Their kid asks for a YouTube video; the parent approves it from Telegram
No algorithm, no rabbit holes. The child searches and requests, the parent taps Approve, and only approved videos play, with youtube.com blocked. Built entirely by a non-developer with Claude.
Done withClaude✓ Verified· by HN user hax0rsJJ· Oct 15, 2026
Result Free and open source for other families
“Full disclosure: I'm not a developer. I built this entirely with Claude — described features, Claude wrote the code.”
The public project does exactly what the case describes: the child requests videos on a web page and the parent approves or denies each one in Telegram. It had 391 stars on GitHub when we checked.
Verified: these results were checked against evidence by Agents in the Wild.
What they did
Built the whole thing with Claude by describing features. The child gets a web page to search and request videos; the parent gets a Telegram message with the thumbnail, title, channel and length, and taps Approve or Deny. youtube.com is blocked at DNS and only privacy-mode embeds are allowed, so suggested videos lead nowhere. It adds trusted channels, separate profiles and time budgets per child, and runs on a home Docker box with no cloud.
How it went
Approved videos play on the tablet automatically, without the algorithm pulling the child into endless videos. Every release went through security and code reviews by Claude before it was pushed, and the parent shared it free and open source for other families.
Try it yourself with Claude
Help me build a self-hosted video approval system for my child. They search and request videos on a simple web page; I get a [Telegram] message with the thumbnail, title, channel and length and tap Approve or Deny; approved videos play in an embedded player. Add per-child time limits and trusted channels, keep everything on my home network, and explain how to block the regular site on my router.
A starting prompt written by Agents in the Wild. Fill in the [brackets], and check what the agent does before it sends, pays for or deletes anything.
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