GitHub - levelup-apps/hn-enhancer: Hacker News Companion - Browser extension

Important

Hacker News Companion - Chrome Extension

🚀 Quick Start Guide

Install from Chrome Web Store or Firefox Addon store
Navigate to Hacker News
Press '?' to view keyboard shortcuts
Choose your preferred AI provider in extension settings

Overview

Transform your Hacker News experience with intelligent navigation, AI-powered summaries, and enhanced user interaction. This extension streamlines how you read and navigate through discussions, making it easier than ever to engage with rich conversations.

🌟 Key Features

Smart Keyboard Navigation
- Vim-inspired shortcuts (h, j, k, l) for intuitive movement
- Quick-jump between comments by the same author
- Collapsible comment threads
- Press '?' to view all shortcuts
AI-Powered Thread Summarization
- Multiple AI provider options
- Summarize entire threads or specific comment branches
- Connect to cloud-hosted models - OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter for advanced summaries
- Use local models hosted on Ollama
- Use Chrome's built-in AI for local processing on Chrome browser
Enhanced Comment Navigation
- Quick-jump between comments by the same author
- Visual indicators for post authors and comment counts
- Comment count display
Rich User Interactions
- User profile previews on hover
- Resizable summary panel
- Comment path tracking and navigation

🤖 AI Provider Setup Guide

Ollama

Requirements:
- Ollama installed on your system
- CORS configuration for the extension

Setup Steps:

# Mac OS
launchctl setenv OLLAMA_ORIGINS "chrome-extension://*,https://news.ycombinator.com"

# Windows
setx OLLAMA_ORIGINS "chrome-extension://*,https://news.ycombinator.com"

Model Setup:

# Pull your preferred model
ollama run llama3.2
# Or other models like mistral, mixtral, etc.

Best Practices:
- Keep Ollama running in the background
- Restart Ollama after CORS configuration
- Set CORS environment variable to persist across restarts

Chrome Built-in AI

Requirements:
- Chrome version 131 or higher
- One-time model download
Setup Steps:
- To verify that you have chrome version higher than 131, navigate to 'About Chrome' chrome://settings/help and check the version.
- To trigger the model download, go to Chrome Dev Summarization API Playground and try some text.
- To verify that the model download is complete, navigate to 'Chrome components' -chrome://components/ and you should see 'Optimization Guide On Device Model'. Make sure the version is 2024.9.25.2033 or higher.

Best Practices:
- Ideal for individual comments or brief threads
- May have limitations with very long discussions
- No API key required

OpenAI

Requirements:
- OpenAI API key
- Active OpenAI account
Setup Steps:
- Generate API key at OpenAI Platform
- Enter API key in extension settings (click on the extension icon)
- Choose preferred model:
  - GPT-4 Turbo (Recommended for best quality)
  - GPT-3.5 Turbo (Faster, more economical)
Best Practices:
- Monitor API usage
- Consider token limits and costs (bigger discussion threads are truncated to fit into context window)
- Set up usage alerts in OpenAI dashboard

Anthropic (Recommended for Best Performance)

Requirements:
- Anthropic API key
- Active Anthropic account
Setup Steps:
- Generate API key at Anthropic Console
- Enter API key in extension settings
- Select model:
  - Claude 3 Opus (Highest capability)
  - Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Balanced performance)
  - Claude 3.5 Haiku (Fastest)
Best Practices:
- Monitor API usage
- Set up billing alerts

OpenRouter

OpenRouter is a service that provides unified access to multiple large language models (LLMs) through a single API. This platform simplifies the integration and management of different AI models, such as GPT, Claude, and Grok, allowing developers to switch between them without dealing with separate APIs.

Requirements:
- OpenRouter API key
- Active OpenRouter account with credits
Setup Steps:
- Generate an API key at OpenRouter
- Enter API key in extension settings (click on the extension icon)
- Enter your preferred model
  - A list of available models can be found at OpenRouter models
  - anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet is our default and a great model to start with

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Global

? / / - Toggle help panel
o - Open post in new window

Home Page

j / k - Next/previous post
c - Open comments page

Comments Page

j / k - Next/previous comment
l / h - Next child/parent comment
[ / ] - Previous/next comment by author
s - Toggle summary panel
r - Go to root comment
gg - First comment
z - Scroll to current
c - Collapse/expand comment

🛠️ Development Setup

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/levelup-apps/hn-enhancer.git
cd hn-enhancer

Load in Chrome:
- Open chrome://extensions/
- Enable Developer mode
- Click "Load unpacked"
- Select the extension directory
Build the project:
- Install dependencies:
- Build the project using Vite:
Development build:
- To start a development build with watch mode:
Release build:
- To create a release build for both Chrome and Firefox:

Running the download script

If you want to run the script that downloads the HN comments for fine-tuning, follow these steps:

cd scripts
pnpm install

# build better-sqlite3 from source in order to fix the node bindings for ARM64 on macOS
cd node_modules/better-sqlite3
pnpm rebuild
cd ../..

🔧 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

AI Summarization Not Working
- Check API key configuration
- Verify network connectivity
- Ensure selected AI provider is running (for Ollama)
- Check Chrome version for Built-in AI
CORS Issues with Ollama
- Verify CORS environment variable
- Restart Ollama after configuration
- Check Ollama logs for errors
Performance Issues
- Try different AI providers
- Collapse long comment threads
- Clear browser cache

Support

GitHub Issues: Report bugs

📜 License

MIT Licensed - free to use, modify, and distribute

🙏 Acknowledgments

Hacker News community
AI provider partners
Open source contributors
Valuable feedback from Liza George

Note

Note: This extension is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or sponsored by Y Combinator or Hacker News.