ti-hnparse

name	ti-hnparse
description	Python scripts for fetching a single HN post (hnparse.py) and searching HN posts via Algolia (hnsearch.py)
user-invocable	false

Contains two standalone Python scripts that talk to the free Algolia Hacker News API:

• hnparse.py — fetch one HN post (article + full comment tree) and write structured markdown.
• hnsearch.py — search/list HN posts by query and time range; emits JSON to stdout.

hnparse.py usage

uv run <path-to>/hnparse.py <hn-url-or-id> [-o <output-directory>]

• Uses uv run inline script metadata for dependencies (playwright, httpx, trafilatura)
• Fetches post metadata and comment tree from Algolia HN API
• Extracts linked article via Playwright headless browser (falls back to plain HTTP)
• Writes content.md to the output directory
• Default output: ~/.tweakidea/hn/hn-{item_id}/content.md
• Prints the absolute path of the output file to stdout (last line)
• All progress messages go to stderr

For better article extraction from JS-heavy sites, run uv run playwright install chromium once. Without it, the script falls back to plain HTTP which works fine for most sites.

hnsearch.py usage

uv run <path-to>/hnsearch.py --query "<freeform>" --days <N> \
  [--tags story|show_hn|ask_hn|front_page|poll] \
  [--min-points N] [--limit N]

• Single dependency: httpx (no Playwright / trafilatura needed)
• Queries https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search (popularity-sorted)
• --query required; --days required (0 = no time filter / all-time)
• --tags defaults to story (excludes comments); allowed: story, show_hn, ask_hn, front_page, poll; multiple tags comma-separated
• --min-points defaults to 10; --limit defaults to 20 (max 50)
• Prints a JSON array of hits to stdout. Each hit has: id, title, url, points, num_comments, author, created_at_i, relative_age, hn_url.
• Progress and errors go to stderr. Exits non-zero on HTTP failure.