hn-digest
Fetch and send Hacker News front-page posts on demand. Use when the user asks for HN, says 'hn', 'pull HN', 'hn 10', or specifies a topic like 'hn health', 'hn hacking', or 'hn tech'. Sends N (default 5) posts as individual messages with Title + Link. Exclude crypto.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/cpojer/hn-digestWhat This Skill Does
The hn-digest skill is a specialized OpenClaw agent tool designed to provide curated, high-signal information from Hacker News directly within your chat environment. It streamlines the consumption of tech news by automating the retrieval, filtering, and formatting of front-page submissions. By defaulting to high-quality content and automatically excluding volatile crypto-related posts, it ensures you spend your time reading relevant developments in technology, science, and engineering rather than browsing noise.
The skill functions by parsing natural language requests to determine how many posts you want (defaulting to 5) and which topical filter should be applied. Once fetched, the skill delivers content in a strict, uniform message format that includes the article title, timestamp, comment metadata, and a direct link to the HN discussion thread. As a final creative touch, it leverages the Nano Banana service to generate a bespoke, themed mood image based on the content of the digests, providing a visual summary that often includes subtle Easter eggs linked to the day's top headlines.
Installation
To integrate this skill into your environment, run the following command in your terminal:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/cpojer/hn-digest
Ensure your agent environment has execution permissions for the script directories as specified in the source repository at openclaw/skills.
Use Cases
- Stay Current: Quickly catch up on the most discussed tech topics during your morning coffee without navigating ad-heavy news sites.
- Focused Research: Use specific topic modifiers like 'hacking' or 'health' to drill down into niche subject matter trending on HN.
- Iterative Browsing: Easily request 'more' results to handle pagination, allowing for deep dives into specific topics without overwhelming your feed.
- Visual Summarization: Receive a contextually generated mood image that reflects the themes of the current news cycle, adding a layer of delight to your daily information intake.
Example Prompts
- "hn"
- "hn 10 hacking"
- "Show me more, next 5 health stories"
Tips & Limitations
- Crypto Exclusion: The skill has a hardcoded filter to ignore cryptocurrency-related posts, keeping your feed focused on core tech, programming, and innovation.
- Default Behavior: If you don't specify a number, the skill intelligently defaults to 5 posts. If you don't specify a topic, it defaults to 'tech'.
- Fallback Logic: If the API fetching fails, the agent will fall back to live browser inspection to ensure you still get your news, though this may take slightly longer than a direct script execution.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-cpojer-hn-digest": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access, file-read, file-write, code-execution, external-api