post-to-hacker-news

Submitting to Hacker News

One shot per thing. A submission that goes up before the links work, or with a title that reads as marketing, is spent — reposting the same URL is treated as a duplicate and gets nothing. Decide it is ready before opening the form.

Drive it with the session_* tools from the T3rnel Session Bridge, in the browser the operator is signed into. news.ycombinator.com/submit shows the form when signed in and a login page otherwise, so the form's presence is the check.

Before submitting

• Every link in it resolves. A store listing still in review is a 404 to a reader, and the front page is not a second chance.
• Show HN has rules: it must be something people can try now, made by the poster. Not a landing page, not a waitlist, not a company announcement. If someone cannot use it within a minute of arriving, it is not a Show HN.
• The title carries no marketing. No "revolutionary", no superlatives, no exclamation. State what the thing is. Under 80 characters; HN silently rewrites long or hyped titles, and its rewrite is usually worse than a careful one.

The form

Four controls, none of them labelled — address them by name:

Selector	Holds
input[name=title]	the title, ≤ 80 characters
input[name=url]	the link
textarea[name=text]	body text
input[type=submit]	submit

url and text are exclusive. Fill one. For anything with a repository or a live page, use url and put the explanation in the first comment. Use text only for a question or discussion with nothing to link.

session_navigate  → https://news.ycombinator.com/submit
session_snapshot  → confirm the form is there, which confirms the session is signed in
session_fill      → input[name=title], then input[name=url]
session_snapshot  → read the values back before submitting
session_click     → input[type=submit]

A successful submission redirects to /newest. Still being on /submit means it did not go — re-snapshot and read problem on the fields, then screenshot if that is empty.