GoKawiilWhen browsing Hacker News, I noticed that many Show HN projects now have a generic sterile feeling that tells me they are purely AI-generated. Initially I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, so I wondered if we could automatically quantify this subjective feeling by scoring 500 Show HN pages for AI design patterns.
Claude Code has led to a large increase in Show HN projects. So much, that the moderators of HN had to restrict Show HN submissions for new accounts.
Here is how the Show HN submissions increased over the last few years:
Update: dang pointed out that the March 2026 dip correlates with the rollout of /showlim, the view newer accounts now see.
That should give us plenty of pages to score for AI design patterns.
AI design patterns
A designer recently told me that “colored left borders are almost as reliable a sign of AI-generated design as em-dashes for text”, so I started to notice them on many pages.
Then I asked some more designer friends what they think are common AI patterns. The answers can be roughly grouped into fonts, colors, layout quirks, and CSS patterns.
Fonts
Inter used for everything, but especially the centered hero headlines
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