Hacker News → Personalized Digest
Monitor Hacker News trending and send personalized article recommendations
Prerequisites
- OpenClaw installed and running
- Slack workspace or Telegram bot for delivery
Required Skills
openclaw install web-scraperopenclaw install research-assistantopenclaw install slack-digestInstallation Steps
Install required skills
Install the web scraper, research assistant, and Slack digest skills.
openclaw install web-scraper research-assistant slack-digestDefine your interests
List the topics, keywords, and domains you care about. The research assistant uses these to score and filter articles.
Configure delivery
Set up Slack or Telegram as the delivery channel and choose your preferred schedule.
Add the config snippet
Copy the configuration below and customize the interests and delivery settings.
Configuration
{
"schedules": [
{
"name": "hn-digest",
"cron": "0 8 * * *",
"actions": [
"scrape-hn-trending",
"score-by-interests",
"generate-digest",
"deliver"
]
}
],
"integrations": {
"hackerNews": {
"sources": ["front-page", "show-hn", "ask-hn"],
"minPoints": 50,
"maxArticles": 30
},
"personalization": {
"interests": ["AI/ML", "distributed systems", "developer tools", "startups"],
"boostDomains": ["arxiv.org", "github.com"],
"muteKeywords": ["crypto", "blockchain"]
},
"slack": {
"channel": "#reading-list",
"format": "digest"
}
}
}Add this to your openclaw.json and customize the values for your setup.
SOUL.md
## HN Digest Curation Rules
- Prioritize articles that teach something or present original research over opinion pieces and hot takes.
- If an article links to a GitHub repo, note the star count and language — context matters for developer tools.
- Skip "Show HN" posts that are just landing pages with no demo or code.
- For each article, write a 1-sentence summary that explains why it's interesting — don't just repeat the title.
- If the comments have more signal than the article itself (common on HN), mention that.
- Keep the digest to 5-10 articles max. Quality over completeness.Add this to your SOUL.md to define the agent's behavior for this workflow.
Expected Behavior
Every morning at 8am, OpenClaw scrapes Hacker News trending stories, scores them against your interests, and delivers a personalized digest of 5-10 articles to your Slack channel with summaries and links.
Usage Guide
The digest runs automatically on the cron schedule. Customize your interests array to tune recommendations. Add domains to boostDomains to prioritize articles from sources you trust. Use muteKeywords to filter out topics you don't care about.