Daily Hacker News digest in Slack, filtered to your topics

Build an agent workflow that posts a daily Hacker News digest to Slack every weekday morning, filtered to a topic list I control.

Trigger: cron, every weekday (Monday through Friday) at 8:00am in my local timezone.

Inputs the agent should accept and let me edit later:

- topics: a list of plain-English topics I care about (default to: AI, infrastructure, devtools, founders).

- slack_channel: the Slack channel (or channel id) to post the digest in.

- story_pool_size: how many top stories to consider per run (default 30, allow up to 100).

- min_score and min_comments: optional thresholds, default 0.

What the agent should do on each run:

1. Call the hacker-news Get Top Stories operation to fetch the current top story ids in front-page ranking order. Take the first story_pool_size ids.

2. Hydrate each id by calling the hacker-news Get Item operation in parallel. Skip any item where deleted=true or dead=true. Keep only items where type is 'story' or 'job'.

3. Filter the hydrated stories down to ones that match the user's topics. Match on title and the url/domain; treat topics generously (for example 'AI' should match LLMs, agents, models). Drop stories that don't clearly relate to any topic. Also drop stories below min_score or min_comments if set.

4. Deduplicate against the previous run. Persist the set of story ids included in the last digest (in workflow memory / state) and skip any id that appeared yesterday. After posting, overwrite that set with today's ids.

5. For each surviving story, write a 2 to 3 bullet summary covering what the story is about and why it matters. Use the HN discussion context (the linked url and, when useful, the top one or two comments fetched via Get Item on the kids array) so the summary reflects what people are actually arguing about, not just the headline. Prioritize stories with high comment activity when ranking within a topic.

6. Group the digest by topic. Within each topic, sort by comment count descending, then score descending. For each story include: the title (linked to the article url, or to the HN discussion if there is no external url), the score, the comment count, and a direct link to the HN discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=<id>), followed by the bullet summary.

7. Post the digest as a single message to slack_channel using the slackbot Send a Message operation. Format it with Slack markdown: a short header line with today's date and the topic list, then one section per topic with a bold topic name and the ranked story entries underneath. Keep the whole thing skimmable in under a minute. If nothing matches the topics, post a one-line 'No matching stories today' note instead so I know the run succeeded.

Use the slackbot integration (not the user-token slack integration) so the digest is attributed to a shared bot rather than a person. Hacker News needs no authentication.

Additional information

What does this prompt do?

Pulls the day's top Hacker News stories and keeps only the ones that match the topics you care about, like AI, infrastructure, devtools, or founders.
Writes a tight two to three bullet summary of each story along with its score, comment count, and a direct link to the discussion.
Groups the digest by topic and ranks each section so stories with the most active discussions float to the top.
Skips anything that already appeared in yesterday's digest so the same story is never sent twice.
Posts the finished digest to the Slack channel of your choice as a single, skimmable message.

What do I need to use this?

A Slack workspace where you can add the Geni bot and pick a channel to post in.
A short list of topics or keywords your team wants to follow on Hacker News, for example AI, infrastructure, devtools, founders, or any others.
No Hacker News login is required. Hacker News is a public source, so nothing to connect on that side.

How can I customize it?

Change the schedule. Move it to 7am, run it only on Tuesdays and Fridays, or send a second pass in the afternoon.
Edit the topic list. Add, remove, or rename topics at any time and the next run will use them.
Pick a different Slack channel, swap to a DM, or send it to more than one channel for different teams.
Tune the depth. Ask for one bullet per story instead of three, or include the lead comment from the discussion.
Raise or lower the bar. Only include stories above a certain score or comment count, or expand from the top 30 to the top 100.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Hacker News account to use this?

No. Hacker News is a public source, so the workflow can read top stories and comments without any login. The only account you connect is Slack.

How does it decide which stories belong to my topics?

Geni reads each story's title, link, and discussion context, then matches it against the topics you list in plain English. You can be as broad as 'AI' or as narrow as 'open-source LLM evals'.

Will I get the same story two days in a row?

No. Each run compares against the previous day's digest and skips anything that already appeared, so repeats are filtered out automatically.

Can I change the channel or the time after it's running?

Yes. The schedule, the destination channel, and the topic list are all editable. Update them in Geni and the next run uses the new settings.

What if there aren't enough matching stories on a given day?

The digest still posts, just shorter. If nothing matches your topics at all, Geni sends a short note so you know the run happened and there was simply nothing to share.