Hacker News Content Generation

Before You Start

1. Understand HN culture: Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) is a community driven by intellectual curiosity and technical depth. It is run by Y Combinator and attracts founders, engineers, researchers, and technically sophisticated readers. The community is allergic to marketing, superlatives, and hype.

2. Determine post type:

   • Show HN: Sharing something you have built for community feedback
   • Ask HN: Asking the community a question
   • Standard submission: Sharing a link to content (your own or someone else's)

3. Check for brand voice: Read brand/VOICE.md if it exists, then heavily adapt it using hn-voice.md. HN has the strictest voice requirements of any platform. Marketing language of any kind will get the post flagged, downvoted, or ignored.

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HN Culture

What HN Values

• Intellectual curiosity and genuine interest in ideas
• Technical depth and rigorous thinking
• Honesty, especially about limitations and trade-offs
• Novel insights and original thinking
• Clear, direct writing without embellishment
• Substance over polish

What HN Rejects

• Marketing language of any kind ("revolutionary," "game-changing," "disruptive")
• Superlatives ("the best," "the fastest," "the most powerful")
• Emotional manipulation or engagement bait
• Clickbait titles
• Self-congratulation
• Hype without substance
• Excessive self-promotion without proportional community contribution

The HN Audience

• Technically sophisticated: assume your reader can evaluate technical claims
• Detail-oriented: vague claims will be challenged in comments
• Skeptical of hype: extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
• Global: readers span every timezone and many industries
• Time-constrained: they scan titles and click selectively

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Show HN Format and Rules

Show HN is for sharing your own projects, products, or creations with the community.

Title Format

Show HN: [Concise description of what it is]

Good titles:

• "Show HN: A terminal-based Markdown editor written in Rust"
• "Show HN: Open-source tool to visualize PostgreSQL query plans"
• "Show HN: I built a search engine for academic papers using semantic embeddings"

Bad titles:

• "Show HN: The revolutionary new way to manage your infrastructure" (marketing)
• "Show HN: Check out my awesome app!" (vague, hyped)
• "Show HN: [ProductName] -- Disrupting the observability space" (buzzwords)

Title Rules

• Describe what it does, not how great it is
• Include the technology if relevant ("written in Rust," "using WASM")
• Keep it under 80 characters
• Do not use all caps or exclamation marks
• Do not include pricing or "free" in the title

The Accompanying Comment

Every Show HN post should have a top-level comment from the creator. This comment is critical. Use show-hn-template.md for the structure.

The comment should cover:

1. What it is: One sentence. Clear, specific, no jargon.
2. Why you built it: The problem you faced or the motivation behind the project.
3. How it works: Brief technical overview for the curious. Architecture, key technologies, interesting design decisions.
4. What's interesting technically: What did you learn? What was hard? What's novel?
5. Current state and limitations: What works, what doesn't, what's next. Honesty here earns enormous respect.
6. What you want: Specific feedback you are looking for. "Feedback welcome" is vague. "I'd love feedback on the query optimizer approach" is actionable.

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Ask HN Format

Ask HN is for questions directed at the community.

Title Format

Ask HN: [Your question]

Good Ask HN posts:

• Specific, well-defined questions
• Questions that invite diverse, experience-based answers
• Questions the community has not been asked recently
• Questions where the asker has context to share

Bad Ask HN posts:

• Questions easily answered by a search engine
• Surveys or market research disguised as questions
• "What do you think of [my product]?" (use Show HN instead)

Body

• Provide context for why you are asking
• Share what you have already tried or considered
• Be specific about constraints or requirements
• Keep it concise. HN readers value brevity.

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Standard Submissions

When submitting a link (blog post, article, paper, tool):

Title

• Use the original title of the content. HN prefers this.
• If the original title is clickbait, rewrite it to be descriptive and neutral
• Do not editorialize: "Great article about X" is editorializing. Just submit "X" with the link.
• Adding "(2023)" for older content or "(PDF)" for PDFs is acceptable

Submission Timing

• HN is most active during US business hours (Pacific time)
• Posting during peak hours gives more initial visibility
• Weekends have less competition but also less traffic

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What Gets Flagged and Downvoted

Understanding HN's enforcement culture helps you avoid problems:

Flagged (removed by community or moderators):

• Obviously promotional submissions
• Clickbait titles
• Duplicate submissions of recent stories
• Low-quality content
• Submissions from domains that are heavily self-promoted

Downvoted:

• Comments with marketing language
• Defensive responses to criticism
• Comments that don't add to the discussion
• Self-promotional comments unrelated to the discussion
• "Thanks for the feedback!" without substance

Invisible penalty: flame detection

• HN has sophisticated flame-war detection
• Heated or uncharitable comments may be auto-deprioritized
• Assume good faith in your responses, even when others don't

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HN Voice

See hn-voice.md for detailed voice guidance. The essential rules:

1. Be direct. State things clearly. No throat-clearing.
2. Be technical. HN readers expect and appreciate technical depth.
3. Be honest about limitations. "We don't handle X well yet" earns more respect than "We handle everything."
4. No superlatives. Replace "the best" with specific comparisons.
5. No marketing language. If it could appear in a press release, rewrite it.
6. Show, don't tell. Instead of "It's fast," show the benchmark.

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Output Checklist

Before delivering HN content:

• Title is descriptive, not promotional (under 80 characters)
• Zero marketing language or superlatives
• Show HN posts include a substantive creator comment
• Ask HN posts include context and show prior research
• Technical details are included where relevant
• Limitations and current state are honestly described
• The content would survive scrutiny from a technically sophisticated, skeptical audience
• Voice follows hn-voice.md guidelines
• No clickbait, emotional manipulation, or engagement bait