How it works

A hack is a rumour until the reports agree.

There is no shortage of life hacks. There is a shortage of life hacks somebody checked. A video gets ten million views for being satisfying to watch; nothing about that number tells you whether the trick works in your kitchen. This is an attempt at the missing half — a registry where the unit of trust is an independent person who tried it and said what happened.

No like button, because likes measure whether an idea sounds clever. No infinite feed, because a feed makes today's fix findable and last year's fix gone. Instead: a category tree with a permanent address for every entry, a proof score attached to each one, and a wall of the things that failed.

The proof ladder

Unverified — under 5 reports

Live from the moment it is filed, clearly marked. Visible so people can find it and try it, never presented as trustworthy.

Tested — 5 or more reports, 70% or better confirmed

Enough independent people have tried it that the result is probably not luck.

Verified — 15 or more reports, 80% or better confirmed

Holds up across different homes and conditions. This is the bar for entry into a kit.

Certified — 40 or more reports, 90% or better confirmed

Effectively settled — worth telling someone about unprompted.

Debunked — under 40% confirmed with 10 or more reports

Moves to the debunked wall with a note on why it fails and what to do instead.

Rules that override the score

Safety wins

Anything that can injure someone carries a warning at every score. A hack that works nine times out of ten and burns you the tenth is not a hack.

Conditions are part of the fix

Region and cost are fields, not footnotes. Most disagreement about whether a hack works turns out to be two people in different conditions both being right.

Merges beat duplicates

Filing something that already exists adds a report to the original. One entry at twenty reports beats five entries at four each.

Anonymous by default

No name, no email, no login to contribute anywhere on the site. A rotating device token stops one person filing the same report twice.

Questions.

One person, as a hobby project. No company, no funding, no ads, and no sponsored entries — a paid placement would destroy the only thing the site is for.

A fix that requires a specific branded product is held to a higher bar and shows the cost prominently. The ladder needs independent reports over weeks, which is expensive and boring to fake — and a burst of confirmations from one source counts as one report.

Jugaad — जुगाड़ — is the Hindi word for a resourceful fix improvised from whatever is available. It already means exactly what this directory collects.

Yes. The registry is CC-BY.