--- name: social-hackernews title: "Hacker News Publishing Playbook" description: "Ground-truth 2026 playbook for submitting and commenting on Hacker News. Covers the reverse-engineered ranking formula, the five post types (Show HN, Ask HN, Launch HN, Tell HN, regular submission) with their exact title conventions, the mandatory first-comment pattern for Show HN, moderation (flags, vouches, mailing the mods), voting-ring detection, and how to write titles that don't read as marketing. Activate when drafting anything for Hacker News." license: Apache-2.0 compatibility: "Octomind content agents. Platform-specific to Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com)." domains: content rules: - content(hackernews) - match(\bhacker\s+news\b) - match(\bshow\s+HN\b) - match(\bask\s+HN\b) - match(\blaunch\s+HN\b) - match(\btell\s+HN\b) - match(\bpost\s+(on|to|for)\s+HN\b) - match(\by\s*combinator\b) - match(\bycombinator\b) --- # Hacker News Publishing Playbook ## Overview Hacker News is unlike every other social platform. No feed personalization, no hashtags, no follower count, no algorithm-for-you. Every user sees the same front page. One post ships per slot and the ranking is pure: early upvotes, steep time decay, penalties for anything that reads as marketing. Of every platform covered in these skills, HN is the most allergic to promotional tone and the most rewarding when a post lands. Pair with `content-voice` for human voice. HN readers — skilled engineers, researchers, founders — detect AI-generated and marketing text within the first line. --- ## Instructions ### The 2026 Ranking Algorithm (reverse-engineered from Arc source) HN's front page ranking uses a simple formula derived from the open Arc source: ``` score = ((points - 1) ^ 0.8) / ((age_in_hours + 2) ^ gravity) × penalties ``` - **Gravity ≈ 1.8** — the time-decay exponent. Posts lose ranking steeply; after 24 hours almost nothing recovers. - **Points exponent 0.8** — diminishing returns on raw upvotes. Going from 10 → 20 points matters more than going from 100 → 200. - **Penalties** — applied opaquely by mods or heuristics; can halve or eighth a post's effective score. Triggers include: promotional language, domain flagging, flagged-by-users, too many comments-per-point ratio (signals controversy), voting rings. **Practical implications:** 1. **The first 1–2 hours on `/newest` decide everything.** If you don't get ~5 upvotes in the first 30 minutes, you're buried under the next 500 submissions. 2. **"Rich get richer" dynamic.** A lucky early upvote cascade can push a mediocre post high; a great post posted at the wrong hour can die in `/newest` with zero visibility. 3. **You can't farm HN.** No hashtags to game, no follow-graph to hack, no engagement bait that works. The only lever is genuinely good content + good title + good timing + a non-zero amount of luck. --- ### The Five Post Types (and their exact conventions) HN has strict naming conventions. Violating them results in the mods re-titling or killing your post. | Type | Prefix | Use for | Title example | |---|---|---|---| | **Regular submission** | (none) | Linking to an article, blog post, paper, repo, video | *Observations on a 500-day project in Rust* | | **Show HN** | `Show HN:` | Something you built that others can try | *Show HN: A terminal file manager written in Zig* | | **Ask HN** | `Ask HN:` | Question for the community (self-post, no link) | *Ask HN: How do you evaluate long-context LLMs?* | | **Tell HN** | `Tell HN:` | Short announcement or observation (self-post) | *Tell HN: HN front page is unreachable from EU today* | | **Launch HN** | `Launch HN:` | YC-backed companies only (coordinated with YC) | *Launch HN: Acme (YC W25) – SDK for audio diffusion* | Do not use `Launch HN:` unless you are actually a YC company with a launch scheduled. Mods will remove it. --- ### Title Craft (the most important part) HN titles do 80% of the work. Rules, in priority order: 1. **If linking to an article, use the article's original title.** Paraphrasing or editorializing gets flagged by users and re-titled by mods. 2. **Drop the site name.** `"My post title - Dan's Blog"` → `"My post title"`. Always. 3. **No clickbait phrasing.** No "You won't believe," no "This one trick," no "10 things every engineer should know." 4. **No marketing adjectives.** Kill: revolutionary, game-changing, powerful, advanced, amazing, groundbreaking, cutting-edge, ultimate, best-in-class. 5. **No question marks unless it's an Ask HN** or the article literally asks a question. 6. **No exclamation marks. Ever.** 7. **No emoji.** Not even for icons. 8. **No ALL CAPS words** except proper acronyms (API, LLM, GPU). 9. **Neutral, factual, curious-hacker tone.** "How we cut our AWS bill 73% in one weekend" beats "We saved $$$: the secret to cloud cost optimization." 10. **Specificity wins.** Numbers, versions, exact tech, timeframes are all positive signals to HN readers. 11. **Under ~80 characters.** HN truncates beyond that. --- ### Show HN — Specific Rules (and the mandatory first comment) Show HN is for things you built and want feedback on. Follow the official format or mods kill the post. **Title**: `Show HN: [what it is]` - Not `Show HN: MyProduct – the revolutionary X` - Yes: `Show HN: A static site generator written in OCaml` - Yes: `Show HN: I built a CLI to search AWS resources by tag` **The first comment (posted by you, within ~1 minute of submission) is mandatory for Show HN.