Hacker News Comments

An Obsidian plugin that fetches and saves Hacker News comments as Markdown notes.

Features

• Fetch comments from any Hacker News post
• Threaded comment formatting with proper indentation
• Metadata included: post title, original URL, comment count
• Customizable note filenames using template variables
• Optional enhanced links for usernames and timestamps
• Automatic HTML-to-Markdown conversion

Installation

Install from community.obsidian.md

From Obsidian's settings or preferences:

1. Community Plugins > Browse
2. Search for "Hacker News Comments"

Manually:

1. download the latest release archive
2. uncompress the downloaded archive
3. move the hackernews-comments folder to /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/
4. Settings > Community plugins > reload Installed plugins
5. enable plugin

or:

1. download main.js, manifest.json & styles.css from the latest release
2. create a new folder /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/hackernews-comments
3. move all 3 files to /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/hackernews-comments
4. Settings > Community plugins > reload Installed plugins
5. enable plugin

How to use

1. Click the Hacker News icon in the ribbon or use the "Fetch Hacker News Comments" command
2. Enter a valid Hacker News URL (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678)
3. The plugin will fetch the comments and create a new note in your vault

Settings

Enhanced links

Convert usernames and timestamps to clickable links pointing to Hacker News profiles and specific comments.

Timestamp format

Customize the date format for comment timestamps using moment.js formatting tokens. Default: YYYY-MM-DD, hh:mm:ss

Open note automatically

Automatically open newly created notes in the editor.

Wrap HTML tags in backticks

Wrap HTML tags in comment content with backticks to preserve code examples and prevent HTML rendering.

Filename template

Customize note filenames using template variables. Default: HN - {{title}} - {{date}}

Available variables:

• {{title}} - Post title
• {{post-id}} - Post ID
• {{date}} - Current date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• {{time}} - Current time (HH-MM-SS)
• {{datetime}} - Date and time (YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS)
• {{source}} - Source hostname or "Hacker News"

Example filename templates

• HN - {{title}} - {{date}}
• Hacker News {{post-id}} - {{title}}
• {{date}} - {{source}} - {{title}}

Technical notes

The plugin uses the Hacker News API as the primary data source with HTML parsing as a fallback. All network requests use Obsidian's native API to bypass CORS restrictions.

Content is sanitized during HTML-to-Markdown conversion to prevent script injection and ensure safe rendering.