git:20260901.6d6f92a to git:20260905.4909a33

- description: "Ground-truth 2026 playbook for submitting and commenting on Hacker News. Covers the reverse-engineered ranking formula, the five post types (Show HN, Ask HN, Launch HN, Tell HN, regular submission) with their exact title conventions, the derive-don't-write title algorithm for link submissions (original title with only guideline-sanctioned transformations), the mandatory first-comment pattern for Show HN, the guideline ban on posting generated text, moderation (flags, vouches, delete-and-repost, mailing the mods), and voting-ring detection. Activate when drafting anything for Hacker News."

- compatibility: "Octomind content agents. Platform-specific to Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com)."

- Hacker News is unlike every other social platform. No feed personalization, no hashtags, no follower count, no algorithm-for-you. Every user sees the same front page. One post ships per slot and the ranking is pure: early upvotes, steep time decay, penalties for anything that reads as marketing. Of every platform covered in these skills, HN is the most allergic to promotional tone and the most rewarding when a post lands.

-

- Pair with `content-voice` for human voice. HN readers — skilled engineers, researchers, founders — detect AI-generated and marketing text within the first line.

-

- ## Instructions

-

- ### The 2026 Ranking Algorithm (reverse-engineered from Arc source)

-

- HN's front page ranking uses a simple formula derived from the open Arc source:

-

- ```

- score = ((points - 1) ^ 0.8) / ((age_in_hours + 2) ^ gravity) × penalties

- ```

-

- - Gravity ≈ 1.8 — the time-decay exponent. Posts lose ranking steeply; after 24 hours almost nothing recovers.

- - Points exponent 0.8 — diminishing returns on raw upvotes. Going from 10 → 20 points matters more than going from 100 → 200.

- - Penalties — applied opaquely by mods or heuristics; can halve or eighth a post's effective score. Triggers include: promotional language, domain flagging, flagged-by-users, too many comments-per-point ratio (signals controversy), voting rings.

-

- Practical implications:

- 1. The first 1–2 hours on `/newest` decide everything. If you don't get ~5 upvotes in the first 30 minutes, you're buried under the next 500 submissions.

- 2. "Rich get richer" dynamic. A lucky early upvote cascade can push a mediocre post high; a great post posted at the wrong hour can die in `/newest` with zero visibility.

- 3. You can't farm HN. No hashtags to game, no follow-graph to hack, no engagement bait that works. The only lever is genuinely good content + good title + good timing + a non-zero amount of luck.

-

- ### The Five Post Types (and their exact conventions)

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- HN has strict naming conventions. Violating them results in the mods re-titling or killing your post.

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- | Type | Prefix | Use for | Title example |

- |---|---|---|---|

- | Regular submission | (none) | Linking to an article, blog post, paper, repo, video | Observations on a 500-day project in Rust |

- | Show HN | `Show HN:` | Something you built that others can try | Show HN: A terminal file manager written in Zig |

- | Ask HN | `Ask HN:` | Question for the community (self-post, no link) | Ask HN: How do you evaluate long-context LLMs? |

- | Tell HN | `Tell HN:` | Short announcement or observation (self-post) | Tell HN: HN front page is unreachable from EU today |

- | Launch HN | `Launch HN:` | YC-backed companies only (coordinated with YC) | Launch HN: Acme (YC W25) – SDK for audio diffusion |

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- Do not use `Launch HN:` unless you are actually a YC company with a launch scheduled. Mods will remove it.

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- ### Tell HN and Launch HN

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- Both have specific rules — see `reference/post-types.md` for full detail. Quick guidance:

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- - Tell HN is for short factual announcements only (outages, vulnerabilities, HN changes). Under 300 words. NOT for "I built a thing" (use Show HN), "thoughts on X" (submit a blog), or hiring (use the monthly thread).

- - Launch HN is YC-only and YC-scheduled. Don't self-declare. First comment has a 6-section structure (what / problem / how / traction / help-needed / try-it).

-

- ### Title Craft (the most important part)

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- HN titles do 80% of the work — and composing a title is the single most common way a drafted submission gets flagged. The guidelines are explicit: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." Users diff your title against the linked page's headline; any unexplained difference reads as editorializing.

