Xkcd #2347 lived in my head, so I built the dependency tower for real
Details
- External ID
- 46148850
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Xkcd #2347 lived in my head, so I built the dependency tower for real
- Website domain
- stacktower.io
- Launched
- Dec. 4, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 36
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.7585877862595419
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I finally got tired of XKCD #2347 living rent-free in my head, so I built Stacktower: a tool that takes any real package’s dependency graph and turns it into an actual tower of bricks. Along the way I had to wrestle some surprisingly spicy problems.Full blog post here: https://stacktower.ioThe result is half visualization tool, half love letter to the chaos of modern dependency trees. Open-source, works with PyPI, Cargo, npm, and more.Code: https://github.com/matzehuels/stacktower
Enrichment
- Theme
- indie hacker passion projects
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- dependency tree visualization
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial Fetching package dependencies and displaying a 3D visualization is conceptually clear, but calculating structural physics and stable block-stacking layouts for complex DAGs requires specialized simulation logic.
What it would actually take: A complete system needs a package registry scraper/resolver (npm, PyPI) that builds full dependency DAGs, coupled with an algorithm that translates topological depths into a physical 3D block mesh. Simulating block balance, collision stability, and render optimization in Three.js/Cannon.js or custom physics solvers requires non-trivial computational geometry and 3D graphics skills.
Discussion
5 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Text blends into background, low visibility, GitHub link broken
Feature requests: Gallery of dependency towers for multiple projects to showcase capability
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 46 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #18 of 47 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 36 days after the earliest competitor.
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- CodeLayers · hn · 2026-02-21 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Full graphical desktop running on a 128MB VPS Alpine+XRDP+WindowMaker · hn · 2026-03-26 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- boringBar · hn · 2026-04-12 · 520 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism · hn · 2026-08-06 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- FuseCells · hn · 2025-12-06 · 37 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- SteppeWM · hn · 2026-08-21 · 23 upvotes · similarity 0.34
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.