April 24, 2026
Replies are calling. Drama answered
Show HN: HNswered – watches for replies to your Hacker News posts and comments
New tool tracks your HN replies — and the comments are feral
TLDR: HNswered is a Chrome side panel that alerts you to replies on Hacker News without any login or servers, keeping everything local. Commenters split between praising the simplicity, mocking the README, debating the tool’s staying power, dropping alternatives, and joking about a downvote‑detector—useful idea, classic HN drama
HNswered promises a tidy dream: a Chrome side panel that quietly watches for replies to your Hacker News posts and drops them into a local inbox. No login, no server, just your username and public data. Simple, right? The community promptly turned it into a spectacle. One commenter rolled in with a dagger, sneering that the README should at least be written by a human — a spicy jab that set the tone. Another veteran sighed that tools like this “keep popping up” but never last, sparking the eternal HN debate: is this handy or just yet another short‑lived gadget? Meanwhile, the conspiracy‑meme energy arrived fast, with a request for a version that tracks downvotes “against the dominant narrative.” Yes, the vibes are chaotic. Others went practical with links to alternatives like hnrss and hnreplies, while a builder promised to fold it into Orange Juice, a popular HN helper extension, and even nudged the dev to submit a PR. So we’ve got it all: privacy‑friendly design (no accounts!), “seen this before” fatigue, downvote‑drama requests, and a community eager to remix it. HNswered may be minimal tech, but the comments? Maximal energy and maximum popcorn
Key Points
- •HNswered is a Chrome side-panel tool that tracks replies to a user’s Hacker News posts and comments using public data only.
- •It provides a local inbox with unread/read filters, an unread badge, manual refresh, and catch-up after Chrome sleep or closure.
- •No HN login, server, or write access is required; all matching happens locally based on HN’s parent-reply structure.
- •State is stored locally via Chrome storage, and a demo video is referenced.
- •A pre-built dist/ is provided; contributors can build from source using pnpm, with a security audit prompt and architecture docs included.