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- For link submissions, derive the title — never write one. Start from the page's own headline (the h1 / `<title>` minus the site suffix) and apply only these transformations:

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- 1. Strip the site or product name — the domain is displayed after the link, so it's redundant. This includes a leading product name in your own headline: `ProductName agents get voice` next to `productname.com` reads as an ad. Product names belong only in the Show HN `Name – capability` pattern.

- 2. Crop gratuitous numbers and number+adjective combos (guideline verbatim): `10 Ways To Do X` → `How To Do X`; `14 Amazing Ys` → `Ys`. Keep the number only when it's meaningful (`Migrating 4M rows with zero downtime`).

- 3. Append `[video]` or `[pdf]` when linking to those formats — the guidelines ask for the warning.

- 4. Add the type prefix (`Show HN:` etc.) when applicable.

- 5. Over ~80 characters (HN truncates): trim words from the original, don't compose a new sentence.

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- Rewriting is allowed only when the original headline is genuinely misleading or linkbait — even then, prefer a phrase lifted from the article body over your own summary. A neutral, well-formed rewrite is still editorializing: the test is "matches the source", not "sounds fine".

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- Submitting your own site? Fix the title at the source: make the post's headline HN-compliant before submitting, so the original title needs no changes and can never be called editorialized.

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- Style rules — for titles you legitimately author (Show HN, Ask HN, Tell HN, self-posts, and permitted rewrites):

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- 1. No clickbait phrasing. No "You won't believe," no "This one trick," no "10 things every engineer should know."

- 2. No marketing adjectives. Kill: revolutionary, game-changing, powerful, advanced, amazing, groundbreaking, cutting-edge, ultimate, best-in-class.

- 3. No question marks unless it's an Ask HN or the article literally asks a question.

- 4. No exclamation marks. Ever.

- 5. No emoji. Not even for icons.

- 6. No ALL CAPS words except proper acronyms (API, LLM, GPU).

- 7. Neutral, factual, curious-hacker tone. "How we cut our AWS bill 73% in one weekend" beats "We saved $$$: the secret to cloud cost optimization."

- 8. Specificity wins. Numbers, versions, exact tech, timeframes are all positive signals to HN readers.

- 9. Under ~80 characters. HN truncates beyond that.

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- Measured from 100 posts >300 points (Aug 2026): median winning title is 44 chars / 7 words (p75 = 68) — treat 80 as the cap, ~45 as the target. Sentence case outnumbers Title Case 3:1. Only 4% are questions. Aphorism titles ("Compression is prediction") work when the article delivers on them.

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- ### Show HN Title Patterns That Win (measured from 60 posts >200 points, mid-2026)

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- Three patterns dominate, in order of frequency:

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- 1. Name – plain capability: `Kage – Shadow any website to a single binary for offline viewing`. State what it does, not its category — "marketing platform" loses to the actual capability.

- 2. First-person origin story with concrete stakes: `I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s` (2,935 points). The number contrast IS the hook; time invested (`I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard`) works the same way.

- 3. Bare intrigue — one/two words, only when the link explains itself in one second: `Show HN: Elevators` (1,679). Playful or visual projects only; a SaaS tool titled this way just looks broken.

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- Recurring credibility signals in winners: hardware constraints (`in 2 GB RAM on any M-series Mac`), efficiency numbers (`98% fewer tokens than grep`), `open-source alternative to [known tool]`. Full annotated winner list: `reference/examples.md`.

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- ### URL submission and duplicates

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- Quick rules: canonical URLs only (strip UTM/ref/AMP/Medium-sk tracking), no link shorteners, no redirect chains, no paywalled URLs (use archive.today instead and mention in first comment), GitHub repo root not a file path, YouTube only if explained in first comment. Same URL within ~6 months = duplicate, redirects to old thread. Cross-posting acceptable but rewrite titles per platform; never copy-paste first comments.

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- Full URL hygiene + duplicate-detection edge cases: see `reference/post-types.md`.

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- ### Body Craft (for Ask HN, Tell HN, and self-posts)

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- HN self-posts live or die by the body text. Unlike link submissions where the article carries the weight, here your writing is the entire experience.

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- Structure for Ask HN:

- 1. Restate the core question in one sentence — many readers skim titles; the body should make the question unmissable.

- 2. Context, not autobiography. "We have 5M support tickets in Postgres" is context. "I started coding at 12 and have always been passionate about..." is autobiography. HN hates the latter.

