hacker-news-poster - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: hacker-news-poster

description: Post, comment, and interact on Hacker News. Use when the user asks to submit a Show HN, post a story, comment on an HN thread, edit a comment, or update an HN profile. Requires HN_USERNAME and HN_PASSWORD environment variables. Persists session cookies to ~/.hn_cookies.txt (configurable via HN_COOKIE_FILE env var).

Hacker News Poster

Submit stories, comment on threads, edit comments, and update profiles on Hacker News.

Setup

Required Environment Variables

| Variable | Required | Description |

|----------|----------|-------------|

| HN_USERNAME | Yes | Hacker News username |

| HN_PASSWORD | Yes | Hacker News password |

| HN_COOKIE_FILE | No | Cookie storage path (defaults to ~/.hn_cookies.txt) |

Security Note

Session cookies are stored in plaintext at HN_COOKIE_FILE (or ~/.hn_cookies.txt). These are standard HN session tokens. Delete the file to clear the session.

CLI

All commands go through scripts/hn.py. Always login first per session.


# login (reads HN_USERNAME/HN_PASSWORD from env)

python3 scripts/hn.py login



# submit a link post

python3 scripts/hn.py submit --title "Show HN: My Tool" --url "https://example.com"



# submit a text post (Ask HN, etc.)

python3 scripts/hn.py submit --title "Ask HN: Question?" --text "body text here"



# comment on a story or reply to a comment

python3 scripts/hn.py comment --parent 12345678 --text "your comment"



# edit a comment (only within HN's edit window)

python3 scripts/hn.py edit --id 12345678 --text "updated comment"



# update profile about section

python3 scripts/hn.py profile --username youruser --about "your bio"

All commands output JSON on success ({"ok": true, ...}) and print errors to stderr.

Notes

HN rate-limits submissions and comments. If you get a rate limit error, wait a few minutes.
Comments can only be edited within ~2 hours of posting.
The submit command returns the new item id and url on success.
Session cookies are stored in ~/.hn_cookies.txt to avoid re-authenticating on every command. Delete this file to clear the session.
For reading HN (search, top stories, comments), use the existing hacker-news skill or the HN API directly. This skill is write-only.

Combining with the read-only HN skill

use the hacker-news skill to browse/search stories and find interesting threads
use this skill to login and post/comment