No algorithm. Just what's near you

Open Instagram. Open TikTok. Open Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube. The thing on top of your screen is not the most recent thing. It is not the most relevant thing. It is the thing some scoring function decided was most likely to keep you on the app for another twenty seconds.

That model has eaten consumer software. Every product manager in the world is being told to add an algorithmic feed. Every roadmap has a 'personalization' line item. The entire industry has decided that what users want is a slot machine.

HandIt does not have an algorithmic feed. We chose not to build one. The feed sorts by three things, in this order, and nothing else.

What the feed actually uses

• How close the task or listing is to where you are
• How recent it is
• Whether it matches the skills you said you have

That is it. No engagement score. No 'similar to other people like you'. No model trained on which tasks made you stop scrolling longest. If two listings are equally close and equally fresh, the older one comes first — because it has been waiting longer.

What the feed does not do

• Reorder by 'predicted engagement' or any synthetic interest score
• A/B test what time to push you a notification to maximize opens
• Hide things to surface them later as a 'recommendation'
• Run infinite scroll for its own sake — the list ends when nearby listings end
• Show urgency badges, fake scarcity, or countdown timers for things that are not actually urgent
• Track you across the rest of the internet to retarget you

I will not pretend any of that is easy to resist. The product books all say add a feed score. The analytics dashboards all reward time-on-app. The investors all ask about engagement. I am ignoring the books, the dashboards, and most of the investors.

Yes, there is one boost — and we are upfront about it

There is exactly one ranking exception, and it is visible. A poster can pay a small fee to boost their task — it gets a clearly labeled badge and floats a position or two higher for a limited time. That is the entire mechanism. No silent boosts. No engagement-based reordering hiding under the boost system. No way to pay to outrank someone closer to you forever.

You can see when something is boosted. You can ignore it if you want. The feed underneath is still distance and recency.

The point of an honest feed

A neighborhood marketplace breaks if the feed is dishonest. If somebody two blocks away is hidden because somebody five blocks away paid more, the whole 'walk past it on your way to the bakery' thing falls apart. The feed is not a product to monetize. It is the load-bearing wall of the entire idea.

And when you are done — close the app. There will not be a notification to pull you back. That is by design too.

We do not want you on the app. We want you off it, getting something done.