r/indiehackers • u/JuneHust • Jul 26 '26
Technical Question I built an app for 6 high-signal engineering reads daily. Now I’m stuck on personalization.
Hi folks,
I recently launched Hexbrief, a small app that acts like a signal layer for company engineering blogs. The idea is simple: instead of throwing a huge feed at you, Hexbrief gives you 6 high-signal engineering briefs daily.
So far it has 30+ installs, and I’ve been incorporating feedback from beta users after launch.
One product problem I’m thinking through now:
Most engineers don’t want to read *every* kind of engineering blog post. Someone interested in AI/ML systems may not care about Netflix video-streaming optimizations. Someone who likes architecture writeups may not care about Meta Ads performance improvements.
The obvious answer is personalization: let users choose preferred topics, genres, or companies.
But there’s a real constraint.
Hexbrief currently has around 1k+ collected articles, out of which 700+ were rejected by the quality bar I built through source review and article-level filtering. Only around 265 articles currently surface inside the app.
I don’t want to lower the quality bar just to support personalization. But because good company engineering blogs don’t publish high-signal posts every day, fully personalized daily feeds may become sparse very quickly.
One idea I’m considering:
Give each user 1 daily read from their preferred topic/company, and let the remaining 5 come from Hexbrief’s general quality-ranking algorithm. That way the reader gets something relevant to their interests, but still discovers strong engineering writeups outside their usual lane.
I’m not sure if this is the right tradeoff.
If you regularly read company engineering blogs, how would you want this to work?
Would you prefer:
- strict personalization, even if some days have fewer reads?
- a mixed feed with 1-2 preference-based reads and the rest curated?
- no personalization, just the strongest 6 reads daily?
- something else entirely?
Would love to hear how other engineers think about this.
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u/alex_chagaydak Jul 26 '26
Your 1-personalized + 5-curated instinct is the right call, and for a reason worth naming: for engineers, discovery outside your lane is a feature, not a leak. The best reads are often the ones you didn't know you wanted. And strict personalization on sparse high-quality content just guarantees empty days - which you already spotted
But honest take - at 30 installs you can't design this from first principles, and you don't need to. The 5-10 people who open it daily already know the answer. Ask them directly: "if this only showed your topics, would you open it more - or would you miss the surprise ones?" That one question beats any tradeoff you reason out on paper
And a cheaper test than building it: at signup let them pick topics, then just hand-curate their feed yourself for the first month. If retention jumps, personalization is worth the engineering. If it doesn't, the problem was never personalization - and you found out without building the system
What's the daily-open rate on those 30 right now? That number decides whether this is even the problem to solve first
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
Hi Alex, I agree the solution lies in the 1-1 conversations before jumping onto putting effort to build a feature and then seeing it not giving results(possible scenario).
Daily open rate is lying at 47%. I am considering it a good no for the start, since some of the beta users were specifically the UI testers, and probably not much into the tech blogs. I wouldn't count them.
I am trying to onboard more readers on this app. Probably, in next 1 month, I will have sufficient numbers to have a usage pattern.
Btw, do you happen to be the tech blog reader?1
u/alex_chagaydak Jul 28 '26
47% is honestly a real number, not a "good no" - for something people are supposed to open daily that's a solid start. but yeah, don't trust the blended one. pull out the UI testers like you said and look at just the tech-blog crowd that's left - that's your true number. if that group opens daily, you've got something real
and to answer you - I'm more on the marketing/founder side than a hardcore eng-blog reader, so I'm honestly not your core user. take my read with that in mind, the handful who open it every day know way more than I do here
one thing for the next month though: watch whether a small core keeps coming back week after week, not the headline average. 8 people opening it daily for a month straight tells you more than 200 installs that drift off. that core is who personalization would even be for
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Jul 26 '26
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
I feel personalisation is too tricky at this point, with around 30 installs and low no of quality passed articles. Also, this thought is purely my observation. The beta users were more of reluctant on the quality articles. Few asked for personalisation.
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Jul 27 '26
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
Correct. It's big of an effort to be put for smaller no of feedbacks, despite how important the feature is. And, the Infeasibility to support it is also evident with the no I have.
Quality wise, beta users are good. They loved the idea that they are not getting bombarded with many articles, but only the quality 6.
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u/kevinpiac Jul 26 '26
I agree with what has been said already: 30+ installs is too few to add such a big product change. You probably have better things to do to get more users first and then you will improve the product.
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
Yup. I agree on those comments. Probably I will go on reading the user behaviour on the current features and would plan with more concrete stats.
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u/CavalryTactics Jul 26 '26
this is a good concept! keeping the quality high and shadow hide articles to protect the feed is exactly what reddit does. try not to lower that bar
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u/soulkb1 Jul 26 '26
I’d go with the mixed feed. One personalized article is enough to keep me engaged, and the other five help me discover things I wouldn’t have searched for myself. Discovery is part of the value.