- 3. What you've already tried. This is mandatory. "I looked at X and Y but they don't handle Z" shows effort and prevents low-effort "have you tried Google?" responses.

- 4. Specific constraints. Performance budgets, compliance requirements, team size — these shape useful answers.

- 5. What a good answer looks like. "I'm looking for war stories from production, not theoretical comparisons" sets the frame.

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- Structure for Tell HN:

- 1. Lead with the news. "HN front page is unreachable from EU today due to a Cloudflare routing issue."

- 2. Evidence, not outrage. Screenshots, traceroutes, specific error codes. HN is a technical audience — they want data.

- 3. No call to action. Tell HN is not Show HN. Don't end with "check out my project" or "sign up for updates."

- 4. Keep it under 300 words. Tell HN is for short announcements. If it needs more, it's an article — submit the article instead.

- Formatting:

- - Use blank lines between paragraphs. Wall-of-text posts get ignored.

- - Use `code` formatting for commands, error messages, or short snippets.

- - Use bullet points for lists of 3+ items.

- - No bold or italic abuse. One or two emphasized phrases per post maximum.

- - No images in self-posts. HN doesn't support inline images; link to them if essential.

- ### Show HN — Specific Rules (and the mandatory first comment)

- Show HN is for things you built and want feedback on. Follow the official format or mods kill the post.

- Title: `Show HN: [what it is]`

- - Not `Show HN: MyProduct – the revolutionary X`

- - Yes: `Show HN: A static site generator written in OCaml`

- - Yes: `Show HN: I built a CLI to search AWS resources by tag`

- Show HN accepts URL + text together, and winners use it: 6 of the top 10 Show HNs of mid-2026 carried the pitch in the submission text field, not a comment. Put the story there — personal context in 1–2 sentences, what it is, one concrete implementation detail, what's not done yet — and use your first comment for deeper technical detail or a direct question to early users ("Two questions: 1. … 2. …" — replies feed ranking). Real specimens: `reference/examples.md`.

- If you leave the text field empty, the first comment (posted within ~1 minute of submission) is mandatory and carries the pitch — the community expects it and you will get roasted if you don't. It should include:

- 1. What it is — 1–2 sentences, plain English

- 2. Why you built it — the itch, the missing tool, the problem

- 3. Tech stack / interesting implementation detail — HN audience reads this

- 4. What's not working yet / where you want feedback — honest about limits

- 5. How to try it — install command, hosted demo link, whatever is lowest-friction

- Do NOT in the first comment:

- - Ask for upvotes (instant voting-ring flag)

- - Use marketing language

- - Include promotional links beyond the core project

- - Shill affiliated services

- First-comment template (adapt, don't copy):

- ```

- Hey HN — built this because [specific personal itch / missing tool].

- It's a [one-line description] written in [language]. The interesting part of the implementation is [specific technical detail that HN readers will find interesting — a datastructure, an optimization, an unusual architecture].

- Currently it handles [X] but [Y] is not yet implemented and I'd especially love feedback on [specific thing]. Happy to answer questions about [technical area].

- Repo: [link]

- ```

- ### Ask HN — Specific Rules

- Ask HN is for genuine questions, no link in the URL field. It's a self-post.

- - Title IS the question. Not "Ask HN: I have a question about X" — just ask it. "Ask HN: How do you structure config files in a polyglot monorepo?"

- - Body is context. What you've tried, what you've ruled out, what specifically you want help with.

- - Don't use Ask HN as disguised promotion — "Ask HN: How can we improve [MyProduct]?" gets flagged instantly.

- Measured pattern (Ask HN >150 points, mid-2026): winners harvest experiences, not advice. `Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?` (1,318 points), `What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?` (739 points, 1,124 comments). A question every practitioner can answer from their own life beats a question only experts can answer. Community introspection (`Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?`) also reaches the front page but expect heat in the thread.

- ### Moderation You Need to Know

- - Flagged posts disappear from `/newest` and the front page. Usually triggered by multiple users hitting the flag link — often for marketing tone, duplicate submissions, political content, or being off-topic for HN.

- - Dead posts (shown as `[dead]` to logged-in users, invisible otherwise) were removed by the software or a mod. Can sometimes be resurrected by mods if you email hn@ycombinator.com politely.

- - Hellban / shadowban — your account posts but no one sees them. Usually triggered by voting-ring behavior or repeated rule violations. Hard to recover from.

