hn-analysis

az9713's avatarfrom az9713

Analyze Hacker News posts and discussions to extract insights from tech community discourse. Use when the user mentions Hacker News, HN, news.ycombinator, YC, or provides a HN URL.

⭐0stars🔀0forks📁View on GitHub🕐Updated Dec 27, 2025
[Web Research]

When & Why to Use This Skill

The Hacker News Analysis skill is a specialized tool designed to bridge the gap between tech community discourse and actionable intelligence. It automates the extraction of insights from news.ycombinator.com by fetching post metadata, linked articles, and extensive comment threads. By synthesizing community sentiment and technical critiques into structured markdown reports, it enables users to stay informed on industry trends and developer perspectives without manually parsing hundreds of comments.

Use Cases

  • Tech Trend Monitoring: Automatically summarize 'Show HN' or 'Launch HN' threads to identify emerging technologies and community reactions to new products.
  • Competitive Intelligence: Analyze discussions surrounding specific companies or frameworks to understand developer pain points and perceived advantages.
  • Sentiment Analysis: Gauge the tech community's stance on controversial industry news or major policy changes by synthesizing top-voted comments.
  • Knowledge Archiving: Create a searchable local database of high-quality tech discussions by saving structured reports and activity logs directly to your workspace.
namehn-analysis
descriptionAnalyze Hacker News posts and discussions to extract insights from tech community discourse. Use when the user mentions Hacker News, HN, news.ycombinator, YC, or provides a HN URL.

Hacker News Post Analysis

Analyze Hacker News posts and their discussions to generate structured reports covering both linked content and community insights.

When to Use

Activate this skill when the user:

  • Mentions "Hacker News", "HN", "Y Combinator news"
  • Provides a news.ycombinator.com URL
  • Asks about a HN discussion or comments
  • Mentions "Show HN", "Ask HN", or "Launch HN"
  • Wants to understand tech community sentiment on a topic

Instructions

  1. Parse the HN URL:
    • Accept news.ycombinator.com/item?id=XXXXX format
    • Extract item ID
  2. Fetch the HN post using WebFetch:
    • Get post title, link, points, author
    • Get top comments (aim for 20-30 top comments)
  3. If post links to content: Also fetch linked article
  4. If fetching fails:
    • Inform user of issue
    • Suggest checking URL format
    • Stop here
  5. Read the analysis prompt from prompts/hn.md
  6. Extract metadata:
    • Title, author, points
    • Post type (Show HN, Ask HN, etc.)
    • Comment count
  7. Generate analysis covering both content AND discussion
  8. Create output directory reports/hackernews/ if needed
  9. Save the report to reports/hackernews/YYYY-MM-DD_sanitized-title.md
  10. Update the activity log at logs/YYYY-MM-DD.md:
    • Add entry under "## HN Discussions" section
    • Format: - [Title](../reports/hackernews/filename.md) - HH:MM
  11. Confirm to user what was saved

Report Format

# [Post Title]

**Source**: [HN URL]
**Linked Content**: [Original URL if any]
**Points**: [Score]
**Comments**: [Count]
**Date**: YYYY-MM-DD
**Type**: Hacker News Discussion

---

[Analysis content following prompts/hn.md structure]

---

## My Notes

[Empty space for user notes]

Error Handling

  • If URL format wrong: Suggest correct format
  • If post deleted: Inform user
  • If comments fail: Analyze post only
  • If prompts/hn.md missing: Use prompts/default.md
  • Slash command: /hn <url>
  • Prompt file: prompts/hn.md
  • Output: reports/hackernews/