** It's not optional — the community expects it and you will get roasted if you don't. It should include: 1. **What it is** — 1–2 sentences, plain English 2. **Why you built it** — the itch, the missing tool, the problem 3. **Tech stack / interesting implementation detail** — HN audience reads this 4. **What's not working yet / where you want feedback** — honest about limits 5. **How to try it** — install command, hosted demo link, whatever is lowest-friction Do NOT in the first comment: - Ask for upvotes (instant voting-ring flag) - Use marketing language - Include promotional links beyond the core project - Shill affiliated services **First-comment template (adapt, don't copy):** ``` Hey HN — built this because [specific personal itch / missing tool]. It's a [one-line description] written in [language]. The interesting part of the implementation is [specific technical detail that HN readers will find interesting — a datastructure, an optimization, an unusual architecture]. Currently it handles [X] but [Y] is not yet implemented and I'd especially love feedback on [specific thing]. Happy to answer questions about [technical area]. Repo: [link] ``` --- ### Ask HN — Specific Rules Ask HN is for genuine questions, no link in the URL field. It's a self-post. - **Title IS the question.** Not "Ask HN: I have a question about X" — just ask it. "Ask HN: How do you structure config files in a polyglot monorepo?" - **Body is context.** What you've tried, what you've ruled out, what specifically you want help with. - **Don't use Ask HN as disguised promotion** — "Ask HN: How can we improve [MyProduct]?" gets flagged instantly. --- ### Moderation You Need to Know - **Flagged posts** disappear from `/newest` and the front page. Usually triggered by multiple users hitting the flag link — often for marketing tone, duplicate submissions, political content, or being off-topic for HN. - **Dead posts** (shown as `[dead]` to logged-in users, invisible otherwise) were removed by the software or a mod. Can sometimes be resurrected by mods if you email **hn@ycombinator.com** politely. - **Hellban / shadowban** — your account posts but no one sees them. Usually triggered by voting-ring behavior or repeated rule violations. Hard to recover from. - **Vouches** — users with enough karma can vouch for a flagged/dead post to revive it. You can't vouch for your own posts. - **Emailing mods** — `hn@ycombinator.com`, polite, short, with the post URL. Works more often than you'd think if the post was clean and got caught by a heuristic. Do NOT email for "boost my post." --- ### Voting Rings and Account Trust HN's single biggest anti-gaming focus. Never do any of these: - Ask friends, teammates, or Twitter/Slack groups to upvote - Post a link to your submission with "please upvote" anywhere, ever - Have multiple accounts (detected by IP, browser fingerprint, posting patterns) - Coordinate simultaneous posting/upvoting with others - Create an account solely to submit your own link All of these trigger voting-ring detection, which typically hellbans every involved account permanently. HN is serious about this and good at detecting it. **The only legitimate pre-submission move:** post the URL in your own newsletter/network, mention "it's on HN" *without* asking for upvotes or linking the HN submission directly. Let people find it organically. --- ### Timing - **Best windows** for English-speaking tech audience: weekday mornings **8–11 AM ET** (US east coast awake, Europe late afternoon). - **Tuesday–Thursday** tend to be best days; weekends are quieter but less competitive. - **Late-night ET / early morning European time** is a decent second-chance window. - Timing is contested — Ken Shirriff's ranking analyses show variance, and a truly good post can break through most times. But bad timing + mediocre hook = invisible. --- ### What Gets a Post Flagged to Death - Marketing language in title or body ("revolutionary," "ultimate," "must-read") - Exclamation marks - Emoji in title - First comment asking for upvotes - Landing page with only a product pitch, no substance - Newsletter signup wall or paywall as the linked URL - Political / cultural war content (HN is actively anti-flame-war) - Duplicate submission (same URL submitted in the last 6–12 months) - Clickbait or editorialized title - Low-quality AI-generated content (HN readers detect this fast and flag hard) - Self-promotion without substance (5 blog posts in 2 weeks all linking your product) --- ### Comment Strategy On other people's posts: - **Substantive first.** HN's comment ranking values thoughtfulness; one-liners get downvoted fast. - **Cite specifics.** "Having run this in production at X scale, we found Y" is gold. - **Disagree politely with reasons.** "I don't think this holds because…" beats "This is wrong." - **Assume good faith.** HN's comment culture explicitly requires it — mods enforce. - **Don't name-call, don't dunk, don't rage-post.** You'll be banned faster than anywhere else. - **Cite sources for factual claims.