What this skill does
Browse and search Hacker News. Fetch top, new, best, Ask HN, Show HN stories and job postings. View item details, comments, and user profiles. Search stories and comments via Algolia. Find "Who is hiring?" threads. Use for any HN-related queries like "what's trending on HN?", "search HN for AI", "show comments on story X", "who is hiring?", "latest Ask HN posts".
Hacker News is part of the Developer Tools category — developer tools that help your agent write, review, debug, and ship code. You can install it on its own or alongside other developer tools skills from the OpenClaw catalog.
How to install Hacker News
The easiest path is via the OpenClaw Easy desktop app — one click, no terminal required:
- Download OpenClaw Easy for macOS or Windows (free, one-click installer, ~30 seconds).
- Open the in-app Skills panel.
- Search for
hackernewsand click Install. - The skill activates automatically when an incoming message matches its description.
Install from the command line
If you already run the OpenClaw CLI, add Hacker News with a single command:
openclaw skills add hackernews
This pulls hackernews from ClawHub and installs it into ~/.openclaw/skills/hackernews/. Restart the OpenClaw gateway afterwards so the new skill is discovered.
How to use Hacker News
Once installed, Hacker News activates on its own: when an incoming message on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Feishu or Line matches the skill's description, your OpenClaw agent loads it and runs the workflow. You can also trigger it explicitly by describing the task in chat. No extra configuration is required after install.
Turning social content into video
Hacker News works with social content. Getting from there to something postable is a separate job: ViralMint — an open-source video pipeline — renders a script or a set of clips into a finished vertical video with captions, ready to post.
It runs as an MCP server, so an OpenClaw agent can drive it from the same chat you already use: ask for a short, and the render comes back finished. See how to connect a video pipeline to your agent.
Manual install (advanced)
If you prefer manual installation:
- Click the Download .zip button above to grab
hackernews-1.0.0.zipdirectly from our S3 mirror. - Unzip into
~/.openclaw/skills/hackernews/(create the directory if it does not exist). - Restart OpenClaw Easy (or the OpenClaw CLI gateway) so the new skill is discovered.
Frequently asked questions
How do I install Hacker News?
Install Hacker News in the OpenClaw Easy desktop app by opening the Skills panel, searching for hackernews, and clicking Install. From a terminal you can run: openclaw skills add hackernews. Either way the skill is placed in ~/.openclaw/skills/hackernews/.
Is Hacker News free?
Yes. Hacker News is free and open-source, distributed under the Apache-2.0 license through ClawHub. No account or payment is required to download or run it.
What does Hacker News do?
Browse and search Hacker News.
Related: more developer tools skills
If Hacker News looks useful, you may also want to check out other developer tools skills in the OpenClaw catalog:
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Free, open-source · Apache-2.0 · Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or local Ollama models