- - Vouches — users with enough karma can vouch for a flagged/dead post to revive it. You can't vouch for your own posts.

- - Emailing mods — `hn@ycombinator.com`, polite, short, with the post URL. Works more often than you'd think if the post was clean and got caught by a heuristic. Do NOT email for "boost my post."

- - Don't delete and repost — the guidelines ban it ("Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place"). Flagged? Fix the trigger, wait (a day minimum; 3+ months for a flop), resubmit — or email the mods if the flag was wrong. Delete-then-repost within hours is itself a flag trigger.

- ### Voting Rings and Account Trust

- HN's single biggest anti-gaming focus. Never do any of these:

- - Ask friends, teammates, or Twitter/Slack groups to upvote

- - Post a link to your submission with "please upvote" anywhere, ever

- - Have multiple accounts (detected by IP, browser fingerprint, posting patterns)

- - Coordinate simultaneous posting/upvoting with others

- - Create an account solely to submit your own link

- All of these trigger voting-ring detection, which typically hellbans every involved account permanently. HN is serious about this and good at detecting it.

- The only legitimate pre-submission move: post the URL in your own newsletter/network, mention "it's on HN" without asking for upvotes or linking the HN submission directly. Let people find it organically.

- ### Account warmup and karma

- New accounts are heavily throttled — a brand-new account submitting its own project is a voting-ring red flag. First 30 days: don't submit your own content, comment substantively on others' posts in your domain, target 50+ karma before first self-promotion, avoid early downvotes (low-trust bucket is hard to escape).

- Full karma mechanics, unlock thresholds, and new-account red flags: see `reference/post-types.md`.

- ### Timing

- - Best windows for English-speaking tech audience: weekday mornings 8–11 AM ET (US east coast awake, Europe late afternoon).

- - Tuesday–Thursday tend to be best days; weekends are quieter but less competitive.

- - Late-night ET / early morning European time is a decent second-chance window.

- - Timing is contested — Ken Shirriff's ranking analyses show variance, and a truly good post can break through most times. But bad timing + mediocre hook = invisible.

- ### What Gets a Post Flagged — by Severity

- HN penalties are not binary. Understanding the tiers helps you calibrate risk.

- Instant death (software or mods kill within minutes, often with hellban risk):

- - Voting-ring detection (coordinated upvotes, multiple accounts, same IP)

- - First comment asking for upvotes — automatic flag + account review

- - Duplicate URL submitted within ~6 months — redirects to old thread

- - `Launch HN:` by a non-YC company — retitled or removed by mods

- - Political / culture-war content — HN is aggressively moderated here

- - Job postings outside the monthly "Who is hiring?" threads

- Heavy algorithmic penalty (score halved or worse; usually dies on `/newest`):

- - Marketing adjectives in title ("revolutionary," "game-changing," "ultimate")

- - Exclamation marks, emoji, or ALL CAPS words in title

- - Clickbait or editorialized title (paraphrasing instead of original)

- - Newsletter signup wall or hard paywall as the linked URL

- - Landing page with only a product pitch and no technical substance

- - Generated or AI-edited text in comments — explicitly banned by the guidelines ("HN is for conversation between humans"); readers detect it within lines and flag

- Community flagging (users hit "flag," post drops from front page):

- - Self-promotion without substance (5 blog posts in 2 weeks all linking your product)

- - Off-topic for HN — lifestyle, general business advice, personal journeys without technical angle

- - Surveys and polls — read as low-effort data collection unless academically rigorous

- - Previously flopped content resubmitted too soon (< 6 months)

- - "I quit my job to build X" — overplayed narrative, flagged as self-promotion

- ### When NOT to Post

- Some topics are effectively banned by community norms even if not in the written guidelines. Save yourself the flag:

- - Crypto / NFT / Web3 speculation — unless it's a technical deep-dive on consensus algorithms or cryptography, it gets flagged.

- - Political culture war — even tangential mentions get flagged. HN moderates this harder than almost any topic.

- - Job postings — use the monthly "Who is hiring?" thread. Standalone job posts get killed.

- - Surveys and polls — unless academically rigorous with methodology disclosed.

- - "I quit my job to build X" — overplayed narrative, usually flagged as self-promotion.

- - Listicles — "10 things every developer should know" is universally hated on HN.

