Hacker News Poster#

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

Setup#

Required Environment Variables#

VariableRequiredDescriptionHN_USERNAMEYesHacker News usernameHN_PASSWORDYesHacker News passwordHN_COOKIE_FILENoCookie storage path (defaults to ~/.hn_cookies.txt)

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.

bash

# 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