A few weeks ago I stumbled onto KVN AUST’s YouTube channel and got completely hooked. He makes videos exploring what he calls the " YouTube Recycle Bin " — the millions of videos sitting on YouTube that were never meant to be found. Default camera filenames like IMG_4293.MOV, GOPR0847, DSC1042. Zero views. No titles, no descriptions, no tags. Just raw footage uploaded straight from cameras and phones, sitting in YouTube’s database forever. He put together a Google Doc cataloging all the search patterns — the keyphrase formats cameras use, which filename prefixes come from which eras of devices, how to dig into different layers of YouTube’s forgotten content: Dashcams from rural Russia. A kid’s first Minecraft recording. Family barbecues from 2009 shot on Flip camcorders. Someone’s cat, uploaded via picture mail from a flip phone in 2007. I wanted to figure out a way to just… surf through it all. Like channel-flipping on a TV at 2 AM. So I opened Claude and started building. What we built A full retro CRT TV interface with static animations, channel knobs, and a draggable volume slider — all in a single HTML file, no frameworks A three-layer “tuner” system with independent locks, letting you dial in by era (Fresh/Forgotten/Ancient), keyphrase pattern, and random fill values A Cloudflare Worker proxy that calls YouTube’s internal InnerTube API — no API key needed, no quota limits, 100k free requests/day The whole thing auto-launches instantly for anyone with the link. No setup, no login, no config The process . I came in with the concept and KVN AUST’s methodology, and Claude helped me architect the search system, build the UI from scratch, iterate through multiple mirror approaches when third-party APIs kept failing, and ultimately land on the Cloudflare Worker solution that made the whole thing shareable. We went through maybe 5-6 major iterations — started with YouTube Data API (100 searches/day limit killed it), tried Piped and Invidious mirrors (too unreliable), and finally landed on a custom InnerTube proxy that works well. I have virtually zero coding experience, and never really used GitHub or Cloudflare or anything, so this was a big learning experience. [ LINK TO LIVE DEMO ] How it works THE TUNER The tuner rack below the TV builds your search query from three layers. Each can be locked so WARP won’t change it. MAP (1 2 3) The era — Fresh, Forgotten, or Ancient. Click to switch and search. QUERY (Q) The keyphrase pattern within your map. Click the name to browse all queries, or ↻ to shuffle. FILL ® The random numbers or date completing the query. ↻ to re-roll. Some queries have no fill. 🔒 LOCKS Freeze a layer so WARP skips it. ⌁ WARP (D) Randomizes all unlocked layers and searches. Your main discovery tool. TV CONTROLS CH ▲/▼ (↑↓) Surf through videos in the current playlist. Auto-warps at the end. VOL Drag the knob or scroll. M to mute. POWER (P) Turn the TV on or off. THE THREE MAPS FRESH Recent uploads. Smartphones, apps, screen recorders. IMG · MVI · PXL · VID · WIN · InShot · WhatsApp Video · FullSizeRender · RPReplay · My Movie · Bandicam · Robloxapp · VLC Record · .MP4 · .MOV FORGOTTEN Camera dumps & device footage — the 0-view graveyard. DSC · DSCF · DSCN · GOPR · GH01 · DJI · SAM · FILE · MAH0 · MOV0 · M2U0 · SANY · HPIM · SDC1 · GEDC · AMBA · Axon Body · AVSEQ ANCIENT Early YouTube relics — flip phones, picture mail, MMS. Picture Mail · Media1.3gp · Video.3g2 · Multimedia Message · Video from my phone · My Great Movie · Flip Video Camcorder · muuvee Go check out KVN AUST’s channel and the original Recycle Bin doc — the rabbit hole goes deep. Happy to answer questions about the build or share the worker code if anyone wants to do something similar. submitted by /u/thetalkinghawk
Originally posted by u/thetalkinghawk on r/ClaudeCode