mvanhorn Hacker News — Printing Press CLI
Prerequisites: Install the CLI
This skill drives the hackernews-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first:
- Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to
$HOME/.local/binon macOS/Linux and%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\binon Windows:npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install hackernews --cli-only - Verify:
hackernews-pp-cli --version - Ensure the reported install directory is on
$PATHfor the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill.
If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.6 or newer):
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/hackernews/cmd/hackernews-pp-cli@latest
If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.
When to Use This CLI
Reach for hackernews-pp-cli when you need to monitor or analyze HN signal programmatically: agent-driven daily diffs, topic pulses, hiring-thread aggregation, repost checks before submitting, structured thread digests for context windows. The local store makes follow-up queries cheap and offline-friendly.
When Not to Use This CLI
Do not activate this CLI for requests that require creating, updating, deleting, publishing, commenting, upvoting, inviting, ordering, sending messages, booking, purchasing, or changing remote state. This printed CLI exposes read-only commands for inspection, export, sync, and analysis.
Unique Capabilities
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
Local snapshots that compound
since— See exactly what climbed, fell, appeared, or dropped off the front page since your last sync.Reach for this when an agent wakes up daily and needs to know what shifted on HN since yesterday — without re-fetching 500 items every poll.
hackernews-pp-cli since --jsoncontroversial— Stories ranked by the highest comment-to-point ratio over a recent window — the discussions everyone is arguing about.Reach for this when you want stories with high engagement-to-approval — heated debate signal — instead of just popularity.
hackernews-pp-cli controversial --window 7d --jsonvelocity— Show a story's rank trajectory over time from local snapshots — climb, plateau, or fall.Reach for this when an agent asks 'is this story still gaining traction or already cresting' — only meaningful answer comes from snapshots.
hackernews-pp-cli velocity 47998158 --jsonsync— Pull top/new/best/show/ask/job lists and recently-changed items into local SQLite for offline use and snapshot history.Run this once per day (or per hour for agents) — it is the foundation that turns since/velocity/controversial/users-stats from impossible into one SQL query.
hackernews-pp-cli sync --resources updates --agent
Algolia leverage
pulse— See per-day mentions, average score, and comment volume for any topic over the last N days.Reach for this when the question is 'is this topic heating up or cooling down' rather than 'what's the top story right now'.
hackernews-pp-cli pulse rust --days 7 --agentrepost— Has this URL been posted before? Lists every prior submission, with score, comments, and date.Reach for this before submitting a Show HN — duplicate URLs flame out instantly; you want to know how a prior post did first.
hackernews-pp-cli repost https://example.com/articlesearch local— Offline full-text search over every story and comment you have ever synced — corpus grows with use.Reach for this when investigating long-tail topics or replaying last quarter's research — Algolia might rank it down or drop it; your local corpus will not.
hackernews-pp-cli search local "vector database" --limit 20 --json
Hiring-thread mining
hiring stats— Aggregate the last N monthly Who-is-Hiring threads: top languages, remote ratio, top companies, location distribution.Reach for this when you need quarterly or seasonal hiring trends — language popularity, remote-share shifts, location density — not just this month's listings.
hackernews-pp-cli hiring stats --months 3 --agenthiring companies— Companies that posted in M of the last N hiring threads, with first-seen, last-seen, and months-posted count.Reach for this when sourcing or trend-tracking — which companies are persistent hirers vs one-off posters — without scraping HNHIRING.com.
hackernews-pp-cli hiring companies --months 6 --min-posts 3 --agent
Cross-entity local queries
users stats— Median and p90 score across a user's submissions, plus traction buckets and hour-of-day score distribution.Reach for this before posting your own work to learn your traction patterns, or when sizing up a poster's history before engaging.
hackernews-pp-cli users stats pg --json
Command Reference
items — Fetch any HN item (story, comment, job, poll) by ID
hackernews-pp-cli items <itemId>— Get details for a specific story, comment, job, or poll
maxitem — Current maximum item ID
hackernews-pp-cli maxitem— Returns the largest item ID currently assigned by Hacker News
stories — Browse top, new, and best Hacker News stories
hackernews-pp-cli stories ask— Get the latest Ask HN postshackernews-pp-cli stories best— Get the highest-voted stories on Hacker Newshackernews-pp-cli stories job— Get the latest Hacker News job postingshackernews-pp-cli stories new— Get the newest stories on Hacker Newshackernews-pp-cli stories show— Get the latest Show HN postshackernews-pp-cli stories top— Get the current top stories on Hacker News
updates — Recently changed items and profiles
hackernews-pp-cli updates— Items and user profiles that have changed recently
users — Look up Hacker News user profiles
hackernews-pp-cli users <userId>— Get a user's profile including karma and submission history
Hand-written commands
hackernews-pp-cli sync— Pull top/new/best/show/ask/job lists and recent items into the local SQLite storehackernews-pp-cli search <query>— Full-text search Hacker News stories and comments via Algolia (use 'search local' for offline FTS)hackernews-pp-cli hiring— Mine 'Ask HN: Who is hiring' threads (filter, stats, companies)hackernews-pp-cli freelance— Mine 'Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?' threads (filter)hackernews-pp-cli since— Show what changed on the front page since the last sync (added, removed, moved stories)hackernews-pp-cli pulse <topic>— Show what HN is saying about a topic — per-day mentions, score, and comment volumehackernews-pp-cli controversial— Find stories with the highest comment-to-point ratio (polarizing discussions)hackernews-pp-cli repost <url>— Has this URL been posted on HN? Lists prior submissions with scores and dateshackernews-pp-cli velocity <id>— Show a story's rank trajectory across local snapshotshackernews-pp-cli doctor— Run a self-diagnostic: API reachability, store writability, config sanity
Freshness Contract
This printed CLI owns bounded freshness only for registered store-backed read command paths. In --data-source auto mode, those paths check sync_state and may run a bounded refresh before reading local data. --data-source local never refreshes. --data-source live reads the API and does not mutate the local store. Set HACKERNEWS_NO_AUTO_REFRESH=1 to skip the freshness hook without changing source selection.
