[HN Gopher] Show HN: HN Companion - web app that enhances the ex...
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Show HN: HN Companion - web app that enhances the experience of
reading HN
HN is all about the rich discussions. We wanted to take the HN
experience one step further - to bring the familiar keyboard-first
navigation, find interesting viewpoints in the threads and get a
gist of long threads so that we can decide which rabbit holes to
explore. So we built HN Companion a year ago, and have been
refining it ever since. Try it: https://app.hncompanion.com or
available as an extension for Firefox / Chrome: [0]. Most AI
summarization strips the voices from conversations by flattening
threads into a wall of text. This kills the joy of reading HN
discussions. Instead, HN Companion works differently - it
understands the thread hierarchy, the voting patterns and
contrasting viewpoints - everything that makes HN interesting.
Think of it like clustering related discussions across multiple
hierarchies into a group and surfacing the comments that represent
each cluster. It keeps the verbatim text with backlinks so that you
never lose context and can continue the conversation from that
point. Here is how the summarization works under the hood [1]. We
first built this as an open source browser extension. But soon we
learned that people hesitate to install it. So we built the same
experience as a web app with all the features. This helped people
see how it works, and use it on mobile too (in the browser or as
PWA). This is now a playground to try new features before taking
them to the browser extension. We did a Show HN a year ago [2] and
we have added these features based on user feedback: * cached
summaries - summaries are generated and cached on our servers. This
improved the speed significantly. You still have the option to use
your own API key or use local models through Ollama. * our system
prompt is available in the Settings page of the extension. You can
customize it as you wish. * sort the posts in the feed pages
(/home, /show etc.) based on points, comments, time or the default
sorting order. * We tried fine tuning an open weights model to
summarize, but learned that with a good system prompt and user
prompt, the frontier models deliver results of similar quality. So
we didn't use the fine-tuned model, but you can run them locally.
The browser extension does not track any usage or analytics. The
code is open source[3]. We want to continue to improve HN
Companion, specifically add features like following an author,
notes about an author, draft posts etc. See it in action for a
post here https://app.hncompanion.com/item?id=46937696 We would
love to get your feedback on what would make this more useful for
your HN reading. [0] https://hncompanion.com/#download [1]
https://hncompanion.com/how-it-works [2]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42532374 [3]
https://github.com/hncompanion/browser-extension
Author : georgeck
Score : 18 points
Date : 2026-02-10 17:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hncompanion.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hncompanion.com)
| rayshan wrote:
| This is one Chrome Extension I can't live without.
|
| I've been using this ever since Manifest v3 killed Hacker News
| Extension Suite (HNES). HN comment threads are getting longer
| over time. Top links often have 1k+ comments now. The AI summary
| saves me a ton of time. I also use the extension with the new
| sorting function, sorting frontpage links by points, so I can
| focus on what's important.
| georgeck wrote:
| Thanks a lot, Rayshan!
|
| Your feedback through GitHub issues has been instrumental in
| helping us prioritize specific features. Additionally, the
| Chrome Web Store team has approved our extension for their
| 'Featured' badge, which could enhance the trust in installing
| the extension. I'm curious to know if you've had a chance to
| try the web app.
| annjose wrote:
| Co-author here. Forgot to share the link to the fine-tuned model
| [0].
|
| [0] https://huggingface.co/georgeck/models
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| The only thing that's rolling in my head right now is: WHY Why
| would anyone want an AI-generated summary of an online
| discussion??
| georgeck wrote:
| When people hear about AI summaries, this is what comes to
| mind. And I understand their concern. Wouldn't a summary strip
| away the essence of a conversation? Let me explain with an
| analogy. When we're overwhelmed with information, we benefit
| from a system that organizes it. For instance, I might use a
| tool to declutter my desktop files and categorize them into
| logical groups. Once the categorization is complete, I can view
| these clusters and focus on the specific files within those
| clusters that pique my interest. However, if the summarization
| process also alters the files, I wouldn't want to use that
| tool.
|
| In the context of HN Companion, our objective is to examine
| lengthy threads and group them into 3 to 4 topics. Within each
| topic, we present the actual discussion that represents that
| cluster. We invested significant effort in developing a system
| that enables you to not only read the actual comments but also
| seamlessly jump to that discussion and continue the
| conversation there.
|
| I encourage you to explore a few of the summaries in the app.
| I'd greatly appreciate your feedback on how we can enhance our
| service.
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(page generated 2026-02-10 23:02 UTC)