cli-web-hackernews

Hacker News on the command line: browsing and search need no auth; voting, submitting, commenting, favoriting, and hiding need login. Install: pip install cli-web-hackernews

Commands

Browse (no auth)

• stories top|new|best|ask|show|jobs — story feeds. Options: -n/--limit N (default 30)
• stories view STORY_ID — story + comment tree. Options: -n/--limit N (comments, default 10), --no-comments
• search stories QUERY / search comments QUERY — Algolia search. Options: -n/--limit N (default 20), --page N (0-indexed), --sort-date (by date instead of relevance)
• user view USERNAME — public profile (karma, member since, about)

Account actions (auth required)

• upvote ITEM_ID — upvote a story or comment
• submit -t TITLE [-u URL] [--text BODY] — submit a link, or omit -u for Ask HN
• comment PARENT_ID TEXT — comment on a story or reply to a comment
• favorite ITEM_ID / hide ITEM_ID — save / hide a story
• user favorites|submissions|threads [USERNAME] — your activity (or another user's, where public). Options: -n/--limit N
• auth login (username/password prompt), auth login-browser, auth status, auth logout

Examples

# Front page, top 10
cli-web-hackernews stories top -n 10 --json

# A story with its first 5 comments
cli-web-hackernews stories view 47530330 -n 5 --json

# Search recent stories about Rust
cli-web-hackernews search stories "rust" --sort-date -n 10 --json

# Submit an Ask HN (requires login)
cli-web-hackernews submit -t "Ask HN: Best CLI tooling?" --text "Looking for recommendations" --json

# Upvote then favorite a story
cli-web-hackernews upvote 47530330 --json && cli-web-hackernews favorite 47530330 --json

JSON output

Add --json for structured output. Stories: {id, title, url, score, by, descendants, age, domain}. Search results: {objectID, title, url, author, points, num_comments}. Users: {id, karma, member_since, about_plain, total_submissions}. Actions: {success, item_id, action}. Errors: {"error": true, "code": "...", "message": "..."}.

Auth

Run cli-web-hackernews auth login for an interactive username/password prompt (or auth login-browser to log in via a browser window). Check with auth status --json. Auth-required commands fail with an {"error": true, ...} envelope when not logged in.

Utilities

cli-web-hackernews doctor [--json] diagnoses local setup (install, auth, dependencies). cli-web-hackernews mcp-serve exposes the commands as MCP tools over stdio. Running with no arguments opens an interactive REPL.

Agent tips

• search covers all of HN history (Algolia); stories reflects the live feeds.
• user favorites/submissions/threads default to your own account when USERNAME is omitted.