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hackernews

Scrapes news.ycombinator.com listing pages into structured JSON story data.

5|Updated Apr 9, 2026
Search Tags:#scraping#pagination#firebase#hackernews#cheerio#html-parsing#news.ycombinator.com
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/AgentComputerAI/torch --skill hackernews-agentcomputerai
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: hackernews
Source: https://github.com/AgentComputerAI/torch/tree/main/skills/sites/hackernews
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/AgentComputerAI/torch --skill hackernews-agentcomputerai

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

What problem does it solve?

This playbook removes the manual effort of building and maintaining scrapers for news.ycombinator.com by providing a proven, repeatable extraction recipe for front-page and listing pages so you can reliably obtain ranked story data quickly.

Core Features & Use Cases

  • Server-rendered scraping: Uses plain HTTP fetch of server-rendered HTML to avoid running a browser.
  • Stable selectors & extraction: Concrete selectors for title, rank, site, points, user, comments, age, and canonical HN URLs so parsers produce consistent JSON.
  • Firebase fallback & pagination: Recommends the official Firebase API for full-archive or comment scraping and outlines polite pagination honoring robots.txt crawl-delay.

Quick Start

Use the hackernews skill to extract the front-page story list from https://news.ycombinator.com and return JSON with rank, id, title, url, site, points, user, comments, age, and time.

Frequently Asked Questions about hackernews

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I scrape Hacker News front pages without running a browser?▼

You can scrape Hacker News front pages by fetching server-rendered HTML and parsing story rows with CSS selectors using Cheerio, avoiding the overhead of browser automation. This method reliably extracts ranked story data quickly.

What data fields can I extract from news.ycombinator.com listing pages?▼

You can extract structured JSON data from news.ycombinator.com listing pages including rank, id, title, url, site, points, user, comments, age, and canonical HN URLs. Stable selectors ensure parsers produce consistent output.

Does Hacker News scraping work for paginated listings like /ask, /show, and ?p=N?▼

Yes, scraping applies to paginated ?p=N listings and various pages such as /news, /newest, /ask, /show, and /jobs. The playbook outlines polite pagination that honors robots.txt crawl-delay during extraction.

When should I use the Firebase API instead of HTML parsing for Hacker News?▼

You should use the Firebase API instead of HTML parsing when you need full-archive data or comment scraping. The playbook recommends it as a fallback for deeper extraction beyond front-page story lists.

Do I need any external dependencies or NPM packages to parse Hacker News HTML?▼

No external dependencies are required beyond Cheerio for HTML parsing. The skill fetches plain server-rendered HTML and applies concrete CSS selectors to extract structured story data without complex setups.

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