- - AI-generated content without human curation — HN readers detect this instantly and flag hard.

- - Personal blog posts with no technical substance — "My journey learning Rust" rarely does well unless it contains genuinely novel technical observations.

- - YouTube Shorts / TikTok-style content — HN is text-first. Short-form video gets flagged.

- ### Comment Strategy

- On other people's posts:

- - Substantive first. HN's comment ranking values thoughtfulness; one-liners get downvoted fast.

- - Cite specifics. "Having run this in production at X scale, we found Y" is gold.

- - Disagree politely with reasons. "I don't think this holds because…" beats "This is wrong."

- - Assume good faith. HN's comment culture explicitly requires it — mods enforce.

- - Don't name-call, don't dunk, don't rage-post. You'll be banned faster than anywhere else.

- - Cite sources for factual claims. Engineers on HN check.

- - Don't fabricate specifics to sound credible. A fake-precise claim ("ran this in production at a 10k-employee bank", "we hit 99.999% uptime") attracts replies asking which bank or which SLO calculation, and the silence that follows is what damages your account. A vague-but-honest comment ("from what I've read on this") survives. A fake-specific one gets dunked on, and the dunk is what classifier bots and mods escalate on.

- On your own posts (especially Show HN):

- - Respond to every substantive comment for the first 2–3 hours.

- - Treat critical feedback as the point. Most useful comments are negative.

- - Correct your own mistakes openly. "You're right, I was wrong about X" earns karma.

- ### Responding to Criticism on Your Own Posts

- HN's culture is direct, technical, and allergic to defensiveness. Negative comments are often the most valuable.

- - Never get defensive. "You don't understand" or "You clearly didn't read it" kills your karma and the thread.

- - Assume the critic is right until proven otherwise. "You're right that X is a problem. We tried Y and it failed because Z. Open to better ideas."

- - Don't argue with every comment. Pick the substantive ones. Ignore drive-by negativity.

- - If someone finds a real bug or error: thank them publicly, fix it, and comment back with the fix. This is karma gold on HN.

- - If the criticism is about your business model: engage honestly about trade-offs. HN respects "we chose X over Y because Z, knowing the downside is W."

- - Never delete comments. HN has no delete. Editing is limited to a short window. What you post stays.

- ### Pre-Publish Checklist

- - [ ] Title follows the type convention (Show HN / Ask HN / plain / Tell HN / Launch HN)

- - [ ] Title is neutral, specific, no marketing adjectives, no exclamation marks, no emoji

- - [ ] If linking: title matches the page headline except allowed transformations (name stripped, number cropped, [video]/[pdf], prefix, length trim)

- - [ ] Body/comment text rewritten by the human author — no agent prose posted verbatim

- - [ ] Not a delete-and-repost of a recent submission

- - [ ] Posted the URL not the AMP/tracking version

- - [ ] No "please upvote" anywhere, including other channels

- - [ ] For Show HN: pitch drafted in the submission text field (preferred) or first comment ready within 1 minute of submission

- - [ ] For Ask HN: real question in the title, real context in the body

- - [ ] Timing: weekday 8–11 AM ET or best-available slot

- - [ ] Account is established (30+ days, non-zero karma) — new accounts get throttled

- - [ ] Ready to engage with comments for 2–3 hours after posting

- - [ ] If the post dies: know the hn@ycombinator.com email and when it's legitimate to use it

- - [ ] Comment only: scanned the existing comment tree for depth and tone before writing

- - [ ] Comment only: 0–1 structural imperfection only (informal phrasing, casual aside) — no typos

- ### Thread-Vibe Matching (Comments)

- Before commenting, read the existing comment tree — not just the top-level comments but the depth. HN threads develop a specific intellectual register within the first 10–20 comments, and deviating from it reads as out-of-place.

- What to scan:

- - Depth of technical detail — are people citing papers, benchmarks, production numbers? Match that depth.

- - Comment length — 2-sentence quips or 5-paragraph mini-essays? Match the median.

- - Tone — skeptical/analytical, warm/collaborative, or heated/contested? Adjust accordingly.

- - Whether the thread is already contested — if there's a flame war forming, either add something genuinely de-escalating or stay out.

- - Existing answers — don't repeat what's already been said well. Add or extend.

