February 10, 2026
Scroll Wars: AI vs Purists
Show HN: HN Companion – web app that enhances the experience of reading HN
Hacker News gets Cliff Notes: power users swoon, purists yell 'WHY'
TLDR: HN Companion adds AI summaries to Hacker News, helping readers skim huge comment threads fast. Reactions split: power users cheer time savings; skeptics ask why anyone wants machine-made takes on human debates, while privacy promises and an hourly Bluesky digest keep the discussion loud.
In a move tailor-made for the scroll-weary, HN Companion promises AI (artificial intelligence) cliff notes for Hacker News (HN) threads: highlight key arguments, jump straight to key comments, and zip around with Vim-style shortcuts. It’s free, open source on GitHub, and vows no tracking. Sounds tidy—but the comments are pure chaos and we love it.
On one side, diehards cheer. One fan basically canonized it—“can’t live without”—while mourning how Google’s extension rules (Manifest v3) nuked an older favorite. The vibe: HN threads now hit 1,000+ comments, and people want their time back. On the other side, the purists clutch pearls: “WHY would anyone want an AI-generated summary of an online discussion??” They argue human debates shouldn’t be compressed into machine-made digestibles; nuance lives in the messy, winding comment chains.
Meanwhile, the devs stoked the hype with a fine-tuned model link on Hugging Face and flexed a Bluesky bot that posts hourly HN digests—because why stop at one feed when you can spawn another? Some joked about “outsourcing reading,” others cheered the privacy-first pitch and the promise of cached, free summaries. A nod to a similar tool by simonw gave street cred. The takeaway: half the crowd wants speed; half wants the full drama. And honestly, that’s the drama
Key Points
- •HN Companion provides AI-generated, HN-aware summaries that preserve comment hierarchy and highlight key debates.
- •Users can navigate threads via a summary panel, jump to specific comments, view author profiles, and use Vim-style shortcuts.
- •The tool is customizable: choose models, edit prompts, and use either free cached summaries or user-supplied API keys.
- •Privacy-first design: no tracking or analytics; runs only on HN pages; settings and API keys stored locally; supports local generation via Ollama.
- •Open-source (MIT License) with code on GitHub; supports Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and is compatible with Brave, Arc, Vivaldi; a web app and bookmarklet are available.