I built an AI newsletter that explains why it picked each story - looking for honest feedback.
Hey IH - my first post here.
Full-time network infra engineer, spent the last few months building devdigest.io in my spare time: a daily email curating AI/tech news from 90+ sources into one personalized digest.
Two things I haven't seen elsewhere: every story has a one-line "why you're seeing this" (topic match, a source you've upvoted, or editorial ranking - no black box), and downvoting a story asks why, then actually reweights future picks.
Current state: a handful of subscribers, mostly friends who signed up as a favor rather than real usage - so I genuinely don't know yet if this holds up with strangers. That's the real reason I'm posting here.
Stack: Python/Flask, MySQL, GPT-4o-mini for ranking + tier-aware rewriting, self-hosted on a small VPS. €50/year after a free 14-day trial.
Live sample: devdigest.io/sample - try it: https://devdigest.io/?ref=indiehackers
Appreciate any feedback, especially the critical kind.
Hi! I tested the signup flow and eventually got access to the preferences and past-digests pages through the email links. Everything appears to be active, but as a new user I found the flow confusing:
After confirming the trial, the homepage still showed “Start free 14-day trial”
The “See a real issue” page remained blurred and still asked me to sign up
“My Past Digests” required another email link, and the archive was empty because the first digest had not arrived yet.
I initially thought my subscription had not been recognized. It may help to clarify that the sample remains gated, that account access is email-link based, and when the first digest will arrive.
Also, I couldn't find a way to unsubscribe from the newsletter; perhaps it's done via email, but the process remains confusing.
Hey Ian, firstly I really appreciate you actually testing the signup flow end to end and writing this up, this is exactly the kind of feedback that's hard to get otherwise.
Went through every point:
Homepage still saying "Start free trial" after confirming - fixed. Confirming now takes you straight to your own preferences page (topics, story count, etc. already showing what you picked) with a "you're confirmed" banner, instead of dumping you back on the marketing homepage with nothing to prove it registered.
/sample staying gated and asking you to sign up again - fixed, for the normal path: from your own preferences or archive page, the "See a real issue" link now recognizes you and shows the real thing with no gate. Worth being upfront that there's no login/account system here by design (no tracking, no cookies) - so that recognition only travels through that specific link. Click something else first (like the logo) and it reverts to the anonymous view, since there's genuinely nothing stored anywhere to remember you by. Decided that's an acceptable tradeoff to keep the no-cookies posture rather than build real accounts for it.
Empty archive, no explanation-fixed. It now says plainly that you just signed up and the first digest hasn't landed yet, instead of just looking blank.
No way to unsubscribe - you were right, there genuinely wasn't one anywhere on the site before your first email arrived. Added a direct Unsubscribe link on the preferences page.
My digest is aimed to fire at 7am (ish) of the subscribers time as it aims to be the "morning coffee&news" experience.
Your core point - "I thought my subscription hadn't been recognized" was the real bug underneath all of these, so thanks for naming it that clearly. Let me know if any of this is still confusing once you look again.
(bumped a few extra trial days as a little token of appreciation) Cheers!
I'm curious what would convince you this is solving a fundamentally different problem from every other AI news digest, rather than just presenting similar information in a different format.
Honestly, the underlying problem (too much AI/tech news) is the same one everyone's solving, so I won't pretend otherwise.
Where I think it differs is the mechanism, not just the format: it's not a static algorithm applied the same way to everyone - every downvote with a reason (wrong topic / wrong source / too shallow) actually reweights what you see next, so two subscribers with the same topics can end up with visibly different picks after a couple weeks. And every story shows why it was picked, so you can actually audit that instead of trusting a black box.
What would convince you : try it for a week or two, downvote a few things with a reason, and see if the next day's picks actually shift.
Appreciate the context.
Would be good to continue the conversation outside the thread.
What's the best email to reach you on?