---

name: hackernews description: "Fetches and displays Hacker News stories and comments via CLI. Use when the user asks about HN, Hacker News, tech stories, wants to search HN, or wants to read/analyze HN comments."

Hacker News CLI

Fetch top stories, search, and view comments from Hacker News.

Tool

Script: scripts/hn-cli.sh (Nix shebang, self-contained)

Commands

List top stories

Copy./scripts/hn-cli.sh              # Top 20 stories
./scripts/hn-cli.sh 50           # Top 50 stories
./scripts/hn-cli.sh --hot        # Hot stories only (🔥 score ≥300 or comments ≥100)
./scripts/hn-cli.sh --hot 10     # 10 hot stories

Search stories (via Algolia)

Copy./scripts/hn-cli.sh -s "rust programming"        # Search, recent first (default)
./scripts/hn-cli.sh --search "AI" --sort popular # Search by popularity/relevance
./scripts/hn-cli.sh -s "nix flakes" 50           # Search, show 50 results (max 100)

View comments

Copy./scripts/hn-cli.sh -c STORY_ID                  # Comments for story (depth 1, max 20)
./scripts/hn-cli.sh --comments STORY_ID -d 3     # Depth 3
./scripts/hn-cli.sh -c STORY_ID -n 100           # Up to 100 comments

Output format

Stories show: rank, title, domain, story ID, points, author, age, comment count, URLs. Comments show: tree structure with author, time, and text.

Story IDs appear in brackets [12345678] — use these for --comments.

Typical workflows

1. Browse HN: Run with no args, scan titles
2. Search for topics: Use -s "query" to find stories on specific topics
3. Dive into discussion: Note story ID, run with -c ID -d 2
4. Find hot topics: Use --hot to filter for trending stories
5. Research a topic: Search with -s, then fetch comments for interesting stories
6. Summarize for user: Fetch stories + comments, summarize key points and insights