nu_script_hnews — Hacker News in your terminal

Read Hacker News from Nushell. Fetches stories, caches them for 15 minutes, and prints a table you can actually read.

Title and Cmts are clickable links in terminals that support OSC-8 (iTerm2, kitty, WezTerm, etc.).

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Requirements

• Nushell 0.97+ (needs $nu.cache-dir)
• Internet access to hit the HN Firebase API

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Install

Copy hnews.nu somewhere on your system, then add it to your config.nu:

use /path/to/hnews.nu *

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Usage

hn              # Top 15 stories
hn 30           # Top 30 stories
hn -f           # Force refresh, ignore cache
hn --new        # New stories
hn --best       # Best stories
hn --ask        # Ask HN
hn --show       # Show HN
hn -j           # Raw JSON output
hn -r           # Raw records (no ANSI formatting)

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Columns

Columns appear and disappear based on terminal width, so narrow windows don't wrap:

Column	Min width	Notes
#	always	1-based rank
Score	50	Color-coded: green / yellow / red bold
Cmts	60	Clickable link to HN discussion
Age	60	Time since posted: Xs Xm Xh Xd Xw
Domain	80	Source domain
Type	90	Site or post-type icon (Ask, Show, Launch)
Title	always	Clickable link to article. Truncated to fit remaining width
By	70	Username

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Icon modes

Flag	Result
--emoji / -E	Emoji icons
--nerd / -N	Nerd Font glyphs
--text / -T	Plain text (default)

You can also set $env.NERD_FONTS = "1" in your env.nu to default to Nerd Font glyphs without passing a flag every time.

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Feeds

Each feed is cached separately, so switching between them doesn't blow away your top stories cache.

Flag	Feed
(default)	Top stories
--new / -n	New
--best / -b	Best
--ask / -a	Ask HN
--show / -s	Show HN

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Caching

Stories are cached for 15 minutes under $nu.cache-dir/nu_hn_cache/. Run hn -f to skip the cache and fetch fresh results.

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All flags

Flag	Short	Description
--force	-f	Bypass cache
--new	-n	New stories feed
--best	-b	Best stories feed
--ask	-a	Ask HN feed
--show	-s	Show HN feed
--json	-j	Raw JSON output
--raw	-r	Raw records, no ANSI color
--emoji	-E	Emoji icons
--nerd	-N	Nerd Font glyphs
--text	-T	Plain text, no color
--full	-F	Force full width display
--compact	-C	Force compact display
--minimal	-M	Force minimal display
--oneline	-1	Force one-line display
--demo		Display all layouts
--test		Use hardcoded test data
--debug		Print cache and icon mode info

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Pipeline use

--raw and --json are there for when you want to pipe results into something else:

# Stories with 500+ points
hn 50 --raw | where { |it| $it.Score > 500 }

# Titles only, from the ask feed
hn --ask --json | select title score by

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Customisation

Column breakpoints and width estimates are named constants at the top of hnews.nu:

const COL_SCORE_MIN_WIDTH  = 50
const COL_CMTS_MIN_WIDTH   = 60
const COL_BY_MIN_WIDTH     = 70
const COL_DOMAIN_MIN_WIDTH = 80
const COL_TYPE_MIN_WIDTH   = 90

Adjust them if your font or table renderer makes columns wider or narrower than expected.