hncli

Browse Hacker News from your terminal.

Convenient, fast, and will run well on most computers, even old ones.

Concept, vision and UX

How to use

More ways to come, at the very least homebrew.

With Docker:

docker build -t hncli . && docker run -it hncli

With Rust toolchain:

cargo run --release

Browse every comment or sub-comment, on any story

On the Home, Ask HN and Show HN (usernames erased here).

Contextual help on all screens

If enabled, contextual help will display the most common commands on any given screen.

hncli contextual help on Show Hacker News list screen

Customize your experience

Persistent settings, stored in the OS-appropriate folder.

Built to last

Made in Rust with a custom architecture

Built in the fast and safe Rust programming language, with a unique architecture described here.

hncli is first and foremost a labor of love, so questions or any kind of contribution are more than welcome on the GitHub repository.

Read-Only

No sign-in required

No Hacker News account required: hncli does not need nor store your credentials in any way whatsoever.

Even a simple upvote function would go against both vision and architectural choices, even if desirable.

Well deserved pause?

Terminal only

hncli works in most terminals, and one of the initial goals was to make technological watch easier at a glance.

As described in the first article, refactoring for answering to topics or comments from hncli would be really difficult - even for me - both in terms of engineering and UX.

Navigation history

Pick up from where you left off

For now, you will be displayed - if possible, i.e. not deleted - the latest top-level comment on the topic(s) you have read before.

As described in the third article, there is a hardcoded limit - pretty large - on the amount of entries stored.

Any issue? Wanting to contribute?

Open a new issue in GitHub