Hacker News — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the hackernews-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first:

Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows:

   npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install hackernews --cli-only

Verify: hackernews-pp-cli --version
Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill.

If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.3 or newer):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/hackernews/cmd/hackernews-pp-cli@latest

If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.

When to Use This CLI

Reach for hackernews-pp-cli when you need to monitor or analyze HN signal programmatically: agent-driven daily diffs, topic pulses, hiring-thread aggregation, repost checks before submitting, structured thread digests for context windows. The local store makes follow-up queries cheap and offline-friendly.

When Not to Use This CLI

Do not activate this CLI for requests that require creating, updating, deleting, publishing, commenting, upvoting, inviting, ordering, sending messages, booking, purchasing, or changing remote state. This printed CLI exposes read-only commands for inspection, export, sync, and analysis.

Unique Capabilities

These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.

Local snapshots that compound

since — See exactly what climbed, fell, appeared, or dropped off the front page since your last sync.

_Reach for this when an agent wakes up daily and needs to know what shifted on HN since yesterday — without re-fetching 500 items every poll._

  hackernews-pp-cli since --json

controversial — Stories ranked by the highest comment-to-point ratio over a recent window — the discussions everyone is arguing about.

_Reach for this when you want stories with high engagement-to-approval — heated debate signal — instead of just popularity._

  hackernews-pp-cli controversial --window 7d --json

velocity — Show a story's rank trajectory over time from local snapshots — climb, plateau, or fall.

_Reach for this when an agent asks 'is this story still gaining traction or already cresting' — only meaningful answer comes from snapshots._

  hackernews-pp-cli velocity 47998158 --json

sync — Pull top/new/best/show/ask/job lists and recently-changed items into local SQLite for offline use and snapshot history.

_Run this once per day (or per hour for agents) — it is the foundation that turns since/velocity/controversial/users-stats from impossible into one SQL query._

  hackernews-pp-cli sync --resources updates --agent

Algolia leverage

pulse — See per-day mentions, average score, and comment volume for any topic over the last N days.

_Reach for this when the question is 'is this topic heating up or cooling down' rather than 'what's the top story right now'._

  hackernews-pp-cli pulse rust --days 7 --agent

repost — Has this URL been posted before? Lists every prior submission, with score, comments, and date.

_Reach for this before submitting a Show HN — duplicate URLs flame out instantly; you want to know how a prior post did first._

  hackernews-pp-cli repost https://example.com/article

search local — Offline full-text search over every story and comment you have ever synced — corpus grows with use.

_Reach for this when investigating long-tail topics or replaying last quarter's research — Algolia might rank it down or drop it; your local corpus will not._

  hackernews-pp-cli search local "vector database" --limit 20 --json

Hiring-thread mining

hiring stats — Aggregate the last N monthly Who-is-Hiring threads: top languages, remote ratio, top companies, location distribution.

_Reach for this when you need quarterly or seasonal hiring trends — language popularity, remote-share shifts, location density — not just this month's listings._

  hackernews-pp-cli hiring stats --months 3 --agent

hiring companies — Companies that posted in M of the last N hiring threads, with first-seen, last-seen, and months-posted count.

_Reach for this when sourcing or trend-tracking — which companies are persistent hirers vs one-off posters — without scraping HNHIRING.com._

  hackernews-pp-cli hiring companies --months 6 --min-posts 3 --agent

Cross-entity local queries

users stats — Median and p90 score across a user's submissions, plus traction buckets and hour-of-day score distribution.

_Reach for this before posting your own work to learn your traction patterns, or when sizing up a poster's history before engaging._

  hackernews-pp-cli users stats pg --json

Command Reference

items — Fetch any HN item (story, comment, job, poll) by ID

hackernews-pp-cli items <itemId> — Get details for a specific story, comment, job, or poll

maxitem — Current maximum item ID

hackernews-pp-cli maxitem — Returns the largest item ID currently assigned by Hacker News

stories — Browse top, new, and best Hacker News stories

hackernews-pp-cli stories ask — Get the latest Ask HN posts
hackernews-pp-cli stories best — Get the highest-voted stories on Hacker News
hackernews-pp-cli stories job — Get the latest Hacker News job postings
hackernews-pp-cli stories new — Get the newest stories on Hacker News
hackernews-pp-cli stories show — Get the latest Show HN posts
hackernews-pp-cli stories top — Get the current top stories on Hacker News

updates — Recently changed items and profiles

hackernews-pp-cli updates — Items and user profiles that have changed recently

users — Look up Hacker News user profiles

hackernews-pp-cli users <userId> — Get a user's profile including karma and submission history

Hand-written commands

hackernews-pp-cli sync — Pull top/new/best/show/ask/job lists and recent items into the local SQLite store
hackernews-pp-cli search <query> — Full-text search Hacker News stories and comments via Algolia (use 'search local' for offline FTS)
hackernews-pp-cli hiring — Mine 'Ask HN: Who is hiring' threads (filter, stats, companies)
hackernews-pp-cli freelance — Mine 'Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?' threads (filter)
hackernews-pp-cli since — Show what changed on the front page since the last sync (added, removed, moved stories)
hackernews-pp-cli pulse <topic> — Show what HN is saying about a topic — per-day mentions, score, and comment volume
hackernews-pp-cli controversial — Find stories with the highest comment-to-point ratio (polarizing discussions)
hackernews-pp-cli repost <url> — Has this URL been posted on HN? Lists prior submissions with scores and dates
hackernews-pp-cli velocity <id> — Show a story's rank trajectory across local snapshots
hackernews-pp-cli doctor — Run a self-diagnostic: API reachability, store writability, config sanity

Freshness Contract

This printed CLI owns bounded freshness only for registered store-backed read command paths. In --data-source auto mode, those paths check sync_state and may run a bounded refresh before reading local data. --data-source local never refreshes. --data-source live reads the API and does not mutate the local store. Set HACKERNEWS_NO_AUTO_REFRESH=1 to skip the freshness hook without changing source selection.

