# Tangled 127 Hacker News commenters recommended Tangled and 57 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A federated GitHub alternative built on AT Protocol, with portable identity and easy self-hosted git servers (knots); critics worry about VC funding and the lack of private repos. ## Why people recommend it - Easy self-hosted knots you control (7 comments): "Being able to host my git repos as a headless, data-only server is about as painless as self-hosting can get." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125787)) "am loving it, not least of which is that my git server (a 'knot' in Tangled parlance) is under my control" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46670654)) "Self-host your knots, AT Protocol for identities, and an "indexer" at tangled.org (easily replaced)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582807)) - Federated, decentralized via AT Protocol (6 comments): "tangled knots actually federate. you could contribute to repos on knot.ghostty.org and knot.tangled.org with the same account." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940984)) "Tangled by making use of the atproto replicates much of this functionality. While also allowing people to run their own nodes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334651)) "the AT protocol means that any individual forge can go down, but the data remains accessible from other AppViews" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952555)) - Portable identity across platforms (2 comments): "You have one identity (on a PDS somewhere, optionally self-hosted) which you use to interact with any tangled repository" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380456)) "built on the same protocol as bluesky, meaning your identity is preserved across different platforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46101011)) - Resilient if host or company disappears (3 comments): "Tangled is far from feature complete but I like the direction and it probably is a bit more resilient against global outages like this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331725)) "the AT protocol means that any individual forge can go down, but the data remains accessible from other AppViews" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952555)) "It's built on ATProto, so even if the company disappears, all of the integration and features will still work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339647)) ## What people warn about - VC funding raises rug-pull fears (6 comments): "How can they ever see a dollar of profit without a rug pull, license change or hosted moat?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949827)) "until they announced they sought and got VC investments, which makes it not even worth looking into for long-term projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49845402)) "Why should we spend our time on a developer tool that would be enshittified down the line when VCs expect 10x returns?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949243)) - No private repositories (2 comments): "Both Radicle and Tangled miss the point; these are all for public collaborative work, but what about private repos?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973273)) "No private repositories (because everything is on ATProto) so near zero commercial use potential" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334277)) - Self-hosting knots has rough edges (3 comments): "I did try to get some of my git repos on Tangled.org just today, and alas found that the actual git data needs a "knit" server to do that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382056)) "I've had some performance issues and some technical ones with hosting my own 'knot' and 'spindle' services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49490409)) "Tangled is forcing some of their particular technologies (nix/rust) on users for those pieces and that is a hard sell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348659)) - Odd federation model, centralized indexer (3 comments): "As far as I know only Tangled actually supports it, but unfortunately Tangled is tangled up in its own weird federation ideas." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162285)) "in practice it is centralized: you can host your own PDS and knot but if tangled.org decides you don’t align with their values then they stop indexing you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223052)) "you’re tied to both tangled (unless you want to self host a forge, which if you did you wouldn’t have picked tabgled)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48962731)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [GitHub](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github.md): 764 recommend - [Forgejo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/forgejo.md): 380 recommend - [GitLab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitlab.md): 331 recommend - [Codeberg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/codeberg.md): 331 recommend - [Gitea](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitea.md): 195 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://tangled.org/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Tangled", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tangled/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).