howf

Hi Product Hunt! I’m a huge conversation person. The idea for howf came to me during a lunch break at work. I was musing about how much emotion is missing from online content, Instagram feels over-tailored and TikTok has its own inauthentic vibe. I wanted a place to discuss books, philosophy, history, or Scottish football (Aberdeen fan here!) with the authentic energy you only get in a pub or a café. *Why "howf"?* In Doric (a dialect from my home in Scotland), a howf is a frequent meeting place, a haunt, or a favorite pub, exactly where you go to talk! Coincidentally, in Schwäbisch (from the German side of my family), Hof means a courtyard or place. It felt like the perfect name for a digital space to hang out and talk. *The Vision* Whether it’s my dad in his 70s who loves phoning into talk radio, or my friends in their 30s who live for WhatsApp voice notes, the human voice adds a layer of fun that text can't match. The vibe is heavily inspired by Reddit, one of the few places where the internet still feels like a community. *The Tech* I’m a software developer by trade, so I built howf to be entirely AWS-native with a serverless microservice architecture to ensure it scales. I used Flutter for the frontend (with a little help from Claude!). How it works: 1. Open the app and add hashtags to your post. 2. Record your voice note (and optionally add a photo to tell a story). 3. When you hit play on a reply, howf plays the entire response tree like a continuous conversation. 4. There is a toggle to auto play your entire feed as well. I’ve posted quite a bit under the username 'Tartan Cicero', follow me to see how I intended the app to be used, but honestly, use it however you like! I can’t wait to hear your feedback. Let’s get talking! 🎙️