CleanTube
A search-only front door to YouTube. No home feed, no recommendations. Arrive with intent, find it, leave.
[model card]
- Gets done
- Lets you use YouTube without getting pulled in.
- Task
- Cut algorithmic noise out of YouTube
- Data
- Your search query, nothing else
- Model
- No ML. A single-page HTML wrapper
- Key metric
- n/a
- Stack
- HTML, JavaScript, Claude
- Status
- [done]
YouTube is one of the best learning tools ever made, and its default interface is engineered to pull you away from whatever you came to learn. After reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, I wanted a way to use YouTube as a utility without handing it my attention.
CleanTube is that way. It’s a search box and nothing else:
- No home page. No wall of thumbnails waiting for you.
- No recommendations. No rabbit holes.
- Search only. You show up with a question, search for it, and go.
It’s a single index.html file hosted on GitHub Pages. Bookmark it or set it as your new tab page so every session starts clean.
Who built what
I came up with CleanTube as a personal focus tool and directed what it should and shouldn’t do. The code itself was generated by Claude. I’m calling that out on purpose: this one is about product judgment, knowing what to remove, more than engineering.