces in community discussion (Hacker News, Lobsters, LessWrong), then gets interpreted in analysis (operator newsletters, essays). Radar ranks by where a story sits on that path and how far it has travelled.
- What does the lead-time spectrum show?
- Every story that entered Radar’s watched feeds in the last 24 hours, bucketed by the gradient station where it first appeared — papers, repos, community, or analysis. It is the day’s flow through the whole watched ecosystem, not the composition of the scored top 40 below it: a paper counts in the flow the moment it is observed, even while its signal score is still too low to earn a board row.
- How is Radar ranked?
- By a recency-decayed signal score: each source tier has a weight and a half-life, a story scores higher when independent source families corroborate it, and a small bonus applies when a story has visibly climbed the gradient. Stories past their tier max age expire from the board. Popularity on a single site is not corroboration.
- How often does Radar update?
- Hourly. The page is server-rendered and a frozen snapshot is archived at a dated permalink each day, so the record is both current and citable.
- What does "heating" mean?
- A story has surfaced in two or more independent source families — not two feeds of the same site. It is corroboration, not popularity.
- What is the lead time reading?
- When the same story is observed first at an earlier gradient stage and later at a higher one, Radar records the gap in hours — for example, seen on arXiv 14 hours before it reached the Hacker News front page. That gap is your lead time. The fires ledger is rolling: a fire ages out with its story, roughly 45 days after the story’s last sighting, so the median lead always describes recent motion.
- What sources does Radar watch?
- Around 78 verified feeds across five tiers: live signal (Hacker News, Lobsters, GitHub trending, arXiv, Hugging Face papers), AI labs and firehose blogs, operator newsletters, contrarian essayists, and primary analysis. The registry is curated; aggregators are used only to corroborate a story, never to be the first to report it.
- Is Radar the newsletter?
- No. Radar shows what is moving; the newsletter tells you what to do about it. Radar is the free, public funnel; Vlad’s Newsletter is the weekly operator read.
- The spectrum band
- A filled flame tick is an early, lead-time-rich stage; a hollow tick is a later stage; a hollow ring on an empty span is a station with nothing on it yet.
- Signal class
- The tier chip: Live Signal moves fast and decays fast; analysis sources stay relevant longer. The ranker weights each accordingly.
- heating
- The same story in two or more independent source families — not two feeds of one site.
- seen in / via
- How many families carried it, or the single source that did.
Once a week, the operator read on what actually changed and the move it calls for. No digest, no hype.
Read the newsletter →