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hackernews-frontpage

Scrape the Hacker News front page and emit story data as JSON.

Updated Sep 13, 2026
Search Tags:#typescript#browser automation#json#web scraping#hacker news#html parsing#news aggregator
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/abdulazeezoj/monovella-poc --skill hackernews-frontpage-abdulazeezoj
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: hackernews-frontpage
Source: https://github.com/abdulazeezoj/monovella-poc/tree/main/.agents/skills/gstack/browser-skills/hackernews-frontpage
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/abdulazeezoj/monovella-poc --skill hackernews-frontpage-abdulazeezoj

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill includes scripts (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Manually checking the Hacker News front page for top stories is repetitive, and building a custom scraper means handling HN's HTML structure, entity decoding, and edge cases like job postings. This Skill automates that extraction and returns clean, structured JSON. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Front-page scraping: Navigates to news.ycombinator.com through a browser daemon and parses the stable tr.athing row structure into typed story records. - Structured JSON output: Each story includes rank, HN item id, title, outbound URL, point count, and comment count, with nulls for job postings that lack scores. - Fixture-tested parser: The HTML parser is a pure function tested against a bundled fixture, so selector breakage is caught before it affects users. - Use Case: Ask for the current top Hacker News stories and receive a JSON array you can pipe into a digest, dashboard, or trend-tracking script. ## Quick Start Ask the assistant to run the hackernews-frontpage skill and return the current top Hacker News stories as JSON.

Frequently Asked Questions about hackernews-frontpage

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

FAQPage Schema
How do I scrape the Hacker News front page?▼

Run the skill via the skill runner, which navigates to news.ycombinator.com through the browser daemon, reads the page HTML, and parses each story row into a typed record. The result is printed to stdout as a single JSON document with a stories array and count.

What data does the Hacker News scraper return for each story?▼

Each story includes its 1-based rank, HN item id, title, outbound URL, point count, and comment count. Job postings that have no score or comments link return null for those two fields, and a 'discuss' link is treated as zero comments.

Does the HN scraper need authentication or an API key?▼

No Hacker News credentials are needed since the front page is public. However, the script must reach the local gstack browser daemon, either via GSTACK_PORT and GSTACK_SKILL_TOKEN environment variables set by the runner or a .gstack/browse.json state file.

Why does the HN scraper return empty or wrong results?▼

Failures usually mean the daemon is not running on the expected port or HN changed its HTML structure. The parser is tested against a bundled HTML fixture, so a fixture test failure signals that the selectors no longer match the live page.

Can I test the HN parser without a browser or network?▼

Yes. The parseStoriesFromHtml function is exported as a pure function over HTML strings, and the bundled test suite runs it against a captured fixture file. No daemon, network access, or live browser is required for those tests.

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