Hacker News Poster

Hacker News Poster

Submit stories, comment on threads, edit comments, and update profiles on Hacker News.

Setup

Required Environment Variables

Security Note

Session cookies are stored in plaintext at HN_COOKIE_FILE (or ~/.hn_cookies.txt). These are standard HN session tokens. Delete the file to clear the session.

CLI

All commands go through scripts/hn.py. Always login first per session.

# login (reads HN_USERNAME/HN_PASSWORD from env)
python3 scripts/hn.py login

# submit a link post
python3 scripts/hn.py submit --title "Show HN: My Tool" --url "https://example.com"

# submit a text post (Ask HN, etc.)
python3 scripts/hn.py submit --title "Ask HN: Question?" --text "body text here"

# comment on a story or reply to a comment
python3 scripts/hn.py comment --parent 12345678 --text "your comment"

# edit a comment (only within HN's edit window)
python3 scripts/hn.py edit --id 12345678 --text "updated comment"

# update profile about section
python3 scripts/hn.py profile --username youruser --about "your bio"

All commands output JSON on success ({"ok": true, ...}) and print errors to stderr.

Notes

• HN rate-limits submissions and comments. If you get a rate limit error, wait a few minutes.
• Comments can only be edited within ~2 hours of posting.
• The submit command returns the new item id and url on success.
• Session cookies are stored in ~/.hn_cookies.txt to avoid re-authenticating on every command. Delete this file to clear the session.
• For reading HN (search, top stories, comments), use the existing hacker-news skill or the HN API directly. This skill is write-only.

Combining with the read-only HN skill

1. use the hacker-news skill to browse/search stories and find interesting threads
2. use this skill to login and post/comment