Publish Hacker News

Publish to Hacker News

Treat this as a manual, explicitly authorized release. Hacker News receives the English article URL and title; it does not receive the Markdown body.

Enforce Boundaries

• Never add hacker-news to publishing/schedule.json, a platform group, a pipeline stage, or --platforms.
• Never call pnpm publish:queue or Wechatsync for this workflow.
• Require the English post to set publish.autoSyndication: false before it can become public.
• Use only the user's main Chrome session for Hacker News. Never use direct HTTP submission, an isolated browser, copied cookies, or a separate profile.
• Do not submit unless the user explicitly requested Hacker News publication. If the user requested only a translation or preparation, stop after creating and validating the draft.
• Do not publish an AI-generated Hacker News comment, solicit votes, or ask others to comment.

Run Preflight

1. Read ../publish-blog-article/SKILL.md and follow its Git, deployment, live verification, and main-Chrome constraints.
2. Resolve one source file under content/posts/. Require it to be tracked, unchanged, on main, and explicitly draft: false.
3. Derive its canonical URL and verify that the public page contains the exact source title. Do not translate an unpublished source for this workflow.
4. Inspect git status --short. Apply the repository's -c/-i rule to unrelated changes and never stage them.
5. Read the current official Hacker News Guidelines and FAQ before submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Prepare the English Counterpart

1. Use filename-based Hugo translations. For content/posts/topic.md, create content/posts/topic.en.md. Keep the same path and base filename so Hugo links both language versions.
2. Derive the English slug from the source slug, falling back to the source basename. Require an explicit site-root URL /en/posts/<slug>/ so the publisher's canonical URL matches Hugo's multilingual output.
3. Translate the title, summary, headings, prose, tables, captions, and useful image alt text. Preserve code, commands, identifiers, URLs, Markdown structure, shortcodes, formulas, and product names unless an established English form exists.
4. Preserve factual meaning. Do not add claims, examples, endorsements, or promotional language that the source does not contain.
5. Add a short note linking to the verified Chinese original and identifying the page as its English translation.
6. Preserve relevant tags, categories, cover, and local image references. Use an English summary and an English page title.
7. Use this front matter contract:

---
title: "<English page title>"
slug: <source-slug>
url: /en/posts/<source-slug>/
draft: true
summary: "<English summary>"
publish:
  autoSyndication: false
  hackerNews:
    title: "<Hacker News title>"
---

8. Default publish.hackerNews.title to the English page title. Remove a site name, gratuitous capitalization, exclamation marks, or clickbait; otherwise do not editorialize. Do not add Show HN: unless the user explicitly asks and the linked work satisfies the current Show HN rules.
9. If the English file already exists, preserve intentional edits. If it has a verified publish.hackerNews.itemUrl, follow Recover or Re-run instead of retranslating or resubmitting it.
10. Run hugo --gc --minify, inspect the rendered English page, and confirm that links, code blocks, images, and the source note remain correct.
11. Commit only the English draft with docs: add English translation for <slug>. This clean checkpoint is required before the normal publisher can run. For a preparation-only request, stop here and report the draft path.

Publish the English Page

1. Reconfirm publish.autoSyndication: false, draft: true, and the exact /en/posts/<slug>/ URL.
2. When the worktree is clean, run:

pnpm publish:article content/posts/<source>.en.md

3. If unrelated changes remain under an authorized -i path, use the scoped site-publication fallback from publish-blog-article; do not stash, commit, or discard unrelated files.
4. Wait for the GitHub Pages deployment associated with the publication commit.
5. Fetch the exact English canonical URL. Require a successful response, the exact English title, and an English document language before proceeding.

Avoid Duplicate Submissions

1. Search for the exact English canonical URL before opening the submit form. Use the HN Algolia read API for lookup, then verify any candidate against its public news.ycombinator.com/item?id=... page. Fall back to the official HN site/domain listings if the search service is unavailable.
2. Normalize only a trailing slash when comparing URLs. Do not treat a title or domain-only match as the same submission.
3. If an exact public submission already exists, do not submit again. Verify it and continue to Record the Result.

Submit with Main Chrome

1. Use publish.hackerNews.title when present; otherwise use the exact English page title.
2. Open the prefilled main-Chrome submission URL:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=<encoded-English-URL>&t=<encoded-title>

3. Confirm the title and URL in the form, then submit once. Do not add a text body or an automated first comment.
4. If login, CAPTCHA, account confirmation, or another user-only checkpoint is required, leave the main Chrome tab open and ask the user to complete it.
5. Treat submission as complete only after a public item page contains the exact English URL and submitted title. A filled form or redirect alone is not completion.

Record the Result

After verifying the public item, update only the English post metadata:

publish:
  autoSyndication: false
  hackerNews:
    title: "<submitted title>"
    itemUrl: "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=<id>"
    submittedAt: "<ISO-8601 timestamp>"

Preserve the article body, date, and draft: false. Run hugo --gc --minify, stage only the English post, commit with chore: record Hacker News submission for <slug>, push main, and verify that the main branch is synchronized.

Recover or Re-run

• If itemUrl is present, verify that it still points to the exact English URL and return it without resubmitting.
• If submission outcome is ambiguous, search for the exact URL before retrying.
• If Hacker News succeeded but recording failed, recover the existing item and backfill the metadata without another submission.
• If English site publication fails, do not open or submit the Hacker News form.
• If the English page is live but Hacker News is blocked, leave the page live, report the exact blocker, and keep Hacker News outside the automated queue.

Report the source URL, English URL, translation/publication commit, Hacker News item URL, result-record commit, any pushed pre-existing commits, and unrelated working-tree changes left intact.