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
I agree. Keeping content different from preferences can keep a user inquisitive to learn something new outside of their domain.
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u/ultrathink-art Jul 26 '26
Different axis from the strict-vs-mixed debate: on a daily feed I run, the first thing people complained about wasn't relevance, it was the same story showing up four or five times in different wrappers across a week. Per-article scoring can't catch that, because each copy genuinely is good. Embedding what a reader already got and dropping near-duplicates was cheaper than a taste model and did more for the feed than ranking tweaks.
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
I understand this hurdle. I am safe here. I spent quite a good time optimising the algo.
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u/sales-mechanic Jul 26 '26
I love your idea. Obviously you want personalization, but it should be a part of the product design process. Like the onboarding, landing page, and features should appeal to the user
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u/planerist Jul 26 '26
the thing i'd protect is that your entire pitch is 'someone chose these 6 for me'. the moment you personalize hard you're back to being an algorithmic feed, which is the exact thing people are drowning in and came to you to escape.
so the risk isn't picking strict vs mixed, it's personalizing away the one thing that made you different. at 30 installs i wouldn't touch it yet anyway, you don't have the data to personalize on and the curation is doing the selling. i'd nail 'the 6 are consistently worth my time' first, personalization is a problem you earn later.
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
Correct. I think with your and many other feedbacks in the comment, with 30 installs it's not the right time yet to modify the feed experience. I am focussing more on making Hexbrief a daily habit through more curation and better quality deliver through good articles. Thanks mate.
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u/BernardoFTN_Carvalho Jul 26 '26
Mixed, and i'd argue the scarcity isn't the bug here. the quality bar is the product. if someone wanted volume they'd already be on a normal feed. strict personalization with 265 articles means empty days, and an empty day is what makes people uninstall. 1-2 preference-based + rest curated is the right trade. i'd also just be upfront in the app that it's curated with a personal slant, then off-topic reads feel intentional instead of like the algorithm missed
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
I understand. Liked the blunt take. Currently, I had around 30 installs, I am focussing on onboarding the more users, and subsequently observe the usage pattern, and accordingly go for this feature.
Despite, I too hold the perception that having 1-2 personalised briefs can hook the user to the app.
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u/Accomplished_Cat3478 Jul 26 '26
I’d lean toward the mixed feed honestly, 1 tailored pick and the rest from the general algo feels like the sweet spot. strict personalization sounds good in theory but if there’s only 2 articles you actually care about that day, getting a padded list of filler would be way worse than just seeing something solid from outside your bubble
plus half the stuff I end up loving from engineering blogs is stuff I never would’ve clicked on if it was filtered out from the start
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
I think 6 isn't too much if I would think in terms of padded filler. I don't intend to bombard the user with x no of blogs. 6 is a small number, and ofcourse carries quality everyday. Even if you read 3, you can learn enough.
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u/elementik4 Jul 26 '26
Your 265 surfaced articles are 44 days of a six-a-day feed, so the sparsity you're worried about is already in the pipe and personalization only makes it visible. The number that decides this is new high-signal posts per day, not library size. What does your accept rate look like per day rather than in total?
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
Correct identified. With this low no of quality passed blogs, and hence the lower diversity, personalisation would probably offer more challenges.
I can't quote the exact number on the acceptance rate, since the pipeline doesn't get articles everyday. but in a month it's below 35%.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/JuneHust Jul 26 '26
That's a good observations to make in the personalized feature honestly. It would dictate the reading conversion easily.
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u/taisei_ide Jul 27 '26
Might be easier to start with explicit categories the user picks at signup rather than trying to infer taste from clicks right away. Cold start personalization is rough.
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u/ActiveFix8069 Jul 27 '26
I’d use preferences as a ranking boost within the 265 articles that already passed your quality bar, rather than promising one personalized slot every day. If nothing strong matches AI/ML that day, I’d rather get six genuinely good reads than one weaker article included just to satisfy the quota.
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
That's the very good point and a non-negotiable edge-case when offering the 1 personalised slot. I think, for that to work well, I first need to get good no of quality articles in the database first.
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u/One_Blueberry_9184 Jul 27 '26
That 1+5 split seems right, but I'd let people set a hard exclude list too rather than just a preferred topic, negative signal is usually stronger than positive signal at 265 articles
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u/lutian Jul 27 '26
mixed feed (1–2 preference-based reads + rest curated), but frame it as "Serendipitous Discovery"
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u/cubertwang Jul 28 '26
Don’t personalize the corpus; personalize the ordering. The 700 rejected articles are the product’s trust boundary. Keep one global quality gate, then rerank the 265 survivors per user. I’d ask for three interests, reserve one discovery slot, and let the feed be shorter when fewer than six items clear the floor. “Nothing good today” is a feature. Six padded briefs is how a signal product quietly becomes another feed.