Covered paths:
hackernews-pp-cli storieshackernews-pp-cli stories askhackernews-pp-cli stories besthackernews-pp-cli stories jobhackernews-pp-cli stories newhackernews-pp-cli stories showhackernews-pp-cli stories tophackernews-pp-cli updates
When JSON output uses the generated provenance envelope, freshness metadata appears at meta.freshness. Treat it as current-cache freshness for the covered command path, not a guarantee of complete historical backfill or API-specific enrichment.
Finding the right command
When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:
hackernews-pp-cli which "<capability in your own words>"
which resolves a natural-language capability query to the best matching command from this CLI's curated feature index. Exit code 0 means at least one match; exit code 2 means no confident match — fall back to --help or use a narrower query.
Recipes
Daily front-page diff for an agent
hackernews-pp-cli sync && hackernews-pp-cli since --json --select added,removed,moved
Sync, then diff. The --select narrows the payload to just the change deltas — agents process kilobytes instead of megabytes.
Topic monitoring with selected fields
hackernews-pp-cli pulse openai --days 7 --agent --select buckets.day,buckets.hits,buckets.avg_score
Per-day breakdown of mentions, average score, and comment volume — using --select to pull only the trend axes from the deeply-nested response.
Pre-submit dupe check
hackernews-pp-cli repost https://example.com/article --json
Lists every prior submission of that URL with score, comments, and date — answers the 'has this been posted' question in one round-trip.
Filter Who's Hiring for remote Go roles
hackernews-pp-cli hiring filter "(remote|REMOTE).*\\bGo\\b" --json
Regex against the latest monthly thread. The double-escaped \b is a real regex word boundary; --json gives you structured rows instead of one big match dump.
Quarterly hiring trend
hackernews-pp-cli hiring companies --months 6 --min-posts 3 --agent
Companies posting in 3+ of the last 6 monthly threads — first-seen, last-seen, total months. Cross-month queries you cannot do without a local store.
Auth Setup
No authentication required.
Run hackernews-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.
Agent Mode
Add --agent to any command. Expands to: --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes.
Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr
Filterable —
--selectkeeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:hackernews-pp-cli items 47998158 --agent --select id,name,statusPreviewable —
--dry-runshows the request without sendingOffline-friendly — sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
Non-interactive — never prompts, every input is a flag
Read-only — do not use this CLI for create, update, delete, publish, comment, upvote, invite, order, send, or other mutating requests
Response envelope
Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:
{
"meta": {"source": "live" | "local", "synced_at": "...", "reason": "..."},
"results": <data>
}
Parse .results for data and .meta.source to know whether it's live or local. A human-readable N results (live) summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a terminal — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.
Agent Feedback
When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:
hackernews-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
hackernews-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
hackernews-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10
Entries are stored locally at ~/.hackernews-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless HACKERNEWS_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or HACKERNEWS_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true. Default behavior is local-only.
Write what surprised you, not a bug report. Short, specific, one line: that is the part that compounds.
Output Delivery
Every command accepts --deliver <sink>. The output goes to the named sink in addition to (or instead of) stdout, so agents can route command results without hand-piping. Three sinks are supported:
| Sink | Effect |
|---|---|
stdout |
Default; write to stdout only |
file:<path> |
Atomically write output to <path> (tmp + rename) |
webhook:<url> |
POST the output body to the URL (application/json or application/x-ndjson when --compact) |
Unknown schemes are refused with a structured error naming the supported set. Webhook failures return non-zero and log the URL + HTTP status on stderr.
Named Profiles
A profile is a saved set of flag values, reused across invocations. Use it when a scheduled agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.
hackernews-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
hackernews-pp-cli --profile briefing items 47998158
hackernews-pp-cli profile list --json
hackernews-pp-cli profile show briefing
hackernews-pp-cli profile delete briefing --yes
Explicit flags always win over profile values; profile values win over defaults. agent-context lists all available profiles under available_profiles so introspecting agents discover them at runtime.
Exit Codes
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | Success |
| 2 | Usage error (wrong arguments) |
| 3 | Resource not found |
| 5 | API error (upstream issue) |
| 7 | Rate limited (wait and retry) |
| 10 | Config error |
Argument Parsing
Parse $ARGUMENTS:
- Empty,
help, or--help→ showhackernews-pp-cli --helpoutput - Starts with
install→ ends withmcp→ MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above - Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with
--agent)
MCP Server Installation
- Install the MCP server:
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/hackernews/cmd/hackernews-pp-mcp@latest - Register with Claude Code:
claude mcp add hackernews-pp-mcp -- hackernews-pp-mcp - Verify:
claude mcp list
Direct Use
- Check if installed:
which hackernews-pp-cliIf not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill). - Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.
- Execute with the
--agentflag:hackernews-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent - If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help:
hackernews-pp-cli <command> --help.