Hacker News Integration & Workflow Automation
Run Hacker News on autopilot. Keep the veto.
10 actions
Trending threads and job posts surface faster than you can act on them, and unsupervised automation fires off responses before you've read a single comment. Rills proposes the next move; you approve it.
Interactive. No signup. 14 days free · approvals always free.
Most automation fires first, asks later. Rills shows you the change before it ships.
Every consequential development action from Hacker News arrives on your phone first. Approve in seconds. Decline without explaining yourself. Workflows wait, paused at zero cost, until you decide.
Queue 3
Flag 3 front-page stories mentioning your category for review?
3 stories ranked in top 15 · all posted within 6 hours
2 include competitor names in title or top comment
Same pattern flagged last Monday; you approved 2 of 3
Free to wait. Free to think.
Approvals and logic don't cost a credit. Pause a workflow for three hours or three weeks. The price is the same: zero. You only pay when something real happens: an AI call, an outbound action.
Approve from your phone in five seconds.
Swipe right when you're sure. Decline when you're not. Between meetings, mid-coffee, on the train. No dashboard to babysit, no inbox triage, no 3am stomach-drop wondering what shipped while you slept.
Routine cases graduate themselves.
Every approval feeds a confidence score for that exact workflow shape. The obvious cases (the ones you've green-lit fifty times) start running on their own. The judgment calls still come to you.
About Hacker News automation
Hacker News moves fast, and the stories that matter to your business — a competitor's launch on the front page, a job posting from a key player, an Ask HN thread your customers are already in — go stale within hours if you miss them.
When Hacker News runs unsupervised
Automation that reads Hacker News and acts without a checkpoint can send the wrong signal at the wrong moment. A script that fires a reply or a report the second a story hits the top list doesn't know context the way you do.
- Listing top stories and auto-flagging competitors posts a notification to your team before you've confirmed the story is actually about what the subject line says.
- Pulling Show HN stories and auto-sharing them to your audience surfaces a post you'd have skipped, or worse, one from a direct rival.
- Scanning job postings and triggering outreach sends a message to a candidate before you've checked whether the role is still open.
- Fetching user profiles to enrich a lead list adds someone to a sequence who turned out to be a journalist, not a buyer.
- Listing Ask HN stories and auto-responding to relevant threads puts words out under your name before you've read past the headline.
What Rills does inside Hacker News
Rills polls for newest stories, best stories, and job postings on whatever schedule fits your workflow, then queues a proposed action for you to review before anything leaves the system. You read the item, you see what the AI wants to do with it, and you decide.
The story surfaces. The action waits. You approve it, or you don't.
Why Hacker News has no triggers and how Rills fills the gap
Hacker News has no native event triggers, so nothing can automatically start a workflow the moment a story goes live. Rills compensates by running scheduled polls against the operations that matter most to you.
- List newest stories: poll every 15 or 30 minutes to catch fresh posts before they age off the front page, then queue a proposed response for your review.
- List job postings: run a daily scan and surface only the listings that match your saved criteria, holding any outreach until you approve it.
- Get an item by ID: use a known ID from an upstream source, such as a mention in another tool, to pull the full item and propose a follow-up action without acting until you say so.
- List recently changed items and profiles: schedule a morning check so Hacker News automation surfaces overnight activity as a digest, not a set of actions that already ran.
What Rills can do in Hacker News
4 of 10 actions across reads, writes, and updates.
- 01
List job postings
Retrieves the latest job posting IDs from Hacker News, allowing you to monitor tech industry hiring trends and discover job opportunities in the startup ecosystem.
- 02
List newest stories
Retrieve the most recently submitted story IDs from Hacker News, ordered newest first, allowing you to discover and engage with fresh content before it gains mainstream attention.
- 03
List recently changed items and profiles
Retrieve IDs of recently modified items and user profiles on Hacker News, enabling you to efficiently sync your local data with the latest changes including score updates, new comments, and edited posts.
- 04
List top stories
Retrieve the current top-ranked story IDs from Hacker News to see what's trending in the tech community right now. Use this to stay informed about industry news, market movements, and emerging topics that could affect your business.
Common questions about Hacker News automation
How do I automate Hacker News top story monitoring?
Set up a Rills workflow that pulls top stories on a schedule and queues the results for whatever you want to do next, like saving to a database or triggering a summary. You decide which actions actually fire, and nothing ships until you say so. Hacker News automation with Rills means you stay in control of what happens with the data.
Can I get mobile approvals before posting based on Hacker News data?
Yes. When Rills proposes an action based on Hacker News data, like drafting a response or publishing content inspired by a trending thread, the proposal waits in your mobile approval queue. You review it on your phone and swipe to approve or reject before anything goes out.
How do I track Show HN and Ask HN posts automatically?
Rills can poll the Show HN and Ask HN story lists on a schedule you set. When new items appear that match your criteria, Rills queues the next proposed action for your review. Nothing runs unsupervised. You approve what moves forward and skip what does not.
Can I build a Hacker News job board monitor without coding?
Yes. Rills can pull the Hacker News job postings list on a cadence you choose. If you want to filter results, save them, or trigger a follow-up, Rills proposes those steps and waits for your approval. No code required, and no action fires until you clear it.
How do I get notified when specific Hacker News items change?
Rills can poll the recently changed items and profiles endpoint on a schedule. When something relevant surfaces, it queues a proposed action for your review. You pick what happens next from your phone, whether that is logging the change, flagging it, or ignoring it entirely.
How is Rills different from Zapier for Hacker News automation?
Zapier runs actions automatically once you configure a zap. Rills holds proposed actions in a queue and waits for your approval before anything executes. If you have been burned by automation firing at the wrong moment, Rills gives you a veto on every step. You also pay only for real actions, not for the approval logic itself.
Does Rills support Hacker News webhooks?
Hacker News does not publish native webhooks, so there are no incoming event triggers. Rills works around this by polling Hacker News on a schedule, such as checking top stories, new items, or job postings at intervals you set. The proposed actions from those polls still go through your approval queue before anything happens.
How much does Rills cost for Hacker News automation?
Approvals and workflow logic are free. You pay only for real actions, meaning the AI calls and external work that actually execute after you approve them. Browsing your approval queue, reviewing proposed Hacker News actions, and setting up workflow rules costs nothing. You only pay when something real runs.