How My Weekend Project Went Viral on Hacker News

Sometimes the best ideas come from simple problems. A couple of months ago, I was annoyed by something most developers deal with. I never knew how my website links would look when I shared them online. Would the image show up on Twitter? Does it look good on Facebook? What about WhatsApp?

Instead of checking each site manually (which takes forever), I decided to build a tool to fix this problem. What started as a fun weekend project ultimately went viral on Hacker News.

What I Built: MetaCheck

MetaCheck is a simple web app that shows you how your website links will look on different platforms. Just paste in any URL and see how it appears on Google, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and more - all at once.

The idea was simple: help people see their link previews without having to post test links everywhere.

What It Does

The app is pretty straightforward:

• Shows previews on 9 platforms - See your link on Google, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Telegram, DuckDuckGo, Discord, and Mastodon

• Gets your website info automatically - Pulls your title, description, image, and favicon

• Fixes URLs for you - Adds https:// and cleans up messy links

• Works on mobile - Looks good on phones and computers

• Shows helpful errors - Tells you what went wrong if something breaks

How I Built It

I kept the tech simple:

• Next.js - For the website framework

• TypeScript - To catch bugs early

• Tailwind CSS - For quick, clean styling

• React Query - To load data efficiently

• Cheerio - To read the website HTML on the server

Here's how it works: You paste a URL, my server grabs the webpage, reads all the important info (like title and image), then shows you how that info looks on each platform.

Going Viral

I didn't expect much when I posted it on Hacker News. But the project hit the front page and stayed there for hours. Thousands of people visited the site, and the comments were amazing.

Developers shared their own tips, suggested new features, and told me they'd been looking for exactly this tool. It was cool to see how many people had the same problem I did.

The Response

The numbers were crazy:

• Thousands of visitors in one day

• Front page of Hacker News

• Tens of comments and discussions

What I Learned

Building MetaCheck taught me:

1. Simple ideas work best - The problem wasn't hard, but everyone had it

2. Weekend projects can become big - Don't overthink it, just build

3. Developers help each other - The Hacker News community was super supportive

4. Link previews matter - Way more people care about this than I thought

The Code

Everything is open source on GitHub. The code is clean and easy to understand. If you want to add new platforms, improve how it works, or just learn from it, it's all there.

Key parts:

• Server gets website data safely

• Handles broken links well

• Caches results so it's fast

• Each platform has its own preview design

What's Next

The viral response showed me people want tools that solve real problems. MetaCheck was just the start - it reminded me how much I love building useful things.

Ideas for version 2:

• Check multiple URLs at once

• Compare how previews looked before vs now

• Let developers use it in their own apps

• Add more platforms

• Give tips to make previews better

But the biggest thing I learned is that I need to keep building. There are so many small problems we deal with every day that could be fixed with simple tools.

I'm back to building, and I can't wait to see what happens with the next weekend project. Sometimes the best tools come from fixing your own problems and sharing them with everyone.

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Check out MetaCheck at metacheck.appstate.co and see the code on GitHub. Read the Hacker News discussion that started it all. Built with ❤️ in a weekend.