Covered paths:

hackernews-pp-cli stories
hackernews-pp-cli stories ask
hackernews-pp-cli stories best
hackernews-pp-cli stories job
hackernews-pp-cli stories new
hackernews-pp-cli stories show
hackernews-pp-cli stories top
hackernews-pp-cli updates

When JSON output uses the generated provenance envelope, freshness metadata appears at meta.freshness. Treat it as current-cache freshness for the covered command path, not a guarantee of complete historical backfill or API-specific enrichment.

Finding the right command

When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:

hackernews-pp-cli which "<capability in your own words>"

which resolves a natural-language capability query to the best matching command from this CLI's curated feature index. Exit code 0 means at least one match; exit code 2 means no confident match — fall back to --help or use a narrower query.

Recipes

Daily front-page diff for an agent

hackernews-pp-cli sync && hackernews-pp-cli since --json --select added,removed,moved

Sync, then diff. The --select narrows the payload to just the change deltas — agents process kilobytes instead of megabytes.

Topic monitoring with selected fields

hackernews-pp-cli pulse openai --days 7 --agent --select buckets.day,buckets.hits,buckets.avg_score

Per-day breakdown of mentions, average score, and comment volume — using --select to pull only the trend axes from the deeply-nested response.

Pre-submit dupe check

hackernews-pp-cli repost https://example.com/article --json

Lists every prior submission of that URL with score, comments, and date — answers the 'has this been posted' question in one round-trip.

Filter Who's Hiring for remote Go roles

hackernews-pp-cli hiring filter "(remote|REMOTE).*\\bGo\\b" --json

Regex against the latest monthly thread. The double-escaped \\b is a real regex word boundary; --json gives you structured rows instead of one big match dump.

Quarterly hiring trend

hackernews-pp-cli hiring companies --months 6 --min-posts 3 --agent

Companies posting in 3+ of the last 6 monthly threads — first-seen, last-seen, total months. Cross-month queries you cannot do without a local store.

Auth Setup

No authentication required.

Run hackernews-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.

Agent Mode

Add --agent to any command. Expands to: --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes.

Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr
Filterable — --select keeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:

  hackernews-pp-cli items 47998158 --agent --select id,name,status

Previewable — --dry-run shows the request without sending
Offline-friendly — sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
Non-interactive — never prompts, every input is a flag
Read-only — do not use this CLI for create, update, delete, publish, comment, upvote, invite, order, send, or other mutating requests

Response envelope

Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:

{
  "meta": {"source": "live" | "local", "synced_at": "...", "reason": "..."},
  "results": <data>
}

Parse .results for data and .meta.source to know whether it's live or local. A human-readable N results (live) summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a terminal — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.

Agent Feedback

When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:

hackernews-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
hackernews-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
hackernews-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10

Entries are stored locally at ~/.hackernews-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless HACKERNEWS_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or HACKERNEWS_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true. Default behavior is local-only.

Write what surprised you, not a bug report. Short, specific, one line: that is the part that compounds.

Output Delivery

Every command accepts --deliver <sink>. The output goes to the named sink in addition to (or instead of) stdout, so agents can route command results without hand-piping. Three sinks are supported:

Sink	Effect
`stdout`	Default; write to stdout only
`file:<path>`	Atomically write output to `<path>` (tmp + rename)
`webhook:<url>`	POST the output body to the URL (`application/json` or `application/x-ndjson` when `--compact`)

Unknown schemes are refused with a structured error naming the supported set. Webhook failures return non-zero and log the URL + HTTP status on stderr.

Named Profiles

A profile is a saved set of flag values, reused across invocations. Use it when a scheduled agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.

hackernews-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
hackernews-pp-cli --profile briefing items 47998158
hackernews-pp-cli profile list --json
hackernews-pp-cli profile show briefing
hackernews-pp-cli profile delete briefing --yes

Explicit flags always win over profile values; profile values win over defaults. agent-context lists all available profiles under available_profiles so introspecting agents discover them at runtime.

Exit Codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
2	Usage error (wrong arguments)
3	Resource not found
5	API error (upstream issue)
7	Rate limited (wait and retry)
10	Config error

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

Empty, help, or --help → show hackernews-pp-cli --help output
Starts with install → ends with mcp → MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above
Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with --agent)

MCP Server Installation

Install the MCP server:

   go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/hackernews/cmd/hackernews-pp-mcp@latest

   claude mcp add hackernews-pp-mcp -- hackernews-pp-mcp

Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

Check if installed: which hackernews-pp-cli

If not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill).

Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.
Execute with the --agent flag:

   hackernews-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent

If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: hackernews-pp-cli <command> --help.

pp-hackernews