Hacker News mention alerts
Nephia watches Hacker News for the stories and comments that name your product, matched over titles, submitted links and comment bodies.
It checks as often as every 2 minutes at 1 credit a check, and a comment arrives with the title of the story it sits under.
Each item is read for sentiment and intent, so a thread asking how you compare sorts above a passing link.
What a Watch on Hacker News reads
- Stories and comments
- Both by default, or only one of the two.
- A points threshold
- Keep only the stories above a score, read at the moment they are caught.
- The context of a comment
- Its parent story’s title and the link to the discussion, without a second request.
- Exactly once
- An item that surfaces late still arrives, and never twice.
How often, and what a month costs
| Plan | Checked | Credits a month | Share of the plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | every hour | 720 credits | 72% of 1,000 credits |
| Solo | every 15 minutes | 2,880 credits | 2% of 150,000 credits |
| Growth | every 5 minutes | 8,640 credits | 1% of 650,000 credits |
| Pro | every 2 minutes | 21,600 credits | under 1% of 2,500,000 credits |
A check on Hacker News costs 1 credit, and Hacker News is never checked more often than every 2 minutes. Credits meter the checks: the mentions they find are never capped. Nothing is charged during the public beta.
What happens to a mention
A search on Hacker News carries one term, because its own search requires every word it is given. A second spelling is a second search.
Every mention is read by the AI for a sentiment and an intent, and ranked by reach: what deserves an answer sits on top, with a reply drafted. The same post caught on two sources is one line.
It lands in your Feed and, the moment it is caught, in Slack, Discord, an email digest or a signed webhook. The REST API and the MCP server read the same stream.
Hacker News mentions, as the AI read them
From the demo account. Cairn and every handle are fictional.
Hacker NewsAsk HN412 points
Cairn vs Payhook for usage-based billing, anyone run both?
questioncomparison
Asks the thread to compare two providers on usage-based billing, with no position of its own yet.
Hacker NewsShow HN276 points
I put usage-based pricing on my API with Cairn in an afternoon
positivepraise
A customer describing shipping with you in an afternoon, the clearest praise in the window, and on the front page.
Questions
Does it catch comments as well as stories?
Yes, by default. Most mentions of a product on Hacker News are in comments under someone else’s story, and each one arrives with that story’s title.
Can I only get the stories that took off?
Yes. A points threshold keeps the stories above it. Comments carry no points, so the threshold narrows stories only.
Can one search carry several spellings?
Not on Hacker News. Its search requires every word it is given, so two spellings in one search find nothing. A second spelling is a second search, at 1 credit a check.