Content Hackernews

Hacker News Content Generation

Before You Start

1. Understand HN culture: Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) is a community driven by intellectual curiosity and technical depth. It is run by Y Combinator and attracts founders, engineers, researchers, and technically sophisticated readers. The community is allergic to marketing, superlatives, and hype.

2. Determine post type:

   • Show HN: Sharing something you have built for community feedback
   • Ask HN: Asking the community a question
   • Standard submission: Sharing a link to content (your own or someone else's)

3. Check for brand voice: Read brand/VOICE.md if it exists, then heavily adapt it using hn-voice.md. HN has the strictest voice requirements of any platform. Marketing language of any kind will get the post flagged, downvoted, or ignored.

HN Culture

What HN Values

• Intellectual curiosity and genuine interest in ideas
• Technical depth and rigorous thinking
• Honesty, especially about limitations and trade-offs
• Novel insights and original thinking
• Clear, direct writing without embellishment
• Substance over polish

What HN Rejects

• Marketing language of any kind ("revolutionary," "game-changing," "disruptive")
• Superlatives ("the best," "the fastest," "the most powerful")
• Emotional manipulation or engagement bait
• Clickbait titles
• Self-congratulation
• Hype without substance
• Excessive self-promotion without proportional community contribution

The HN Audience

• Technically sophisticated: assume your reader can evaluate technical claims
• Detail-oriented: vague claims will be challenged in comments
• Skeptical of hype: extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
• Global: readers span every timezone and many industries
• Time-constrained: they scan titles and click selectively

Show HN Format and Rules

Show HN is for sharing your own projects, products, or creations with the community.

Title Format

Show HN: [Concise description of what it is]

Good titles:

• "Show HN: A terminal-based Markdown editor written in Rust"
• "Show HN: Open-source tool to visualize PostgreSQL query plans"
• "Show HN: I built a search engine for academic papers using semantic embeddings"

Bad titles:

• "Show HN: The revolutionary new way to manage your infrastructure" (marketing)
• "Show HN: Check out my awesome app!" (vague, hyped)
• "Show HN: [ProductName] -- Disrupting the observability space" (buzzwords)

Title Rules

• Describe what it does, not how great it is
• Include the technology if relevant ("written in Rust," "using WASM")
• Keep it under 80 characters
• Do not use all caps or exclamation marks
• Do not include pricing or "free" in the title

The Accompanying Comment

Every Show HN post should have a top-level comment from the creator. This comment is critical. Use show-hn-template.md for the structure.

The comment should cover:

1. What it is: One sentence. Clear, specific, no jargon.
2. Why you built it: The problem you faced or the motivation behind the project.
3. How it works: Brief technical overview for the curious. Architecture, key technologies, interesting design decisions.
4. What's interesting technically: What did you learn? What was hard? What's novel?
5. Current state and limitations: What works, what doesn't, what's next. Honesty here earns enormous respect.
6. What you want: Specific feedback you are looking for. "Feedback welcome" is vague. "I'd love feedback on the query optimizer approach" is actionable.

Ask HN Format

Ask HN is for questions directed at the community.

Title Format

Ask HN: [Your question]

Good Ask HN posts:

• Specific, well-defined questions
• Questions that invite diverse, experience-based answers
• Questions the community has not been asked recently
• Questions where the asker has context to share

Bad Ask HN posts:

• Questions easily answered by a search engine
• Surveys or market research disguised as questions
• "What do you think of [my product]?" (use Show HN instead)

Body

• Provide context for why you are asking
• Share what you have already tried or considered
• Be specific about constraints or requirements
• Keep it concise. HN readers value brevity.

Standard Submissions

When submitting a link (blog post, article, paper, tool):

Title

• Use the original title of the content. HN prefers this.
• If the original title is clickbait, rewrite it to be descriptive and neutral
• Do not editorialize: "Great article about X" is editorializing. Just submit "X" with the link.
• Adding "(2023)" for older content or "(PDF)" for PDFs is acceptable

Submission Timing

• HN is most active during US business hours (Pacific time)
• Posting during peak hours gives more initial visibility
• Weekends have less competition but also less traffic

What Gets Flagged and Downvoted

Understanding HN's enforcement culture helps you avoid problems:

Flagged (removed by community or moderators):

• Obviously promotional submissions
• Clickbait titles
• Duplicate submissions of recent stories
• Low-quality content
• Submissions from domains that are heavily self-promoted

Downvoted:

• Comments with marketing language
• Defensive responses to criticism
• Comments that don't add to the discussion
• Self-promotional comments unrelated to the discussion
• "Thanks for the feedback!" without substance

Invisible penalty: flame detection

• HN has sophisticated flame-war detection
• Heated or uncharitable comments may be auto-deprioritized
• Assume good faith in your responses, even when others don't

HN Voice

See hn-voice.md for detailed voice guidance. The essential rules:

1. Be direct. State things clearly. No throat-clearing.
2. Be technical. HN readers expect and appreciate technical depth.
3. Be honest about limitations. "We don't handle X well yet" earns more respect than "We handle everything."
4. No superlatives. Replace "the best" with specific comparisons.
5. No marketing language. If it could appear in a press release, rewrite it.
6. Show, don't tell. Instead of "It's fast," show the benchmark.

Output Checklist

Before delivering HN content:

• Title is descriptive, not promotional (under 80 characters)
• Zero marketing language or superlatives
• Show HN posts include a substantive creator comment
• Ask HN posts include context and show prior research
• Technical details are included where relevant
• Limitations and current state are honestly described
• The content would survive scrutiny from a technically sophisticated, skeptical audience
• Voice follows hn-voice.md guidelines
• No clickbait, emotional manipulation, or engagement bait