** Engineers on HN check. On your own posts (especially Show HN): - Respond to every substantive comment for the first 2–3 hours. - Treat critical feedback as the point. Most useful comments are negative. - Correct your own mistakes openly. "You're right, I was wrong about X" earns karma. --- ### Pre-Publish Checklist - [ ] Title follows the type convention (Show HN / Ask HN / plain / Tell HN / Launch HN) - [ ] Title is neutral, specific, no marketing adjectives, no exclamation marks, no emoji - [ ] If linking an article: using the original title, site name stripped - [ ] Posted the URL not the AMP/tracking version - [ ] No "please upvote" anywhere, including other channels - [ ] For Show HN: first comment drafted and ready to post within 1 minute of submission - [ ] For Ask HN: real question in the title, real context in the body - [ ] Timing: weekday 8–11 AM ET or best-available slot - [ ] Account is established (30+ days, non-zero karma) — new accounts get throttled - [ ] Ready to engage with comments for 2–3 hours after posting - [ ] If the post dies: know the hn@ycombinator.com email and when it's legitimate to use it --- ## Examples ### Example 1: Show HN title **Bad (marketing, adjectives, exclamation):** > Show HN: TurboForms - The Ultimate Form Builder for Modern SaaS 🚀! **Bad (too vague, no information):** > Show HN: My new side project **Good (specific, neutral, informative):** > Show HN: A form builder that outputs raw HTML and zero JavaScript What works: says exactly what it does, has a specific technical angle (no JS) that HN readers will find interesting, no adjectives, no marketing. --- ### Example 2: Show HN first comment **Bad (marketing, asks for upvotes, no substance):** > Hey HN! 🎉 Super excited to share TurboForms! We've been working SO hard on this. Would love your support and upvotes!! Check it out at turboforms.io — it's a game-changer for form building! **Good (substantive, technical, asks for real feedback):** > Hey HN — built this because every form builder I tried (Typeform, Tally, custom in-app ones) either forced a JS runtime on my users' sites or had vendor lock-in I couldn't stomach. > > It outputs raw HTML + a tiny amount of progressive-enhancement JS (optional, adds inline validation). Server-side it's Elixir + a SQLite-per-tenant architecture — happy to talk about why I went with that over Postgres, it was a real trade-off. > > Currently handles single-step forms well. Multi-step and conditional logic are half-done and I'd love feedback on whether the DSL I'm prototyping (shown on the /experimental page) is reasonable or cursed. > > Demo: https://example.com > Repo: https://github.com/me/project What works: personal itch, technical specifics HN cares about (SQLite-per-tenant is interesting), honest about what's not done, asks for specific feedback, no marketing language, no upvote ask. --- ### Example 3: Ask HN **Bad (vague, unanswerable):** > Ask HN: Any advice for a startup founder? **Bad (disguised promotion):** > Ask HN: What would you want in a CRM built for freelancers? (I'm building one) **Good (specific, shows effort, has context):** > Ask HN: How do you evaluate long-context LLMs for retrieval tasks? > > Context: we have ~5M support tickets in Postgres, and I've been testing Claude 3.7 (200k), GPT-4.1 (128k), and Gemini 2.0 (1M) for "find similar tickets" workflows. > > Benchmarks I've tried: needle-in-haystack (shows little about real retrieval), RAG-bench (synthetic), LongBench (helpful but old). What I'm struggling with: building an eval that reflects our actual query distribution without hand-labeling thousands of ticket pairs. > > Has anyone built domain-specific LC-LLM evals they can talk about? Especially interested in how you decided when the eval was "good enough" to trust. What works: real question, specific setup, shows prior work, asks something experts can actually answer from their own experience. Will attract the right kind of comment thread. --- ### Example 4: Title for a linked article You're submitting: `"Why we moved from Kubernetes to Nomad: a 12-month retrospective - InternalDevBlog"` **Bad (kept site name, re-phrased):** > Why our team left Kubernetes for Nomad (awesome retrospective!) **Good (article's original title, site stripped, no editorializing):** > Why we moved from Kubernetes to Nomad: a 12-month retrospective HN rule: use the original title unless it's misleading or clickbait. Strip the site name. No commentary. --- ### Example 5: Post that flops and why Submission: > Show HN: Revolutionary AI-Powered SaaS Analytics Platform That Will Transform Your Business 🚀🔥 First comment: > Hi everyone! We built this to help businesses leverage AI! Please check out our landing page and let us know what you think! Upvotes appreciated 🙏 **Why this dies in under 10 minutes**: title has `Revolutionary`, `AI-Powered`, `Transform Your Business`, two emoji, no specifics. First comment asks for upvotes, has no substance, no tech stack, no real problem description. Flagged within the first 5 users; hellban risk for "Upvotes appreciated." Mods remove, account reputation damaged. --- ## References - AgentSkills spec: https://agentskills.io/specification - HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - HN FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html - Ranking source (Arc): https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc - Contact mods: hn@ycombinator.com - Companion skill: `content-voice` — HN is the hardest platform for sounding human; voice rules are essential