hn

A terminal client for Hacker News.

Features

• 📰 Story browser — Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN with tab switching
• 💬 Comment threads — navigate with j/k, fold/unfold, lazy-load reply trees
• 🌐 Translation — translate a title with t, all visible titles with T, or a selected comment
• 🔄 Soft refresh — refresh stories or comments without restarting
• 🎨 Themes — hn, mocha, dracula, tokyo, nord, gruvbox
• ⚡ Progressive loading — visible range loads first, more fetched as you scroll

Install

Homebrew (macOS / Linux):

$ brew install heartleo/tap/hn

winget (Windows):

$ winget install heartleo.hn

curl (macOS / Linux):

$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heartleo/hn-cli/main/install.sh | sh

No sudo needed — the binary is installed under your home directory. The install directory is picked from the first of these that is set:

Source	Value
HN_INSTALL_DIR	used as-is
XDG_BIN_HOME	used as-is
XDG_DATA_HOME	$XDG_DATA_HOME/../bin
(default)	$HOME/.local/bin

To install somewhere else:

$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heartleo/hn-cli/main/install.sh | HN_INSTALL_DIR=~/bin sh

The script warns if the install directory is not on your $PATH, and prints the export PATH=... line to add to your shell profile.

The script never calls sudo. To install system-wide, run it as root yourself:

$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heartleo/hn-cli/main/install.sh -o install.sh
$ sudo env HN_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh install.sh

Prebuilt binaries — download from GitHub Releases

Go install (requires Go 1.25+):

$ go install github.com/heartleo/hn-cli/cmd/hn@latest

Build from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/heartleo/hn-cli
$ cd hn
$ go build -o hn ./cmd/hn

Claude Code Plugin

This repo also ships hn, a Claude Code plugin that brings Hacker News to Claude.

/plugin marketplace add heartleo/hn-cli
/plugin install hn@hn-cli

Skill	What it does
hn-digest	Scan the front page — today's themes, hot discussions, industry mix

Then just ask: what's on HN today. Ask in any language and the digest comes back in that language. See the plugin README for details.

The digest is also published daily at hndigest.heartleo.dev.

DeepSeek Harness Plugin

For DeepSeek Harness there is hacker-news, a plain-ESM plugin that talks to the public HN APIs directly — no hn binary needed.

dsh plugin --profile <name> add -w github:heartleo/hn-cli#path:/plugins/hacker-news

Ask naturally, for example: what's popular on HN?, search HN for sqlite, or read this HN discussion.

Tool	What it does
hn_stories	Ranked feeds — top / new / best / ask / show / job
hn_item	An item plus its reply tree in reading order
hn_search	Algolia search, by relevance or date
hn_user	Karma, account age, bio, submission count

See the plugin README for configuration.

Quick Start

$ hn        # top stories
$ hn new    # new stories
$ hn best   # best stories

Commands

Browse

Opens the interactive TUI. Defaults to Top stories; switch tabs with ←/→.

$ hn        # top stories (default)
$ hn top
$ hn new
$ hn best
$ hn ask
$ hn show

Comments

Press Enter on any story to open its comment thread.

• navigate with ↑/↓ or k/j
• press Enter to expand or collapse a reply tree
• press Space to fold or unfold the selected comment
• press C / E to fold or unfold all
• press r to jump to the root comment
• press R to soft refresh
• press Esc to go back

Translation

Translates via any OpenAI-compatible chat completions API. See Configuration to set up an API key.

t   translate selected story title (toggle cached translation)
T   translate all visible titles in one batch request
t   translate selected comment (in comment view)

theme

$ hn theme          # show current
$ hn theme nord     # set globally

Available: hn · mocha · dracula · tokyo · nord · gruvbox

Keys

Story List

Key	Action
Enter	Open comment thread
o	Open in browser
t	Translate selected title
T	Translate all visible titles
← / →	Switch tab
r	Refresh
?	Toggle help
q / Ctrl+C	Quit

Comment Thread

Key	Action
j / ↓	Next comment
k / ↑	Previous comment
gg	Back to top
r	Jump to root comment
Enter	Expand / collapse replies
Space	Fold / unfold selected comment
C / E	Fold / unfold all
t	Translate selected comment
R	Soft refresh
o	Open story in browser
Esc	Back to list
?	Toggle help
Q / Ctrl+C	Quit

Configuration

hn reads ~/.config/hn/config.json. A .env file in the working directory is also loaded automatically; environment variables take precedence over the config file.

Translation

Variable	Default	Description
HN_TRANSLATE_API_URL	https://api.openai.com/v1	API base URL
HN_TRANSLATE_API_KEY	—	API key
HN_TRANSLATE_MODEL	gpt-4o-mini	Model name
HN_TRANSLATE_LANG	Chinese	Target language

Example .env:

HN_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=sk-...
HN_TRANSLATE_LANG=Chinese

Theme

Variable	Description
HN_THEME	Override theme without editing config

Example ~/.config/hn/config.json:

{
  "theme": "mocha",
  "translate": {
    "api_url": "https://api.openai.com/v1",
    "api_key": "sk-...",
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "language": "Chinese"
  }
}

Contributing

Issues, bug reports, feature suggestions, and general feedback are very welcome:

• 🐛 Report a bug
• 💡 Suggest a feature

[!NOTE] This project is maintained in my spare time, and I currently do not have enough capacity to properly review external pull requests. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details. Thank you for your understanding!