April 5, 2026
The real intel? The comments
Show HN: OsintRadar – Curated directory for osint tools
Sleuth fans cheer the workflow—but roast vague blurbs and fear link rot
TLDR: OsintRadar launched a community-made directory for public-data sleuthing tools, organized by real investigation workflows. Commenters praised the structure but slammed vague descriptions, warned about link rot, debated “just make a GitHub list,” and asked for clear “local vs online” labels to prevent mid-investigation breakdowns.
OsintRadar just dropped a community-built directory of OSINT tools—think online sleuthing gear for digging through public info about people, social media, websites, images, and usernames. The pitch: browse by real-world workflow, not a chaotic list. The crowd loved that move, with one fan calling the sequence-first approach a breath of fresh air. But the cheers came with side-eye: critics pounced on vague tool descriptions, pointing at examples that read like marketing fluff rather than clear guidance.
Then the big drama: link rot. A top comment warned that dead links during an investigation are worse than having no directory at all. People fear that 300+ tools is easy to start but hard to maintain, and nobody wants their CSI moment cut short by a 404. Practical voices asked for a simple tag—“local tool” vs “online service”—so investigators know what will work offline in a pinch. And of course, the classic internet split appeared: why not just make an “awesome” GitHub list instead of a standalone site? Cue the meme energy: Team Workflow vs Team Just Use GitHub. Either way, the message is clear: great idea, but keep it tight, clear, and alive. If not, OSINT becomes “Oh, Sorry, It’s Not There.”
Key Points
- •OsintRadar is a curated, community-built directory of OSINT tools, frameworks, and techniques.
- •Resources are organized by category and investigative workflow/use case.
- •It includes social media OSINT targeting platforms like X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.
- •Domain analysis techniques listed include WHOIS, DNS history, certificate transparency logs, and infrastructure correlation.
- •Media and identity analysis methods include reverse image search, EXIF analysis, deepfake detection, and username correlation.