| name | content-hackernews |
| description | Hacker News post generation for Show HN, Ask HN, and submissions. Use when user wants to post to Hacker News or write a Show HN/Ask HN post. |
Hacker News Content Generation
Before You Start
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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.
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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)
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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:
- What it is: One sentence. Clear, specific, no jargon.
- Why you built it: The problem you faced or the motivation behind the project.
- How it works: Brief technical overview for the curious. Architecture, key technologies, interesting design decisions.
- What's interesting technically: What did you learn? What was hard? What's novel?
- Current state and limitations: What works, what doesn't, what's next. Honesty here earns enormous respect.
- 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:
- Be direct. State things clearly. No throat-clearing.
- Be technical. HN readers expect and appreciate technical depth.
- Be honest about limitations. "We don't handle X well yet" earns more respect than "We handle everything."
- No superlatives. Replace "the best" with specific comparisons.
- No marketing language. If it could appear in a press release, rewrite it.
- Show, don't tell. Instead of "It's fast," show the benchmark.
Output Checklist
Before delivering HN content:
