Hacker News Intel

by Varnan-Tech

Hacker News Intel is an Automation skill for Claude Code, published by Varnan-Tech in opendirectory.

621 stars66 forkson Varnan-Tech/opendirectoryAdded 2026/08/24+2% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/16

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Install in seconds

Install Hacker News Intel

Copy Hacker News Intel into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/Varnan-Tech/opendirectory/tree/main/skills/hackernews-intel ~/.claude/skills/hackernews-intel

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/Varnan-Tech/opendirectory.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/hackernews-intel/SKILL.md in Varnan-Tech/opendirectory
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/hackernews-intel
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Automation — 1523 skills

What Hacker News Intel does

Hacker News Intel monitors Hacker News for configured keywords, deduplicates matches with a local SQLite cache, and sends Slack alerts for new posts. Use it to track topics on HN or run scheduled keyword monitoring.

Hacker News Intel is cataloged under Automation on DirSkills. Hacker News Intel comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, gtm, hermes-agent, marketing-skills and openclaw-skills.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Hacker News Intel

Monitor Hacker News for keywords. On each run, fetch new posts via the HN Algolia API, deduplicate against a local SQLite cache, and send Slack alerts for unseen matches. Run manually or schedule via cron or GitHub Actions.

Step 1: Check Setup

1a. Verify required environment variables

Check that these are set:

HN_KEYWORDS (required): comma-separated list of keywords to monitor
SLACK_WEBHOOK (required): Slack Incoming Webhook URL for alerts

If either is missing, stop and tell the user:

HN_KEYWORDS: list the topics you want to monitor, comma-separated. Example: claude code,LLM agents,deno runtime
SLACK_WEBHOOK: create an Incoming Webhook at https://api.slack.com/apps. Select your workspace, enable Incoming Webhooks, and copy the URL.

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Hacker News Intel

What else does Varnan-Tech publish alongside Hacker News Intel?
Hacker News Intel is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from Varnan-Tech/opendirectory, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include App Store Review Arbitrage, Blog Cover Generator and Brand Alchemy. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Hacker News Intel does, and is maintained by Varnan-Tech in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the Varnan-Tech/opendirectory page.
How does Hacker News Intel compare to other Automation skills?
Hacker News Intel ranks #1179 by stars among the 1523 Automation skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Autonomous Loops, Autonomous Agent Harness and Automation Audit Ops. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Hacker News Intel against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.