Show HN: InstaPodz – I made this to turn my boring commute into learning session
Hacker News - AI
Jul 17, 2025 10:32
AnsenHuang
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Summary
A developer created InstaPodz, an app that uses AI (Gemini models and LangSmith) to generate custom podcast episodes in response to user questions, aiming to make learning during commutes easier and more accessible. Unlike existing tools, InstaPodz automates content generation without requiring users to gather source material, highlighting the growing trend of personalized, on-demand audio learning powered by advanced AI models. This demonstrates AI's expanding role in tailoring educational content and enhancing everyday productivity.
I was tired of wasting time in traffic jams every day and wanted to use my commute to learn. I tried finding podcasts on specific topics, like explain MOE like i’m five or the pros and cons of TCA vs. MVVM in SwiftUI, but finding a single episode on niche subjects like these is kinda hard. I’ve tried tools like NotebookLM, but they require you to manually find and collect all the source material first. I wanted something simpler, that i can just ask a question and get an interesting discussion to listen to. So I spent the last three months working part-time to build InstaPodz. It's a simple app where you type a question, and it generates a custom podcast episode on that topic for you to listen to. It's built with - three version of Gemini models - langsmith to handle the tracing and prompt template versioning(it used to make my codebase messy) - backend built with FastAPI on CloudRun (there’re some free credits we can get for new users) - Swift native using SwiftUI and MVVM(I ended up