DIdist-epoch·Mar 17, 2026
In Grace Hopper's Revengedbreunig
whenwords
Libraries & SDKs2026–2026
dbreunig / whenwords
whenwords
A relative time formatting library, with no code.
9Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A relative time formatting library, with no code.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by week10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2026-01-10 11:18:48 UTC to 2026-03-17 11:20:49 UTC. Weeks start Monday, UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 5 | 2026-01-05 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-12 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Jan 12 | 2026-01-12 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-19 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Jan 19 | 2026-01-19 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-26 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 26 | 2026-01-26 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Feb 2 | 2026-02-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-09 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 9 | 2026-02-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 16 | 2026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-23 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 23 | 2026-02-23 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-02 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2 | 2026-03-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-09 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 9 | 2026-03-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 16 | 2026-03-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-23 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesWhenwords: An Open Source Library Without Code
1 points · Open discussionWhenwords: A relative time formatting library, with no code
2 points · Open discussionWhenwords: An Open Source Library Without Code
2 points · Open discussionWhenwords: A relative time formatting library, with no code
2 points · Open discussionAgnostic library without code, only specs and tests
1 points · Open discussionWhenwords – A relative time formatting library, with no code
3 points · Open discussionWhenwords: A relative time formatting library, with no code
2 points · Open discussionThere's no translation from YAML to a different language.
The YAML describes the tests - like this file here: https://github.com/dbreunig/whenwords/blob/main/tests.yaml
Snippet:
- name: "5 hours ago"
input: { timestamp: 1704049200, reference: 1704067200 }
output: "5 hours ago"
- name: "21 hours ago"
input: { timestamp: 1703991600, reference: 1704067200 }
output: "21 hours ago"
When told "use red/green TDD to write code for this in Ruby", a coding agent like Claude Code will write a test harness in Ruby that loops through all of those YAML tests, run it and watch it fail, then write just enough Ruby that the tests pass.
In This is the future: A Software Library with No Codehere you go, a prompt only library:
https://github.com/dbreunig/whenwords
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