On a current WikiTok searching run, I encountered entries on subjects like SX-Window (a GUI for the Sharp X68000 series of computer systems), Xantocillin (“the initially reported natural item discovered to include the isocyanide practical group), Lorenzo Ghiberti (an Italian Renaissance carver from Florence), the William Wheeler House in Texas, and the city of Krautheim, Germany– none of which I understood existed before the session began.

How WikiTok removed

The initial concept for WikiTok stemmed from designer Tyler Angert on Monday night when he tweeted, “insane project idea: all of wikipedia on a single, scrollable page.” Bloomberg Beta VC James Cham responded, “Even better, an infinitely scrolling Wikipedia page based on whatever you are interested in next?” and Angert created “WikiTok” in a follow-up post.

Early the next early morning, at 12:28 am, author Grant Slatton quote-tweeted the WikiTok conversation, which’s where Gemal can be found in. “I saw it from [Slatton’s] quote retweet,” he informed Ars. “I immediately thought, ‘Wow I can build an MVP [minimum viable product] and this could take off.'”

Gemal began his job at 12:30 am, and with assistance from AI coding tools like Anthropic’s Claude and Cursor, he completed a model by 2 am and published the outcomes on X. Someone later on revealed WikiTok on ycombinator’s Hacker News, where it topped the website’s list of everyday news products.

“The entire thing is only several hundred lines of code, and Claude wrote the vast majority of it,” Gemal informed Ars. “AI helped me ship really really fast and just capitalize on the initial viral tweet asking for Wikipedia with scrolling.”

Gemal published the code for WikiTok on GitHub, so anybody can customize or add to the task. Now, the web app supports 14 languages, post sneak peeks, and short article sharing on both desktop and mobile internet browsers. New functions might get here as factors include them. It’s based upon a tech stack that consists of React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Vite.

Therefore far, he is staying with his vision of a totally free method to delight in Wikipedia without being tracked and targeted. “I have no grand plans for some sort of insane monetized hyper-calculating TikTok algorithm,” Gemal informed us. “It is anti-algorithmic, if anything.“