What It Does
- Fetches live front-page stories from the Algolia Hacker News API and delivers them as a concise spoken digest
- Drills into any story on request for a fuller breakdown
- Searches Hacker News for any topic by name
- Pages through the front page for more stories
- Uses the LLM only for narration — titles, points, and comment counts come directly from the API
Voice Commands
| You say | What happens |
|---|---|
"1", "2", … | Deep-dive on that story |
| ”Tell me about the Rust one” | Expands the matching story by title |
| ”Search for WebAssembly” | Searches Hacker News for that topic |
| ”More” / “Next” | Fetches the next batch of five front-page stories |
| ”Stop” / “Done” / “Bye” | Ends the session |
Example Conversation
User: What’s on Hacker News? AI: A new memory allocator for Rust is getting attention — it cuts allocation overhead by forty percent in benchmarks, and the thread is full of performance engineers comparing notes. Up next, PostgreSQL 17 shipped… AI: Want me to explain one of those? Say a number, name a topic, or say stop. User: Two. AI: PostgreSQL 17’s headline feature is a revamped vacuum process… User: Search for WebAssembly. AI: Five stories on WebAssembly right now — the top one covers the new WASI 0.2 spec that just hit stable… User: Stop. AI: Later. Stay curious.
How It Works
- Low-latency startup — the API fetch and the spoken intro run concurrently, so the stories are ready by the time the intro finishes.
- Background prefetch — once the digest is spoken, all five story expansions are pre-generated in the background, so asking for a story by number is usually instant.
- Intent classification — each response is routed through an LLM classifier (
EXPAND,SEARCH,MORE,EXIT,CONVERSE,UNKNOWN); bare numbers bypass the LLM via fast-path detection. - Pagination — “more” fetches the next Algolia page, so stories never repeat across batches.
Trigger Phrases
Hacker NewsHN digestwhat's on Hacker Newstech digestHN today
Setup
No API key required — the ability uses the free, public Algolia Hacker News Search API, which needs no sign-up or token. It requires Python 3.10+, thehttpx package, and an OpenHome Agent with an LLM configured (used for narration and intent classification).
APIs Used
| Service | Auth required | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Algolia Hacker News Search | None | Live front-page stories, story details, and topic search |
Developer Credit
Developed by Kuber Mehta.View on GitHub
Source code for the Hacker News Digest community ability.