hacker-news-strategy
Community engagement skill — Master Hacker News without getting flagged.
What It Does
Guides you through effective Hacker News promotion: Show HN launches, title optimization, comment engagement, karma building, and avoiding the behaviors that get posts killed or accounts banned.
When to Use
- Planning a Show HN launch
- Writing titles for HN submissions
- Responding to comments on your posts
- Building karma before a launch
- When you say "Hacker News," "HN post," "Show HN," or "why did my post die"
Quick Start
/hacker-news-strategy
Review my Show HN post before I submit. Here's my title and
first comment draft. The product is an open source CI/CD tool.Key Sections
- Understanding HN's Culture — Who's there, what they value
- Post Types — Show HN, Launch HN, regular submissions
- Title Optimization — What works, transformations, what mods edit
- Timing & Mechanics — When to post, how the algorithm works
- Comment Strategy — First comment, responding to criticism
- What Gets Flagged — Behaviors that kill posts or ban accounts
- Building Karma — The long game for authentic presence
Critical Rules
| Do | Don't |
|---|---|
| Write like a human | Use corporate speak |
| Share technical details | Be vague about what it does |
| Respond to criticism gracefully | Get defensive |
| Build karma through genuine comments | Ask anyone to upvote (bannable) |
| Wait 24h before reposting | Spam the same link |
Tools
- Octolens — Monitor HN for relevant discussions
- HN Search (hn.algolia.com) — Research what worked before
Related Skills
developer-audience-context— Foundation contextreddit-engagement— Similar dynamics, different normsgithub-presence— What HN users check when evaluating you