- Vibe calibration by thread type:

- | Thread type | Comment vibe |

- |---|---|

- | Technical deep-dive (Show HN, paper) | Match the depth; cite specifics, production numbers, versions |

- | Ask HN (genuine question) | Answer directly; show your work; "we did X and found Y" |

- | Contested claim / debate | Measured, specific disagreement; cite sources; no contempt |

- | Personal story / retrospective | Warmer; share a parallel experience; shorter |

- | News / announcement | Factual extension or question; no hype either direction |

- ### Human Imperfection Protocol

- Hard rule first: the guidelines say "Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans." Every draft this skill produces — first comments, Ask HN bodies, replies — is a skeleton for the human author to rewrite in their own words, never text to post verbatim. Deliver comment drafts as bullet beats, not polished prose: polished prose gets pasted, and pasted prose gets flagged. Derived link titles are exempt by construction — they contain no generated text.

- HN is the most formal platform in this set. Comments are essentially mini-essays — readers are engineers, researchers, and founders who notice both AI-polished prose and careless typos. The goal is structural informality, not visible sloppiness.

- Key HN nuance: typos read as careless, not human. On HN, a typo in a technical term signals you don't know the domain. Imperfections should be structural — informal phrasing, a sentence fragment, a casual aside in parentheses — not spelling errors.

- Ground truth from real winners (mid-2026): the quarter's top Show HN author writes "Kiosk-ize bowling alleys, yknow? I'm pumped." — enthusiasm anchored in specifics reads human; polished-neutral reads corporate. A stray typo in a plain word ("plian download") shipped in the author comment of a 1,000-point Show HN with zero damage; the fatal typos are in technical terms and proper nouns only. Don't inject typos deliberately, and don't sand away genuine enthusiasm.

- Imperfection level by content type:

- | Content type | Level | What that means |

- |---|---|---|

- | Submission title | Zero | Titles are edited artifacts; zero imperfections |

- | Show HN first comment | Zero | This is your pitch; zero imperfections |

- | Ask HN body | Very low | 0–1 structural imperfection max |

- | Comment on others' posts | Very low | 1 structural imperfection; no typos |

- | Reply in a casual/warm thread | Low | 1 structural imperfection; slightly more informal phrasing |

- Imperfection menu for HN (pick 0–1 per comment, structural only):

- - Casual aside in parentheses — `(worth checking if yours went dark)` — very HN-native; engineers write like this

- - Sentence fragment as emphasis — `Not a typo. The whole thing.` — used for emphasis, reads as deliberate

- - "though" / "honestly" / "actually" — casual qualifiers that read as human hedging

- - Informal opener — `Ran into this exact thing last year.` instead of `I encountered this issue last year.`

- - Dropped subject — `Tried X, didn't work.` instead of `I tried X and it didn't work.` — common in technical writing

- - Em-dash used informally — `The fix was one line — and it was embarrassing.` — reads as thinking-while-typing

- Never do on HN:

- - Typos in technical terms, library names, language names, or proper nouns — credibility damage is severe

- - `lol`, `lmao`, `tbh`, `ngl` — too casual for HN register in almost all threads

- - Emoji in comments — HN culture treats this as low-effort

- - Stack 2+ imperfections in one comment — reads as careless

- - Imperfections in a Show HN first comment or submission title — these are edited artifacts

- Calibration check before posting:

- 1. Is this a title, first comment, or a reply? Titles and first comments = zero imperfections.

- 2. Read the existing thread — what's the depth and formality level?

- 3. Does your comment have 0–1 structural imperfections (informal phrasing, not typos)?

- 4. Would a senior engineer typing this between tasks plausibly have written exactly this?

- ## Examples

- All worked examples live in `reference/examples.md`: Show HN first comments (good vs. flagged), Ask HN bodies, a full post-that-flops autopsy, Show HN title patterns, linked-article title derivation, thread-vibe matching, and calibrated imperfection. Load it whenever drafting actual HN content.

- ## References

- - AgentSkills spec: https://agentskills.io/specification

- - HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

- - HN FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

- - Ranking source (Arc): https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc

- - Measured stats in this skill: derived from the HN Algolia API (https://hn.algolia.com/api) — front page, Show HN >200 points, Ask HN >150 points, Aug 2026 window. Re-derive periodically; patterns drift.

- - Contact mods: hn@ycombinator.com

- - Companion skill: `content-voice` — HN is the hardest platform for sounding human; voice rules are essential