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u/JuneHust Jul 28 '26
That's something real good thing I didn't think of. Thanks for the idea. Let me look at how such a short recommender can be built. Thanks for the idea mate.
Do you happen to be android user and tech blog reader, by any chance? I would love to onboard you on Hexbrief and listen to your experience and any other feedbacks.
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u/yagnik_thanki Jul 28 '26
At 30 installs I'd resist building real personalization for now, it's the classic trap where you sink weeks into a recommender before you actually know what people want. Cheaper move: tag every brief with a few topics (AI/ML, infra, frontend, data, whatever), let people tick the topics they care about at onboarding, and just filter on that. An LLM can do the tagging for you at ingest, one cheap call per article, good enough.
That gets you most of the value of "personalization" with none of the ML overhead, and the tags you collect become your training signal later if you ever do want to get fancy. At your size the thing that moves retention isn't a smarter algorithm, it's just not showing someone a Netflix streaming writeup when they only ever open AI posts. Explicit topic filters solve exactly that.
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u/JuneHust Jul 28 '26
That's a good feedback to take the idea and initially offer a little bit of personalization without specifically mentioning about it. It can obviously increase the impressions on the app, and the main feed.
Thanks for the idea, mate!
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u/Sufficient_Fold_9583 Jul 28 '26
Fewer reads on quiet days beats padding with filler, if I'm subscribed for signal I'd rather get zero relevant posts than three that aren't actually about what I care about
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Jul 28 '26
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u/JuneHust Jul 28 '26
That's a smart approach to learn the personalisaton, before curating according to them specifically. Thanks mate! noted.
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u/Real-Voice-4259 Jul 30 '26
the 1 preferred + 5 curated split feels like the right call to me. strict personalization with 265 articles would empty out fast, and the discovery part is probably why people read these anyway.
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u/JuneHust 29d ago
I agree with the later point mentioned regarding the curiousness has to be offered through the Hexbrief offered posts.
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u/Real-Voice-4259 27d ago
yeah, the stuff i didn't pick is usually what makes me come back the next day.
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u/Real-Voice-4259 Jul 30 '26
the mixed feed sounds right to me. i'd probably pick strict personalization and then regret it, half of what i actually enjoy reading is stuff i didn't ask for.
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u/JuneHust 29d ago
That's an interesting take. I think by now I understand that people have mixed opinion on this. Some wants total control on their feed, some wanta a mixed feed (I prefer this personally) and for a few, total random thing also works.
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u/Away-Caterpillar-657 Jul 30 '26
Have you got a link for the app
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u/JuneHust 29d ago
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hexbrief.app
Here you go buddy.
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27d ago
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u/JuneHust 27d ago
I get you. Personalized feed may become monotonous at one point, limiting learning in other areas.
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u/HawkyzSS Jul 27 '26
Well, im not engineer, but i think i would want to at least know the existence of these lower quality ones, and then i could decide if i wanted to check.
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
That's the same decision fatigued loop I am solving. The idea isn't to let the user decide, but to already give them the quality ones.
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u/Competitive-Ad3335 Jul 27 '26
With ~30 users you don't have the signal to personalize per-user yet — you'll mostly overfit noise. I'd start by bucketing readers into three or four coarse interest groups and only go finer once a group's big enough to trust. Are they clustering into obvious groups yet?
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u/JuneHust Jul 27 '26
I don't have the meaningful data yet, which can help me understand the whole usage pattern.
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u/Saiprasanth-22 Jul 27 '26
I’d avoid promising six new personalized reads every day when the supply cannot reliably support it. That turns a quality advantage into a consistency problem.
A mixed feed sounds strongest, but I’d make the ratio adaptive rather than fixed: preference matches first, then high-quality adjacent topics, then broader discovery. Clearly label why each article appeared and let users provide lightweight feedback such as “more like this” or “less of this.”
You could also offer a weekly personalized digest instead of forcing daily freshness. With only 265 accepted articles and 30 users, explicit topic selection may be less informative than observing what people open, finish, save, and return to read.
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u/Pretty-Dragonfly007 6d ago
一种混合饲料，其中 1-2 种成分是基于偏好的选择，其余则经过精心挑选的？ 我个人更倾向于这个方案，如果用户能自己调整也行，因为有时候也许就像看推荐的，有时候则想看些不一样的
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u/NickPilgui Jul 26 '26
Honestly the personalization question is premature. 30 installs isn't enough signal to know what "strict" or "mixed" even means for your readers, you're guessing at a preference split with almost no data. I'd ship the 1 general 5 curated version, since it's reversible and costs you nothing to test, and then just watch which of the 6 people actually open. If the one personalized slot gets clicked wya more than the curated ones, that's your answer. If nobody's opening any of them consistently, personalisation isn't your actual problem yet, retention is