Show HN: Hntui – A TUI for Hacker News | Hacker News

hi there! i'd like you to try out a tui i made for browsing hackernews. it's built using opentui and also effect (learning experiment). i really like it and i think you will too!

65 comments

sho_hn2 days ago

"Zig with TypeScript bindings and React components" for a TUI is definitely the wildest, weirdest stack for a given job I've seen.

jrop2 days ago

Ha, mine's weirder, I think? I wrote a React-like renderer in Lua that renders into Neovim buffers[1], then built a pile of apps on top, including an (unfinished/experimental) HN reader[2].

[1] https://github.com/jrop/morph.nvim

[2] https://github.com/jrop/tuis.nvim

markild2 days ago

Where are you seeing any mention of Zig? All I see is TypeScript?

tom13372 days ago

It uses OpenTUI which is build in Zig: https://github.com/anomalyco/opentui

dhanushnehru2 days ago

I'd recommend saving actual HN item IDs rather than feed positions. Since the front page reorders constantly, relying on item IDs makes returning to a saved thread completely predictable.

ahmd-sh2 days ago

hey thanks for your input. unless i'm misunderstanding, hntui does save/store HN item IDs (and the Saved tab refetches)... but i think you might be pointing somehting else out that i'm not seeing (maybe the cursor)?

rootnod32 days ago

That is a wild stack to use for a RSS feed.

dd8601fn2 days ago

It's also exactly the kind of thing that would have gotten my attention a few years ago, but now any chatbot could whip up in 20 minutes, exactly how you want it.

Have opinions about the stack (for how little it matters)? Secrets storage and session management? Whatever you want, just say that. It ain't avionics.

dd8601fn2 days ago

I had it make me one on lunch. Works well... commenting from it now. Claude chose Go and Bubble Tea, for the curious.

ahmd-sh2 days ago

your point exactly. there's a fair bit of room for improving this relatively simple project, but it's mainly the look and feel i was after without shamelessly shipping slop

glitchc2 days ago

Thank you, I've been looking for a meaningful way to browse HN on my cyberdeck and this looks perfect.

nateb20222 days ago

As an aside, 'meaningful' is an obtuse adjective to use there; and it's typical of text generated by Claude.[0] I seem to see it a lot more frequently than pre-AI (~2022). Maybe my next project will be statistically analyzing word frequencies in HN comments pre-AI and post-AI.

[0]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7031138

glitchc2 days ago

Thanks for you concern, I typed that message out by hand and genuinely meant it. The terseness stems from the use of a mobile phone, not Claude. As it happens, I don't have an Anthropic account, nor do I possess an OpenAI one. If you look at my comment history, you'll notice I've been around for a while (as I noticed, have you).

ahmd-sh2 days ago

hey thanks for trying it out! :) also it would look sick on a cyberdeck!!

iugtmkbdfil8342 days ago

Hmm, it is cool, but I feel obligated to ask why. Does it portend the future where we mostly interact with website through designated intermediaries that are not generic web browsers. I am not messing with you. I am curious what you envision.

ahmd-sh2 days ago

hey thanks for trying it out. honestly, this was just a fun selfish project because i'm really into the look and feel of tuis lately. there's no overarching vision with using tui/intermediaries for browsing the web, i believe browsers exist for a reason that LLMs haven't been able to replace yet :)

IceDane2 days ago

.. what? There are like hundreds of these and similar apps.

65 comments

Related stories